Hi, let's take a look inside one of these professional industrial quality joysticks as seen in a previous mailbag episode and sent in by Mike Sadowski from Control Devices hearing not Sydney So thank you very much Mark. Let's take a look at what makes one of these puppies tick. So Marks included two joysticks here. One is the fully complete one complete with interface and presumably has all the circuitry fully functional inside the thing and the other one is essentially are the same thing but all stripped down so that we can take a look at the mechanicals and he says that this one here is that most likely used in the garbage trucks which come around and you know lift up your bins and haul them into the back.

That would be one of the industrial applications from one of these puppies. Of course you know the buttons would do various things and they'd label them for a specific purpose and they would operate the operate, you know, up/down dump, rubbish, all that sort of stuff. or they can be used in that flight simulators or anything that requires a real top-quality joystick. Because these things I mean there's a lot of engineering which goes into that and it's hard to really give you an insight as to how good this thing feels, but a real top quality like you know, military style.

Our grade joystick, for example, won't only just go like that in any direction, it'll have more movement in the for accent like easier movement in the four axes like that than it does. You can actually push these like at any angle, but there's more force required to do that. So you know if you're flying, applying or something, you know if you want it to go forward. Jesus Push forward.

You don't want it to go slightly off to an angle. you know, like that. So you want the joy. I'm not sure the correct term for that I'm sure people all scream at me.

the joystick aficionados were screaming Me: I know the term for that Anyway, it is yet is there's less resistance. so if you push it forward, it's naturally going to go forward. You need actually a fair bit of force to to sort of move it over to one side. Didn't get that different angle.

So yeah. Superbly engineered. They really are cost a fortune And these buttons. Mark was telling me that they used to be designed in the US.

They use one from a US company but they failed. You know, just too much use too many button presses. They weren't reliable enough. so they designed these ones themselves here in Sydney at their Factory and they manufacture them here.

They're a hall-effect switch so all it is is basically put in there. There's no actual contact in there. So basically all they're doing is putting a magnet beside a Hall effect sensor and these have up to 20 million operations. And yes, they have actually designed some Mark test jigs to actually prove that and you know, actually test them out.

Push them 20 million times and actually test the reliability of these things. You know. This mechanism here however, does use standard. Well you know they're They're going to be super high quality, but you can see the white contacts in there and as I move it, you can see that arm swing across.

So just like say, your range switch in your multimeter. they've got the pads you can probably see through the PCB they're on to the other side. those are dual wipe contacts. Of course you'll wipe either side so they can determine how when these things have been moved.

So there's a lot of mechanical palm which goes into ensuring I mean we can. You know we can tear this whole thing down and see inside because it's there's a lot of a lot of engineering palm which goes into that as I said to give the the extra force required to go at the various angles. Very nice and we have some unpopulated circuitry in here. By the way, all the mechanical stuff.

This is all art designed and made in the UK but all the rest of it. all of the PCBs and that circuitry and everything else they're all done here in Sydney. So presumably all this like there'd be a micro on there and it gives presumably our proportional output. or you know, some sort of decoded output and or and or you know, serial protocol custom interface for whatever device you need.

So yeah, that's you know, probably completely are customizable to the customer's requirements because these things basically aren't off-the-shelf pretty much. they're sort of. You know, more of your are designed to the customer spec kind of thing and how the PCB gives it away 4 to 20 mili-amp times to. that's a current loop output.

So we'd get a proportional current output based on the movement of the joystick. and they reason they use a current output instead of a voltage output because industrial applications typically got big long wiring harnesses and things like that. you don't want any interference. So a nice 4 to 20 mili-amp industry standard current loop output and proportional output is exactly what you want for that sort of thing.

So yeah, you can eliminate any noise interference because it's relatively high current. it's not. You know our high impedance voltage, the input. So it's a huge difference there.

So no surprise that and industrial weight unit has 4 to 20 milliamp current loop outputs on it. But yeah, I'm sure they could design it to. You know they'd custom make this board to whatever requirements you wanted if you take that grommet off. Uh-huh.

