Hi, All. Quite sure this is covered at least partially elsewhere but I need a more basic explanation.
I'm trying to help a student replace a physical joystick with a LabView program so we can use it remotely while our lab is shut down. The joystick is for X and Y motion of an instrument that we use. It connects to a motor controller hooked to the instrument, and it doesn't have incremental controls (you push it to the right, it goes right at a fixed speed until released).
We want to basically skip the joystick and send signals from a computer (running LabView) to the motor controller.
What sort of hardware are we going to need? An Arduino? A serial cable soldered into the joystick outputs?
And, along those lines, we're thinking the motor controller supplies voltage to the joystick, but we're not sure how much. Is there a simple way to determine the type/magnitude of signals our virtual joystick needs to send to the motor controller without gutting the controller? Do we even need to know, or can our program just control a device which opens/closes a gate to the voltage from the controller?
Thanks for any and all help.