signals
winch
winch
switch, I'd
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Stamp.
the
photos
Lookin' good, Ed. The model sitting in the cart in Fig. 2 is very complimentary to your project -- easy on the eyes, and a definite plus for the Art Cart team.
Have you considered using a "rocker pot" joystick? You can easily program in a big enough dead zone for any variability in supply voltage and pot manufacturing. This will definitely give you a "neutral" position with feedback -- you just let go of the joystick or let it spring back to its center position, and the motor stops. You would be using the pot to determine motor speed and direction rather than absolute position. You also might just use a couple of microswitches on the winch to determine end of travel positions (this prevents winch overtravel and/or overloading the motor). If you were interested in saving a few clams (and possibly provide some flair of a commercial sort to your project) you might want to look at some old joysticks (you can feel if they're just switches by the "click" on end of travel -- stay away from those), and only use the X- or Y-axis (depending on whether it's going up/down or side-to-side). Many of the older ones were made to be rugged, have a good plastic/rubber boot over the stick, and might withstand an onslaught of sand pretty well.
Good luck Chris