PRESENTATION ON

JOYSTICK

Submitted by
Shivam Gupta

CONTENT

Definition

History

Technical Details

Design

Working

Other Applications

Pictures

o DEFINITION

A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and

reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling.

Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or
more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer.

Joysticks are used mostly for computer games, but they are also used
occasionally for CAD/CAM systems and other applications.

o SOME HISTORY

Joysticks originated as controls for aircraft ailerons and elevators.

The name "joystick" is thought to originate with early 20th century.

The first electrical 2-axis joystick was probably invented around 1944 in Germany.

In the 1960s the use of joysticks became widespread in radio-controlled airplane

modelling systems.

The first use of joysticks outside the radio-controlled aircraft industry may have been in
the control of powered wheelchairs (1963).

CONTINUED

Ralph H. Baer, inventor of television video games and the Magnavox Odyssey
console, created the first video game joysticks in 1967. They were analogue,
using two potentiometers to measure position.

Joysticks were commonly used as controllers in first and second generation

game consoles.

More recently, analogue sticks (or thumbsticks) have become standard on

video game consoles and have the ability to indicate the stick's displacement
from its neutral position.

o TECHNICAL DETAILS

Most joysticks are two-dimensional, having two axes of movement, but one
and three-dimensional joysticks do exist.

An analogue joystick is a joystick which has continuous states of the

movement in any direction in the plane and a digital joystick gives only on/off
signals for four different directions, and mechanically possible combinations.

Additionally joysticks often have one or more fire buttons, used to trigger
some kind of action. These are simple on/off switches.

Some joysticks have feedback capability.

Most I/O interface cards for PCs have a joystick port. Modern joysticks mostly
use a USB interface for connection to the PC.

o DESIGN

The basic idea of a joystick is to translate the movement of a plastic stick into
electronic information, a computer can process.

The various joystick technologies differ mainly in how much information they pass on.
The simplest joystick design, used in many early game consoles, is just a specialized
electrical switch.

The base of joystick is a circuit board that sits directly underneath the stick. The circuit
board is made up of several "printed wires," which connect to several contact
terminals.

The circuits just carry electricity from one contact point to another. When the joystick is
in the neutral position all but one of the individual circuits is broken.

o HOW IT WORKS

Joysticks pull off a really neat trick. They take something entirely physical - the
movement of your hand - and translate it into something entirely mathematical - a string
of ones and zeros (the language of computers).

When the computer picks up a charge on a particular wire, it knows that the joystick is in
the right position to complete that particular circuit. Pushing the stick forward closes the
"forward switch," pushing it left closes the "left switch," and so on. In some designs, the
computer recognizes a diagonal position when the stick closes two switches.

The firing buttons work exactly the same way - when you press down, it completes a
circuit and the computer recognizes a fire command.

In the conventional system, a card inside the computer handles this with a
very crude analogue-to-digital converter. The basic idea is to use the varying
voltage from each potentiometer to charge a capacitor.

By discharging the capacitor and then calculate how long it takes it to

recharge, the converter can determine the position of the potentiometer, and
therefore the joystick.

The measured recharge rate is a numerical value the computer can

recognize. The computer performs this operation whenever it needs to get a
read on the joystick.

o SOME OTHER APPLICATIONS

Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks,
underwater unmanned vehicles, surveillance cameras etc.

Miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for

smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones.

Also specialist joysticks, classed as an assistive technology pointing device,

are used to replace the computer mouse for people with fairly severe physical
disabilities.

They are also used on electric powered wheelchairs for control since they are
simple and effective to use as a control method.

Video game joystick

elements:
1.stick,
2.base,
3.trigger,
4.extra buttons,
5.auto fire switch,
6.throttle,
7.hat switch (POV
hat),
8.suction cup.

Thank You