There's something that I want, that I think ought to exist, but I can't find one. I wonder if anyone knows of the device I am looking for.
I have a joystick, or a game controller, that works with Windows (7, 8, or 10, not all that fussy). Joysticks have a joystick itself, that might have multiple axes, and they have a whole lot of buttons on them.
The problem with them is that for the application I am using (a robot controller), I have certain buttons that are "important". What I mean by that is that they have some pretty significant impact on the way that robot actually moves. As a result, I want them to be very difficult to hit by accident, and very easy to hit on purpose, even when one is in a hurry. Ideally, even when one is in a hurry and not even looking at the button, but that would be an acceptable compromise. They should just be large enough that it isn't likely you would hit the wrong one by accident. This is in contrast with a typical gaming joystick, which has a ring of several buttons on it, but each one is rather small. People who play a game for several hours get quite good at this, so they never hit the wrong button after they have learned the functions, but I'm dealing with people who have very little time to use the interface, so I want the buttons big enough that I can attach labels to. They can even be solid color labels that I can tell them "Red means immediately stop. Blue means begin rotating in a circle."
Also, it doesn't actually need the "joystick" part of the joystick. It just needs the buttons. However, it has to show up as a joystick/game controller in Windows. When I plug it in to the USB port, the system has to recognize it, and accept commands from it, as if it were a joystick.
I have found a variety of "gaming keypads" that would be adequate, except that they all interface via the keyboard port. I need something that appears to the computer to be a joystick/game controller.
In case anyone wonders why the specific requirements, it is because it has to work with a specific application. Specifically, it has to work with the FIRST Robotics Drive Station (2016). The kids (high school students) drive the robot, and they usually drive it via joysticks in manual control, but they can hit a button that takes them into a completely separate mode in which they give up control of the robot, and let a computer vision algorithm take over the driving.
Yesterday, in a competition, one of the kids hit that button by accident, and did not realize he had hit it. He was utterly confused as to why his robot was moving in random directions, unresponsive to the joystick. The programmer insisted that the only possible way it could have happened is if the field control software got all mixed up, and then I pointed out that when it finally stopped, it happened to be staring at a light, which happened to have certain visual characteristics that could be mistaken for staring at a goal. I want to give them better control of what is happening by making it more difficult to hit the button by accident, and by giving them an easy to find "exit" button that, regardless of what the robot thinks it ought to be doing, will give back manual control to the operator. However, the only easy to use input device is a game controller, so what I need is something that, from a software perspective, is a USB game controller, but has large, easy to see, and labellable, buttons.
And for what it's worth, I don't want anything I have to write a custom driver for, or any software. I have to be able to go to the joystick test screen on the driver station, press Button 1 on the device, and have the little "button 1" light light up. If I can do that, I can take the rest from there.
I have a joystick, or a game controller, that works with Windows (7, 8, or 10, not all that fussy). Joysticks have a joystick itself, that might have multiple axes, and they have a whole lot of buttons on them.
The problem with them is that for the application I am using (a robot controller), I have certain buttons that are "important". What I mean by that is that they have some pretty significant impact on the way that robot actually moves. As a result, I want them to be very difficult to hit by accident, and very easy to hit on purpose, even when one is in a hurry. Ideally, even when one is in a hurry and not even looking at the button, but that would be an acceptable compromise. They should just be large enough that it isn't likely you would hit the wrong one by accident. This is in contrast with a typical gaming joystick, which has a ring of several buttons on it, but each one is rather small. People who play a game for several hours get quite good at this, so they never hit the wrong button after they have learned the functions, but I'm dealing with people who have very little time to use the interface, so I want the buttons big enough that I can attach labels to. They can even be solid color labels that I can tell them "Red means immediately stop. Blue means begin rotating in a circle."
Also, it doesn't actually need the "joystick" part of the joystick. It just needs the buttons. However, it has to show up as a joystick/game controller in Windows. When I plug it in to the USB port, the system has to recognize it, and accept commands from it, as if it were a joystick.
I have found a variety of "gaming keypads" that would be adequate, except that they all interface via the keyboard port. I need something that appears to the computer to be a joystick/game controller.
In case anyone wonders why the specific requirements, it is because it has to work with a specific application. Specifically, it has to work with the FIRST Robotics Drive Station (2016). The kids (high school students) drive the robot, and they usually drive it via joysticks in manual control, but they can hit a button that takes them into a completely separate mode in which they give up control of the robot, and let a computer vision algorithm take over the driving.
Yesterday, in a competition, one of the kids hit that button by accident, and did not realize he had hit it. He was utterly confused as to why his robot was moving in random directions, unresponsive to the joystick. The programmer insisted that the only possible way it could have happened is if the field control software got all mixed up, and then I pointed out that when it finally stopped, it happened to be staring at a light, which happened to have certain visual characteristics that could be mistaken for staring at a goal. I want to give them better control of what is happening by making it more difficult to hit the button by accident, and by giving them an easy to find "exit" button that, regardless of what the robot thinks it ought to be doing, will give back manual control to the operator. However, the only easy to use input device is a game controller, so what I need is something that, from a software perspective, is a USB game controller, but has large, easy to see, and labellable, buttons.
And for what it's worth, I don't want anything I have to write a custom driver for, or any software. I have to be able to go to the joystick test screen on the driver station, press Button 1 on the device, and have the little "button 1" light light up. If I can do that, I can take the rest from there.
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