F16 'dobber' switch or DCS switch DIY

Maybe this new thread can be helpful for everyone who wants to build the ICP for the Viper and doesn’t have a lot of knowledge, like me, for writing code and it is a really cheap solution.

This is my first thread on any forum whatsoever, so if I made some mistakes, please forgive me.

Last month I bought an ICP for the Viper from Hispapanels for assembling the first part of my ‘desktop’ cockpit. In other words, I will only have the most important panels on my desk so I can cut back on the use of the mouse and keyboard.

For the ICP, I followed the thread from Tekkx and Hansolo for building a matrix and using DCS-Bios, so you can spare some pins on your Arduino board. This was a really helpful thread for getting started.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=195285

I got all my buttons and switches working, exept the ‘dobber’ or DCS switch gave me a lot of headaches.

After looking up and reading a lot of instructables, I endend up with MHeironymus joystick library. So I bought an analoge joystick (1€ in China), an Arduino pro micro(32u4 chip, 6€ for a clone) because I thought it was the easiest way of making a ‘dobber’ switch.

After a lot of trial and error, I have found a quite simple solution thanks to Aldrinos for asking and MorganS for providing a working code on the Arduino forum.

If you use the Arduino micro with the joystick library it will show up in windows as a game controller and you can assign any key you want for 'up-down-rtn-seq' in the controls menu in DCS. So basically it adds an extra input device, besides the keyboard and Hotas in DCS.

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=643880.0

https://github.com/MHeironimus/ArduinoJoystickLibrary

I’ve added the first 4 lines myself. I believe they are necessary for the Arduino to show up in windows 10.

The letters ‘h’, ’d’, …. in Keyboard.press('h'); is one of the keys I assigned in DCS control menu.

This is my working code:

#include <Joystick.h>

#include <Keyboard.h>

// Create Joystick
Joystick_ Joystick;

const int pinXAxis = A0;
const int pinYAxis = A2;

const int middleX = 512;
const int middleY = 512;
const int leftThreshold  = middleX - 256;
const int rightThreshold = middleX + 256;
const int upThreshold    = middleY - 256;
const int downThreshold  = middleY + 256;
const int hysteresis = 32;

void setup() {
}
void loop() {

 int rawX, rawY;
 rawX = analogRead(pinXAxis);
 rawY = analogRead(pinYAxis);

 if(rawX < leftThreshold - hysteresis) Keyboard.press('h');
 if(rawX > leftThreshold + hysteresis) Keyboard.release('h');

 if(rawX > rightThreshold + hysteresis) Keyboard.press('d');
 if(rawX < rightThreshold - hysteresis) Keyboard.release('d');

 if(rawY < upThreshold - hysteresis) Keyboard.press('y');
 if(rawY > upThreshold + hysteresis) Keyboard.release('y');

 if(rawY > downThreshold + hysteresis) Keyboard.press('r');
 if(rawY < downThreshold - hysteresis) Keyboard.release('r'); 
}

this week I got 2x minijoys for that same usage, thanks for sharing ;)