looking for an ultra light joystick

"petrus bitbyter"

** What sort of disabled people want to fly an ultra light ?

..... Phil

"Phil Allison" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net...

Young ones. They have Duchennes disease and seldom grow older the 35 years. Of course they also like to play other games but simple flight simulators are fun. However, the ordinary joy sticks become too heavy and too strong.

Here

some are playing different games. We need - among other things - joysticks for the game controller adapters.

petrus bitbyter

Can't suggest any specifically, but I'd think that the type of joysticks which are used for the control of motorized wheelchairs would include some of the very-low-force variety.

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Perhaps. But they would certainly need custom embedded code and hardware to interface to standard gaming machines and software, I think. That may be true, regardless, though.

Jon

"petrus bitbyter"

** My god you are thick as a plank.

... Phil

Optics to sense hand movement?

Optics is a good idea.

Is there a simple touch screen development kit that could be used to generate required fwd/aft & L-R outputs?

If jaw / tongue muscles are useable, what about a "bit" & small joystick with a saddle operated by the tongue?

Good idea. I'm thinking of a PDA or tablet, with a touch screen. Move the fingers around the screen moves the virtual joystick. Multi touch and gestures should take care of the virtual buttons without needing to lift the hand.

I recently saw such a tablet device operating a wheel chair. The problem was that the operator had to push down slightly with a finger in order to move the joystick. He could do it, but it was tiring. As the palm rested on the screen in some positions, false motion was a problem. They were working on a spring loaded finger attachment when I was asked for (free) help. I found a thick glove, cut off the index finger, and tweaked the sensitivity until it would detect only the finger. That solved the problem (except when the glove is wet).

One intermediate idea that worked, but could not be operated by this individual, is a hockey puck like cylindrical object dragged around the tablet. It had the advantage of not requiring any force in order to maintain joystick direction. However, there were too many small problems (dirt ground into the screen), falling off and rolling away, and visual parallax, that it was discarded. However, it might work for some situations and methinks is worth pursuing.

It might also be possible to use an overhead camera. Have the operator wear a ring, with target of some sorts on top. The overhead camera will track the ring and produce a joystick effect.

This is probably too stiff, but might be worth looking at:

Good luck.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Cross the shafts of two potentiometers and tie them together (I used paperclip wire)

Mount one pot so that the shaft is horisontal mount a handle to the other. I used 1M pots and this worked well connected to a PC joystick socket

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petrus bitbyter expressed precisely :

Could any of the PC Head Pointer software help? It requires some head movement to move the mouse pointer then the rest is up to you.

--
John G