Joystick

The design of the Esplora board recalls traditional gamepad design with the analog joystick on the left and four push buttons on the right. The Esplora has the following onboard inputs and outputs :

1. Analogue joystick with central push-button two axis (X and Y) and a centre pushbutton.
2. 4 push-buttons laid out in a diamond pattern.
3. Linear potentiometer slider near the bottom of the board.
4. Microphone for getting the loudness (amplitude) of the surrounding environment.
5. Light sensor for getting the ambient brightness.
6. Temperature sensor reads the ambient temperature (please note that the temperature sensor is not fitted, however we do stock this component).
7. Three-axis accelerometer measures the board’s relation to gravity on three axes (X, Y, and Z)
8. Buzzer can produce square-waves.
9. RGB led bright LED with Red Green and Blue elements for colour mixing.
10. 2 TinkerKit Inputs to connect the TinkerKit sensor modules with the 3-pin connectors.
11. 2 TinkerKit Outputs to connect the TinkerKit actuator modules with the 3-pin connectors.
12. TFT display connector connector for an optional color LCD screen, SD card, or other devices that use the SPI protocol.
13. In order to utilise the total number of available sensors, the board uses an analogue multiplexer. This means a single analog input of the microcontroller is shared among all the input channels (except the 3-axis accelerometer). Four additional microcontroller pins choose which channel to read.