Team Melon 's Unconventional Sumo Bot Controller

The controller for the sumo bot works very simply. The joystick is a digital output with four outputs for each direction, these digital inputs are read by the Arduino and sent across the transceiver to be decoded as movement outputs. Forward and back move the bot in that direction, while left and right rotate counter clockwise and clockwise respectively. If both left and forward are pushed at the same time, for instance, the bot will do both so it will go forward and turn. We intended to make it so the potentiometer would control the speed of the bot, however ultimately that was not much use as the bot only continued until it received a different message, and we could not find a way that didnt cause the machine to constantly stop and start, or could only change speed between stopping and driving again. Trying ot integrate that, along wiht working with the newly updated code after everything was fully working, were the two most challenging aspect. Brooklyn was the primary person who built the controller physically, she was the one connecting wires, and making sure all the inputs were gathered, along with creating an antenna solution to help solve the transmission distance issue. Alexander was the primary coder, he modified the base code to work with the Sumo bot and the Arduino to work with what we had used for our input methods. Nash and Luis both helped with aquiring the parts for the project, along with acting as designers of the idea controller, and a second/third set of eyes for the physical and code parts of the controller, with Luis also providing a managerial role to make sure everyone was doing what needed to be done, along with their fair share of the work.
Some notable breakthroughs we had involved realizing that fundamentally the input from a joystick is no different than that of a series of four buttons, and finding how to vary the speed based on the voltage from the potentiometer (despite never finding how to get that speed to go across to the bot). Even more important than that was finding a way to make the transmitter to send the information further, ultimately we created a soft antenna system where alligator clips were connected to where the transmitter was originally plugged in, and extended their maximum distance using the clips directly plugged into the wires from the transmitter, allowing us an extra foot of range from the wires seemingly causing interference on the breadboard.
Originally, we wanted to use easily understandable controls that could be extended to something that's not normally portrayed as it was. The idea I had in mind initially was having a longer joystick, so you effectively have this massive lever you control for direction, along with a wheel for spinning the potentiometer. Ultimately it would look kind of like a driving system like with a wheel and stick, however the stick would control movement while the wheel the speed, so inverted from what is normal.