T&L Publications

Hi everyone. I have obtained a power wheelchair that I would like to hack. It has a joystick controller that is hooked to the batteries and motor through a large 10 pin connector. What I would like to do is make a breakout box from this connector so that I could use the joystick as a backup control should the circuits I make not work or fail. I am going to make an H bridge mosfet driver for the wheel controls that can be controlled via a pc. My question is, do I have to fabricate a manual switch to change from the joystick to the H bridge or would it be possible to just put diodes in the wires to the joystick to block reverse flow from the second controller?

I just figured a much simpler way. I am just going to unplug the controller that came with the wheelchair and get another connector and then plug in the controller I am going to make, then I can have both, a joystick backup and a computer control, the joystick for the inevitable episodes of smoke until I get the circuits right!

Did you end up makeing anything? I just found a chair in a dumpster But my wire is gone altogether, I need some help reverse engineering it.

Hi Zotdoc, It’s glad to know that you found a way to have a back up of wheel chair joystick controller as well as computer controller. But I’m not quite clear about the methodology you used. Could you kindly explain?

BTW my aunt uses a power wheel chair and a wheelchair lift as well. I thought of helping her creating the PC controllers for her wheelchair as well. But we can have Blue-tooth controllers as well as I heard but I’m not quite sure how we can create the controllers and the power voltage to the controller for the monitoring purpose. I tried using D/A chip but it doesn’t work up to my expectation. I hope you can explain your process in detail. Thanks in advance.