ILDA joystick

[greenalien]

Do any of the electronic buffs in the community have a circuit for an ILDA joystick? What I have in mind is something that plugs between the controller / DAC and the computer and can override the X and Y signals, allowing the beam to be moved manually. With a couple of trimpots in parallel to the joystick pots, this could be very useful - I have something similar on my old argon system and it got used a lot.

[Insanity]

If you are using Live Pro, you can connect a standard PC joystick with up to 4 buttons and control all manner of different functions: Such as; position, rotation and colour channels...

Mark

[greenalien]

If you are using Live Pro

I'm not.

However, I am using Mamba, and can attach any sort of Midi controller, which could be used in the same way - but that was not what I asked in my original post

[laserist]

Do any of the electronic buffs in the community have a circuit for an ILDA joystick? What I have in mind is something that plugs between the controller / DAC and the computer and can override the X and Y signals, allowing the beam to be moved manually. With a couple of trimpots in parallel to the joystick pots, this could be very useful - I have something similar on my old argon system and it got used a lot.

Joysticks can be a lot of fun. I'd take it a bit further and set it up to sum with the ILDA signal rather than replace it. You'd have a joystick, joystick gain, image gain, and you might even want to throw in an image rotation circuit... Another nice adaptation would be a circuit to introduce multiple points (could tie this into the intensity to blank the ringing and "fly forward" between points. The electronics for a joystick is pretty simple:

X axis pot, Y axis pot +10 volts to one side -10 to the other side of both pots
wipers to voltage followers driving gain pots
Inverting opamps with offset adjust and some capacitance in the feedback loop for noise filtering.
These signals go to a dual rotary pot for joystick gain (rotary because you're going to have one hand on this control a lot of the time...)
Convert the ILDA Signal to single ended for simplicity sake. Run these into pots for x,y axis gain.
Run ILDA and Joystick signals from gain pots to summing amps
Another set of inverting opamps at unity gain for (-) differential signal
Send this onto the ILDA out connector (actually send it to a a/b switch so you can remove the new circuitry completely...

I can give you a hand with design if you'd like.

[greenalien]

Laserist -that's very helpful; if you'd be kind enough to post a circuit diagram, I should be able to take it from there - I can build circuits but can't design much, hence my request. Please specify components exactly!

TIA

[laserist]

OK - I'll draw something up tomorrow...

[greenalien]

Great - could you please use this :

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/s...duct&R=0162732

(RS 2 x 10K lin joystick) as the basis, as I already have one...

Cheers

[laserist]

Great - could you please use this :

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/s...duct&R=0162732

(RS 2 x 10K lin joystick) as the basis, as I already have one...

Cheers

I design it so it'll work with pretty much whatever you want to throw at it.

I kind of grew up with the picture in my last post. 3 to 4 inches of travel, about a 1 inch ball knob on a shaft that fits well between index and middle fingers, a circular limit mask to support analog rotation, and stays where you put it - i.e. isn't spring loaded to return to center... The other thing is the design is conforms to kiss principles and field repairable. Oh and it's cheap.

[weartronics]

Do any of the electronic buffs in the community have a circuit for an ILDA joystick? What I have in mind is something that plugs between the controller / DAC and the computer and can override the X and Y signals, allowing the beam to be moved manually. With a couple of trimpots in parallel to the joystick pots, this could be very useful - I have something similar on my old argon system and it got used a lot.

Hi greenalien,

I have the same need, and I designed the "ildastick" for exactly this purpose:
http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...0&postcount=35

Best regards,

weartronics

[greenalien]

Weartronics - your design looks great; however, it is a stand-alone, output-only unit, whereas I need something that fits in line between the output from the DAC and the input to the projector, so that I can manually override the position of any part of a show - for example, projecting a circle to give a tunnel effect, then sweeping it back and forth in time with the beat of the music.