We can really see how they achieve this. You know, less force required in one axes like that, You can see that they've got little milled cutouts in there. So obviously in listening with the circular disk going in back and forth and left and right is much less force required. Then as I said going opposite like that because it's a higher upper Ridge like that.

and of course this being around in here obviously just slides in that slot there real easy so it stays on target unless you really have to put a bit of force to move it over. That is terrific stuff. And of course the the force is determined by your spring on there. So if the customer said oh, look, that's a bit, that joysticks a bit stiff I don't like a stiff joystick now that's a bit dodgy.

give me one that's a bit soft, then they can just spring in there and give the customer whatever they want. So all this physical base inside here is manufactured in the UK as I said by Penny and Gillies Control a limited made in the old dart. There you go. And yeah, they're all individually serial number because you know these things cost a lot of money and you know you really want to trace them.

So but as I said, the the rest of the electronics and that stuff inside is done by Control Devices here in Sydney If we take that board assembly out here, you can see the dual wipe contacts under there. So there's two separate circuits. And today and check out the backside of the board here. Yes it is a proportional output, not just like a like a four position output or something like that.

Dead giveaway is this carbon trace over here like this. So one of those dual wipe contacts. They're these two pads and this one down here. Here and here they make contacts.

A1 makes contact of course with that main pad which goes all the way across there and the other goes on to this variable resistance. Well, it's a continuous resistance right across there. It's going to have a controlled resistance right across, but depending on the position then you can actually tap it off just like a regular pot. So there's your three terminals.

Here's your one terminal going across there and there's either side of your pot like that and they might even be tapping off from the center as well there. And let's measure the end end resistance of that. There we go. about 3.6 K or there abouts and that'll be fairly linear across that arc.

like that, it's fairly evenly distributed resistance across there. It's based on the the graphite or whatever material it is and then the the controlled thickness as well. There'd be a lot of art in actually manufacturing those for the joystick, so you know I Don't know who's actually manufacturing those, but you know it would be a really top quality stuff. We've got another one across here which is a different axes but this doesn't look like it's used at all on this particular joystick with the contacts.

Anyway, that ones around about 500 ohms apiece. It looks like that Oh, we've got as I said, we've got two contacts there and two contacts there, so maybe they had something else up there for these top contacts, but these aren't used in this particular model. so you've got one wiper across there and there. As I said, that'll be a regular potentiometer, going back and forth with the centre tap in there and then the other one goes between here and it's just a multi-position It detects whether or not it's the centre and goes over there.

So going to be dependent whether or not you use that depends on your art system requirements. And of course the carbon on there is going to be some sort of you know graphite base material I'm not sure what it is precisely, but it's going to want to be very special for this you know, really high-end industrial military type application to get you know if you've got the can wipe or continuously going across that it's not like a regular you know 10 cent pot you can buy from your local tricky dick story. it's going to be really high-quality carbon on there bet your bottom dollar. And of course they wouldn't just get that from any PCB manufacturer either.

They would have had you know, carefully selected and are qualified that particular piece of being manufactured to do that particular process that they wanted and it probably cost a fortune. And of course needless to say the gold plating on there wouldn't be a standard one that you're gonna get on your our $5.00 board from you know from your one hung low PCB Manufacturer that's going to be really top-quality super hard, super thick gold on there. bet your bottom dollar again. And by the way I Know all about selecting the right type of button here I Used to work at Australian Defence Industries and working on military stuff and we were doing simulators for the simulator panels for the Navy and we had to.

You know we would spend like six months sourcing, selecting and testing and qualifying the right switch for the damn thing. I Mean that's why these military bloody projects are so expensive. They just like the switch. Yeah, 500 bucks a bloody switch, but it's been how many you know? $100,000 just selecting the damn thing, just in labor and red tape and look at all these cast parts that they have to make.

I Mean jeez, these things that cost a fortune and we're getting more down into the guts of she could use that in some sort of sci-fi movie. Couldn't you? That's fantastic. Love that. Oh Anyway, we're getting down into it.

There's the money shot for your mechanical grease monkeys. Look at that. Fantastic. So yeah, I mean that is just you know a great work of mechanical engineering.

