[amsugg]

Dang if I had known my name could've been in your bio I would've built your deck for you lol.
This joystick looks pretty sweet, you might have to make me one for my powerdrive.

If it’s electric foot pedal we can do it

You had your chance lol

 

[amsugg]

Fixed now

 

[SoDakSlayer]

Hahahahaha nice

 

[Kayakfish1]

Bahahahahaha I guess I'll get "electrical contractor" too lol

 

[amsugg]

Well with the crap weather NC has been having I started back on my joystick. I decided to just wire everything up and see if it would work.

And after it’s all said and done every function work as far as the signal it needs to send works when bench tested. Now I just need to see if it translates correctly to troller control board or if the resistance of the pots on the joystick are to high and slow the troller movements down or kill function.

 

[amsugg]

Alright so even tho the bench test worked as far as the signal it didn’t 100% work when connected to the trolling motor. Left and right worked but on/off and speed didn’t. I tried every combination to get the prop to spin but never was able to figure it out. But dont worry i have a plan B, since i am unable to bypass the original circuit board I thought what would it take to incorporate it. Now i also saw that in 2017 Minn k changed the foot pedal to what they call the BT version. The BT version removed the slide pot for speed control and added a little turn knob for speed control which is basically what i was trying to do with the joy stick so i purchased a used one and took it apart, then proceeded to wire the joystick exactly like this pot on the BT version and still nothing. So i moved forward with trying to include the circuit board. I then proceeded to remove the plastic cover off of one of the buttons to see how its made

This is a close up of a button. The shiny piece that you see is basically a thin pice of metal that when depressed completes the circuit. Under that it looks like this

 

[amsugg]

left, right, on/off, momentary/ continues buttons all look like this. With that all i need in a joystick is just a digital switch like this

So basically run the two wires from each button to a switch the switch completes the circuit on the board and the motor moves.

Now for the speed portion i purchased the same pot that is on the BT circuit board and wired it the same way to this board

tested all functions with ohm meter and my Father in laws bench power source and all is functioning correctly now just need to connect to troller and see if it works

 

[SoDakSlayer]

That is some serious engineerical stuff right there man. I like it!

 

[amsugg]

What my control box will look like in theory

 

[amsugg]

It works

 

[SoDakSlayer]

Good stuff man

 

[amsugg]

if you want one just let me know im sure i can do the same on yours

 

[morley]

Do powerdrives have reverse on them or just turn the motor around?

 

[amsugg]

Turn motor around

 

[morley]

Now that you know what needs to be done, how much do you have into it and what would it cost to build one?

 

[amsugg]

Well it depends on a few things like what pedal you have. I have a powerdrive v2 pedal and a powerdrive BT pedal difference is slide pot or twist pot. BT pedal is twist pot and requiers 2 less parts. then its basically how fancy you want or don't want it to be . my basic one will look like this v2 pedal w/ slide pot

thats 57.28 give or take

 

[amsugg]

now i do have a fancier Joystick with 2 buttons that i was planning on doing a few things different with but i wanted to get the basics down before i tried to get creative. like i wanted to see if i can have like a 1 button wide open throttle, and i was also going to move the mom/cont button ( rocker switch) to the other button. the buttons on these joysticks are momentary so to turn them into latching requires a couple different circuit boards to make that happen

 

[SoDakSlayer]

I like it man. Like morely asked... What would one cost to be built for the powerdrive BT?

 

[amsugg]

BFC guys I’ll do for parts you get the parts you want or I’ll get them either way then it just shipping

 

[amsugg]

BT you need joystick, box, knob for pot and latching switch