Lots of folks use joystick controls on their robots. This looks interesting - 3 camera pan/tilt joy sticks in a rack mount:
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Each joystick activates 4 separate micro switches which makes it easy to interface, but they are not proportional.
Just FYI, I'm not selling this, but I know the person who is. I'm just passing the word along in case it might be of interest to some folks here.
-Brian