Built a custom ROV controller

[kmatthews123]

Hello, I work as a ROV operator, we use a robot called the Video Ray Pro4 and I have been designing a custom interface device for this bot for the last several months. the default controller is an industrial looking USB input device that is uncomfortable to use for long periods of time and I wanted to try my hand at some custom PCB designing.

I heavily utilized this library as a base for the code. I started with a bit of a meme-y product by hacking a ps3 guitar hero controller to work as a controller using a KB2040 Keyboar from Adafruit. this worked ok but i was missing more buttons than I thought I would. that was fine for the proof of concept though and things worked well enough for me to move onto a more refined version.

I needed to learn to use KiCAD for this project and I would like to say that I only needed to do one iteration of the board before sending it off to fabricate. I know that my board is likely somewhat amateurish but I'm really proud of the final product. I ended up bread-boarding the whole controller to ensure my code would work and with a bit of help from chat gpt i was able to add some extra functionality to the controller. One thing we need for my work robot is the ability to toggle between a self centering joystick (analog input/ self centering pot) and a linear pot that stays in place. this is useful for us because it will be used for the vertical propeller on the ROV which occasionally needs to be left at a specific throttle and sometimes it is nicer to have the vertical thruster go dead when not in use. I used a toggle switch with LED to switch between analog inputs for the ZR axis and to indicate which axis is being used. This is what I ended up using chat gpt to help me with because some of the finer minutia of python coding eludes me sometimes.

Anyway, thank you to fasteddy for making this excellent library. I really have enjoyed using it to make this custom USB gamepad.

Here is my github for all the cad, code and other items relevant to this project, I will be updating the repo with additional information in the near future.
https://github.com/kmatthews123/Controller/tree/main
and I also used onshape for this file so if you want to look at it your welcome to do so.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9419f7314355fc0529143749/w/7dd750f9077cb0f159653e8e/e/8f049d4318b432b6ddfe8d7c?renderMode=0&uiState=65d17f750c344037c710b3d6

[fasteddy516]

Hi @kmatthews123,

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing your story, photos and source. I created this library as a learning project while I was building a gaming chair for space sims; I never imagined it would be used to control something as awesome (or expensive 😨) as an actual ROV! Hopefully your custom controller is holding up well in the field and keeping things more comfortable for extended operation!