Hi,

I'm having a bit of trouble with a discontinued product and the organization is not being helpful and doesn't have a manual available. The product is a DEFY g5 camera gimbal. It has a joystick that controls the motor. The joystick broken when the cable was pulled out of its chassis.

This product is unique in that the joystick circuit board NEEDS to connect into the motor control's circuitry using a 3-ring headphone jack for some odd reason.

When the jack was pulled from the joystick's circuit board (a parallax 2-axis board), the wiring remnants were very messy and the solder points were very odd, so I went and purchased a new 2-axis (adafruit) joystick that had very simplistic holes that I could solder onto,(x,y,pwer,ground and a select button that is not being used - you push the joystick down to activate, something the old one never used). I also purchased a new headphone jack that had screw-in contact terminals, as it makes the job a lot easier to troubleshoot and the previous headphone jack would have been a little short now.

After cutting a length of quad wire and soldering into the joystick board and attaching the other wire ends to the screw in headphone jack terminals, I get absolutely nothing. I'm starting to wonder if there is any way that the joystick can determine what is up vs down or left vs right on each axis, and if there is some sort of additional wiring that I need to add to accomplish this.

Alternatively, if anyone knows an easier way to get a properly working controller, keeping in mind of the unusual 1/8" headphone jack input, I'm all ears.

Thanks for your help.

Colin

 

Does the connector look like this?


If just the cable came undone why do you think the electronics is bad and needed replacing?

 

Thanks for having a read. Yep, That is the headphone jack connector. The original circuit board had no punchouts. All of the solders were done directly on the flat board with clear adhesive holding the wires strategically apart from each other. I don't have the tools to do such a small precision job like that. Also the board's labeling wasn't quite as clear as the new one I've purchased and the cable was ripped out violently. It was very difficult to tell what went where originally.

 

I've attached a picture of the original joystick

Also, Here is the original Joystick schematic
https://www.robotshop.com/media/files/pdf/2-axis-joystick-schematic-27800.pdf

Clearly my attempt to simplify things was not a good choice and I'm guessing that there is no way to mod the new joystick. Going back to the old joystick I'll have to find some proper tools or possibly a second set of hands.

Can anyone explain how I could possibly connect a 4-wire headphone jack to this?

 

Is this the original joystick?

https://www.adafruit.com/product/245

All you need to do now is solder the cable to the board, once you find out which wire goes where.