"Whoever is removing my post and placing it in Project Guidance, please stop. This is a General Electronics question."
So I'm trying to put an Arduino in my sons power wheel so I can control it remotely. I've run into an issue trying to figure out how to wire the controller. The PowerWheels has two controls, one for each wheel. This thing drives like a zero turn lawnmower. Each controller has 5 wires going to it. Yellow, Black, Green, White and Red. I setup a sketch to read the voltages coming from the controller and then got confused.
I hooked the red to 5v and the black to ground and set up each of the others to read as a potentiometer. with the controller at rest I get a reading between 1-1.7 volt. When push backward or forward I get a reading of around 2.5-3 volts.
Shouldn't I be getting a reading of 0 and 5?
It might just be because of the type of sensor they used. Never seen anything like it. It seems to work via magnetic field. The silver points on the control stick are magnetic and do'nt actually touch the board in anyway, minus the thin piece of clear plastic that inserts into a slot on the handle. The plastic gets pushed up or down based on the position of the switch. The plastic doesn't move from the board, so I can't figure out it's purpose.
I've included the following links to the pictures of the control and board.
I appreciate anyone that can help me with this project.
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This is still a cross post as there is a good chance that the answers that you get here will be duplicates of the answers that you got in the other post. Duplicating answers wastes members time.
I didn't cross post, an admin did
IV_Explorations:
I didn't cross post, an admin did
No, a moderator merged two posts he thought looked very similar and closely-related.
I'm still not convinced they shouldn't be one.
I'll just leave the other one locked.
To actually give you some information instead of screwing around worrying about where a post is, my suggestion would be to go someplace like
http://forum.modifiedpowerwheels.com/
I can't picture the setup you have from your descriptions and I don't know that board. My suggestion would be go to a Power Wheels forum, see if you can learn about how that board works, what the inputs and outputs of it are, and then once you know that if you still want to interface an Arduino with it you will be in a much better position to come back here and ask for assistance.
As it is, I for one, can't tell you how an Arduino would work with that board because i don't know what that board does. I mean you ask if you should be getting a reading of between 0v and 5v. I have absolutely no idea if you should or should not. With some more information, there are some here who might could help you.
Best of luck.
karma for you red... i wasted all morning looking for this... would help to actually have it instead of looking... looks like a hall effect sensor... I'm sure the direction must be on one of the other wires...
Thank you wolframore, I agree. I didn't even get told what was happening. I posted it three times thinking there was a glitch. It wasn't until I checked my other post that I found out what was happening. I understand sometimes a post may not get put in the proper category (which I still feel this was the correct category), but something needs to be said to the OP if there is an issue, so they doesn't think there's a glitch and keep re-posting the same thing in the same place.
Anyways, that's kinda what I was thinking is was. I'm just not sure how that works. Time to google.
Thank you bigred1212, I'll check it out