Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: NoOne=NBA= on November 30, 2004, 07:41:53 pm

Title: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: NoOne=NBA= on November 30, 2004, 07:41:53 pm

Does anyone have a design that will allow me to use an analog pedal to send digital pulses, and vary the duty cycle the farther the pedal is depressed?

I want to put together an analog gas pedal system for a game that uses a digital pedal.
As it plays now, the gas is either ON or OFF.
If you want to go slower, you have to pump the pedal (much like what you need to do in Pole Position).
I would like to have "light throttle" send digital pulses that are say 50/50 ON/OFF, and "heavy throttle" send a steady ON signal.

Title: Re: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: Kremmit on December 01, 2004, 01:17:50 am

So what you want is a circuit that sends on-off pulses, with the length of the "on" pulse to be determined by the signal from a potentiometer.  I'm smart enough to know what it is, but not smart enough to build it! :P  I'd take that one to these geeks:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&group=sci.electronics.design

Title: Re: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: NoOne=NBA= on December 01, 2004, 01:20:37 am

Unfortunately I fell asleep for 3 years while attending electronics school.
It's probably somewhere in my textbooks, but they are somewhere in my garage--amongst the many OTHER things that are somewhere in my garage.

Title: Re: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: Samstag on December 01, 2004, 01:28:17 am

You could do this with a microcontroller with a built-in A/D convertor.  Then you just write a small routine to monitor the input and pulse the output.  You may even find one with A/D input and PWM output built in. 

Title: Re: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: Xiaou2 on December 01, 2004, 01:29:42 am

well,

Title: Re: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: rdagger on December 01, 2004, 03:03:59 am

Quote from: Samstag on December 01, 2004, 01:28:17 am

You could do this with a microcontroller with a built-in A/D convertor.

Title: Re: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: Samstag on December 01, 2004, 07:43:14 am

Yeah Atmel would be my first choice.  Since it would be such a simple program, you can easily get away with using one of the BASIC or C compilers and you wouldn't even need to get into any dirty machine code!

Also, you can set up an AVR with very few external components.

Title: Re: Pulsed Throttle Control???
Post by: NoOne=NBA= on December 01, 2004, 09:31:58 am

I'll check them out.

Thanks.