Analogue joystick as Digital?

[@rt]

Hi Guys
With the availability of the analogue joysticks (or thumbsticks) salvageable from old Playstation controllers, and popular with Arduino stuff,
I wondered if anyone tried using one as a digital joystick, where the analogue stick is of the variety that centres itself.

I figure for retro platforms such as Atari/C64/Amiga/Sega, I think they all have open collector inputs tied high with resistors back at the computer,
and the joystick shorts them low, the centre pins of the pots could both be tied to ground, and the outside pins connected to the four direction
open collector inputs, then four additional resistors could be tied between the direction inputs and the supply to adjust the threshold to trigger each direction.

Has anyone tried such a thing?

[Fungus]

You have to fix those things to something to make them useful.

Why not fix them to the back of an Arduino Pro mini and use it to read the pots and output digital values on four of its pins?

[@rt]

Because rather than use shields I make things
The joystick and four other buttons are to be muxed with a parallel to serial shift register,
so the micro won’t be able to see the pots to measure pot values.

[Macbeth]

I think you will utterly miss the reason why old school micro-switch joysticks like the "Kempston Compatible Competition Pro" were the choice of gamers at the time. They really needed those 4 suction pads on the bottom and the "rapid fire" switch too if you didn't have a hacked "trainer" mod. The game were made for these, not for modern dweeb game pads.

Mind you they now sell "gamer keyboards" and "gamer mice" with flashing LEDs and hi resolution, so what do I know?

[@rt]

I’m talking about sticking a small thumbstick to a PCB to navigate menus for a GPS, not for gaming.
In the case of a Playstation controller, one could pull out two analogue sticks from one controller.

[Fungus]

Because rather than use shields I make things
The joystick and four other buttons are to be muxed with a parallel to serial shift register,
so the micro won’t be able to see the pots to measure pot values.

You're not seeing it: The micro is the shift register.

(or can be)

It has direct access to the pots and emulates whatever interface to the outside world you're imagining.

[CM800]

One way to make an analog joystick digital is to cut the traces towards the end so that the contact only comes into contact at each position.

[@rt]

Lol. Yeah I am seeing it.
The micro already exists, and the shift register is needed to mux 8 inputs down to 3 pins of a micro.
The four inputs of a digital joystick, 2 extra buttons, and two switches in an SD card socket.

Retro gaming was an example because the older sticks work the same way,
and are not already multiplexed by some method.

No wrecking the joystick part by cutting it either.
In the case of 74HCxx input logic it takes a grand total of 4 resistors.

Connect both pot centre wiper pins to ground, directions to the outside pins,
and an additional 4x10K resistors tied from the directions to tie them normally high.

You're not seeing it: The micro is the shift register.

(or can be)

It has direct access to the pots and emulates whatever interface to the outside world you're imagining.