Arduino dual joystick shield issue

Dual joystick shield

I bought a robot arm kit that came with a shield that had 2 PS2 joysticks on it. The two Arduinos I tried with it would always show 1023 on the analog inputs for all of the analog inputs. I tried other potentiometers and another PS2 joystick without the shield, and the analog inputs read properly. After some troubleshooting I tried cutting the Aref pin on the shield and the analog pins started reading correctly.

Back of dual joystick shied showing the Aref pin cut. Arduino Uno below to show pin names

Notes about the board that I had to dig around to find:

  • Left joystick X axis connected to A0
  • Left joystick Y axis connected to A1
  • Left joystick Z axis (button) connected to D2
  • Right joystick X axis connected to A2
  • Right joystick Y axis connected to A3
  • Right joystick Z axis (button) connected to D4
  • Servo 1 signal pin connected to D11
  • Servo 2 signal pin connected to D10
  • Servo 3 signal pin connected to D9
  • Servo 4 signal pin connected to D5
  • Servo 5 signal pin connected to D7
  • Servo 6 signal pin connected to D6
  • Shield LED connected to D3
  • Bluetooth TX connected to D13
  • Bluetooth RX connected to D12

Shield is labelled: mearm.wdt v2.18.8.22.s
It is also sold as: Dual PS2 Game Joystick Button Module JoyStick Shield Compatible With UNO R3

This schematic doesn’t show that the Aref pin is tied to ground, but on the board I have it is. Store with link to schematic PNG.