projects/ janelia/ Mouse Joystick/ Sources/ mouse-joysticks-mech/

Source files

mouse-joysticks-mech

Rig atlas: the repository at revision 22aa7544fd10 (tag v1.0), 2026-10-15. Not copied: docs/, which the site in this archive renders.

Mechanical model of the dual lever assembly in the Janelia Dudman lab joystick rig: the two mirrored joystick mechanisms that the rig's two mouse-joystick-pcb controller boards drive, one board per joystick. The model is exported geometry; this repository adds renders of it, a registry of every part and generated pages that say what each part is and which board circuit and firmware it meets.

The two-joystick assembly

File Format Size Use
mouse-joysticks.stp STEP AP214 22.6 MB Open in FreeCAD, Fusion, Inventor, SolidWorks or Onshape to measure, mate against or modify
mouse-joysticks.glb glTF 2.0 binary 11.3 MB Open in any glTF viewer or in Blender to look at the assembly
docs/model/mouse-joysticks.glb glTF 2.0 binary The same assembly with the finishes of the renders, exported for the viewer on the atlas site
docs/renders/ PNG Renders of the assembly, one station, exploded views and every part in isolation, generated from the model (how); the same pages and pictures make the atlas site
docs/ Markdown One station, the parts, the mechanical BOM, the model's frame and units
atlas/ YAML, Python The part registry and the scripts that generate the renders and pages
manual/ YAML, Python The PDF manual of the whole rig, assembled from the four repositories' pages at the revisions its manifest pins (how); attached to each release of this repository

The assembly was designed and modelled by Sam Jager (Janelia Research Campus) in Autodesk Inventor 2025 and exported to STEP on 2026-07-22; the STEP header records the file as Dual Lever Assembly.stp. The native Inventor files are not in this repository.

One Station

Each joystick station is a motor driving the lever through a spur gear pair, with a magnetic particle brake and a reaction torque sensor on the lever axis, a limit switch at the end of travel and an encoder, all on a frame that slides on a linear stage and rotates on the base plate. The station page shows it exploded and each part has a page with its render, vendor part number, datasheet, the board connector it reaches and the firmware that drives it.

One station, exploded

How The Boards Relate To It

The left mechanism is a mirror of the right one. The controller boards and their firmware are identical for both joysticks; the reversal is made in the motor and encoder cables, which the harness pinouts in the board repository describe. Where the controller boards mount is an enclosure decision, not something this model fixes; the boards' outlines, mounting holes and connector positions are in their generated documentation. The model predates the brake and torque sensor interfaces on the v1.0 controller board and does not record how those parts mount.

Placement study: the two boards under the stations

The boards in this render stand where the 2026-09-21 placement study put them, as a study and not a fixture; the board models are the PCB repositories' own exports (atlas/boards/PROVENANCE.md).

License

CC-BY-SA-4.0; see LICENSE.

Citation

CITATION.cff carries the citation metadata; GitHub renders it under "Cite this repository".


Files

NameSize
.github/
atlas/
LICENSES/
manual/
.gitignore95 B
CITATION.cff997 B
LICENSE257 B
mkdocs.yml2 kB
mouse-joysticks.glb11.3 MB
mouse-joysticks.stp22.6 MB
pixi.lock120 kB
pixi.toml4 kB
README.md (rendered above; raw)4 kB