There are 7 options for gamepads (rule R904). Our team has experience only with the F310. We have noticed that as the stick is pushed from null to full stroke, the signal to the motor becomes saturated somewhere near 50% of the full stroke. Meaning, the last 1/2 of the stroke does not add any more nuance to the motor power.
Does anyone know if (a) this is caused by the SDK, robot controller, or the F310 gamepad, and (b) if it’s the gamepad, which of the other 6 options would not suffer from this?
The Logitech F310 is a reasonable starter gamepad, but almost every other gamepad has a better analog joystick response. What you experience is a common complaint, students without fully developed fine motor skills have a hard time using the controllers because of the range of travel issues.
The REV Robotics USB PS4 compatible gamepad is a pretty good wired gamepad, includes rumble, and most features of the top-tier gamepads for a fraction of the price. The cable makes the controller more fool-proof (no cables to pull out of the back of the controller), and the hand-feel is similar to other PS4 gamepads. It would not surprise me if FTC were to eventually move to supplying these gamepads instead of Logitech F310’s in future Control System kits.
The Sony DualShock 4 (PS4) and DualSense (PS5) controllers are what you’d expect in top-tier controllers at top-tier prices. They also drain the REV Driver Hub batteries like crazy. You really need to have a USB Battery Bank connected to the REV Driver Hub when you use these gamepads (also recommended for the REV Robotics gamepad especially if you use rumble, though I’ve not done any battery drain testing with the REV controllers to know how much battery they use) but the DS4 and DS gamepads have internal batteries and those internal batteries will charge themselves using the Driver Hub’s power. The DS4 has a USB-micro connection which isn’t very mechanically sound, and in my experience pulls out (you can get a 3d printed retainer to hold the cable in). The DualSense uses USB-C, and that’s a much more mechanically stable connector. But remember you cannot use wireless because Bluetooth does not play nicely with 2.4GHz and thus using Bluetooth is illegal for competition.
The Xbox 360 Controller and the Etpark Wired Controller are both depricated. You can’t really buy Xbox 360 controllers, and the ones you can buy are on the reseller market and can be fairly expensive. There are newer “Etpark” gamepads that don’t actually work the same as the ones that were originally available - the company who makes the Etpark changed out a part for reasons unknown and the new resulting gamepads no longer works correctly with the FTC SDK (they’re not even recognized by the drivers). So I don’t recommend buying either of those gamepads if you’re looking for a new gamepad.
The QuadStick is an accessible gaming device designed for quadriplegics, we don’t expect anyone to use it otherwise.