You know it's such a simple function for a joystick, but you know to perfect it and get it right requires. You know a lot of design effort and a lot of you know precision machining and things like that. You know, really separate the real top-quality ones from just your junk ones for bloody game and kitties and you would think apart like that would be symmetrical. but it's not.

There's a little pin in there which is designed to made up with the hole down in there. so it goes in one orientation only. But it looks pretty darn symmetrical. but you know.

and likewise for that part too you think is symmetrical, looks symmetrical. but no, it's got a little key in there which mates up with that so you can't mount any other orientation. Bet you're us, we're going to avoid that wordy yeah. And here is inside.

presumably a fully assembled one or a fully assembled customized I Don't know it could be a prototype or anything like that. I Don't know. it wasn't Certainly our brand new out of their stock. they just gave me whatever they had hanging around.

So yeah, that looks like it's just possibly just jury-rigged Maybe for test purposes? Something like that. Unfortunately, it looks like the board is actually riveted on there. Check it out. it's not actually screwed in.

Completely riveted on. So yeah. I'm not sure there's anything of value on the bottom of the board in there. And by the looks of these, these connectors on the side, yeah, I'd say it's some sort of art unit.

So yep, that's nothing interesting on there. Let's take a squiz at these buttons if we can to get at those buttons. it looks like we can remove the silicon in here or I get through there somehow and get the screws off and access those. Then we've popped that out.

but unfortunately why it spotted. So we can't get to see the Hall effect sensor in there. But as I said, it's just a Hall effect sensor. probably on a little board with a push button and a spring which then pushes a magnet in front of the Hall effect sensor and there's going to be a little board on there.

It's got a PNP output and Mark says this is rated for 20 million operations. Datasheet says 10 million, but yeah, they probably get a lot more than that. Probably very conservatively rated. So yeah, they're manufactured by Control Devices Here in Sydney they're their own Hall effect sensor because mechanical white contacts.

you know to get 10 or 20 million operations out of those. It's a bit dodgy. So yeah, there's a Hall effect with no metal to metal contact. all electronic effectively is the best way to get that reliability.

Then you've only got to pretty much rely on the spring and that's up pretty much it. So as long as you can get the spring to do, those are 10 or 20 million operations and Bob's your uncle and they're all ESD protected as well as you'd expect in an industrial application like this. And just a small thing like putting heat shrink over the wiring which goes through the cavity there just so it doesn't rub against the inside I Know there's no movement on here once you've physically installed it, but it just shows attention to detail. I Really like it.

and of course you've got rubber o-ring seals as well because well, you can't have the operator you know spilling their coffee all over these buttons and well, accidentally having that Jeron Shoot somebody. No, you want to do it on purpose if we have a brief look at the data sheet here for the penny and gillies. JC 6000 multi axis joystick controller designed for demanding operator control applications in off highway vehicles and other man-machine in interfaces where reliability bla-bla-bla is super-important so you can get Hall Effect or our potentiometer in which we have our got in here. We've got the potentiometers in there as we saw and you can get single or dual access control.

High strength level is superb. Proportional control that's probably the word. I Was looking for a proportional axes kind of control and there Ip66 and the Hall Effect ones actually supplied by them, but they've got up to 15 million operations. But as I said, the Hall Effect switches in these ones.

the joystick switches on the top. They're actually manufactured out locally here in Sydney not by this company so but the potentiometer once they've got more than five million operations. So fantastic reliability on that. That's just awesome.

And you can get dual output ones as well for like failure detection, safety critical applications, all that sort of jazz, and of course little design, whatever the hell you want. So there you have it. That's a brief look inside one of these professional industrial type joysticks and quite a lot of really nice engineering which goes into these things. and well, if you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford it, you gamy kitties.

So these are designed for real industrial, high reliability applications and pretty much sort of you know custom are designed for your particular needs. So thank you very much to Mark from my control devices here in Sydney for letting us have a look inside these beautiful joysticks. and oh man, just love a good stiff joystick that's just fantastic. Catch you next time you.