
Then you’ll need to wire up the MCP3008 chip correctly. Method 1 worked fine for me – you just open up a config screen in Raspbian and select the SPI option.
JOYSTICK MAPPER RASPBERRY PI HOW TO
Using A Joystick On The Raspberry Pi Using An MCP3008įirst, you’ll learn how to enable the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus on certain GPIO pins. Analogue Sensors On The Raspberry Pi Using An MCP3008. Enabling The SPI Interface On The Raspberry Pi. Fortunately, there’s a set of very helpful tutorials for doing just this, and you’ll find them on the Raspberry Pi Spy website. To get it to work, you’ll need to learn about the SPI bus protocol and how to enable it on the Pi, then wire up a small chip that uses SPI to bridge the gap between analog controls and the Pi. But I’ll wire it up same as the potentiometers, since that’s what the articles linked below do as well. If your joystick can be pressed down like mine can, then *that *button just has an on/off state and can be connected directly to any regular GPIO pin. The joystick is an analog control, consisting of two potentiometers that send a variable voltage depending on the position of the joystick (here’s a video that shows how they work), and it won’t just connect directly to the GPIO pins on the Pi. If you’re buying several instead of just one like me, consider Adafruit’s site. It’s cheaper directly from Adafruit, but watch out for shipping. Adafruit MCP3008 – 8-Channel 10-Bit ADC With SPI Interface Ī tiny chip that bridges the gap between an analog control and the Pi. I pulled 5 random wires out of the set to use on this project, and they all worked great. You’ll need a few of these to connect the joystick to the breadboard. Phantom YoYo Jumper wire M/F male to female.
There's no documentation, but I found a link to instructions for each module on Amazon. It comes with a joystick control (which I used for this post), and a load of other sensors and input devices. The longer ones let you fit more wires and stuff. Some of the kits come with a shorter breadboard. If you already have a Pi, obviously you don't need this. There are a few things you’ll need on hand before doing this, all of which you can find on Amazon (of course).Ī decent starter kit includes the Pi, adapter, memory card, case, breadboard and cobbler, wires and LEDs, blah blah blah. Well, I finally decided to pull one out, and thought the mini-joystick might offer some interesting… opportunities. I knew they wouldn’t directly interface with the Pi, but that it was entirely possible to do it, so I put them aside for later. Attach sensors to read temperature and humidity, and plug other cards like the Sense HAT over top of the pins.Ī few months ago, I got a set of 37 sensor modules on Amazon. Place a button in the path of a circuit and detect when a user presses it. They’re just sitting there, waiting to be connected to all kinds of useful peripherals so your Pi can interact with the world around it. One of the coolest things about the Raspberry Pi is its GPIO pins.