Joysticks and Game Controllers

Types of Controllers

There are two main classes of controllers used to drive robots in FRC:

• Joysticks
• Game Controllers

Game controllers are the vast majority of the controllers used by FRC teams. Typical Game Controllers include:

• XBox One Controllers
  • XBox 360 Controller
  • XBox One Controller
• Playstation Controllers
  • PS3 Controller
  • PS4 Controller
• Logitech Controllers
  • F310 Controller - has no haptic feedback / rumble

The predominant Joystick in use is:

• Logitech Extreme 3D PRO Joystick

HOMEWORK

XBOX - team 5911 - Hafsa

Logitech - team 1310 - Cole

Playstation - team 1310 - Tomasz

X3DPro Joystick - 5596 Khalil

Turning Algorithm

team 1310 - Cole

team 5596 - Khalil

Game Controllers

The typical Game Controller has the following features:

• 2 joysticks - left and right
• 4 primary or face buttons on the right hand
• 2 or 3 game mode buttons in the center (back, start)
• left and right bumper buttons
• left and right analog triggers
• Point of View (POV) rocker control or D-pad

From Wikipedia (XBox 360 controller):

The Trouble with Game Controllers

One unfortunate property of Game Controllers is that the DriverStation maps each of the game controller types from the various manufacturers differently. The buttons, sticks, and triggers may differ between controllers, and can even differ based on mode within a controller (the F310 has X mode and D mode).

This means that if you switch controller types, or even switch a setting on a controller, the code may not work properly.

Our Solution

In order to separate the button numbers from the buttons, we implemented a GameController class:

The Toronto Framework code allows the coder to easily program for the correct game controller stick and axis without needing to know the axis number or button numbers from the SmartDashboard. To change the controller to a PlayStation controller, a GameController_PlayStation class needs to be instantiated instead of a Logitech game controller, and all of the code remains the same. The buttons A,B,X,Y would be mapped by position to the Square, Circle, Cross, Triangle buttons on Playstation controller. This is much easier than using the WPILib code where each instance of getRawAxis, or getRawButton would need to be updated for the new game controller type.