Input problems, control a real robot

This is kind of an odd application, I’m a longtime coder but an unreal noob.

I have an actual real world physical robot that is controlled by Wi-Fi and sends information about its current state back over Wi-Fi. Right now I’m using open sound control protocol to send and receive this information. I want to use unreal to create a dashboard/hud to display information from the robot and to read a game controller’s analog sticks and send commands to the robot.

I have a simple blueprint that can send messages over Open Sound Control and receive them but I am having trouble reading the controller sticks. The values coming back from get thumbstick X or y always are zero even when I do what I think is a correct enable input in the blueprint.

I am probably leaving out some stupid thing here. I suspect it is because I’m trying to just read input and send it without having created some kind of controlled player character.

can anyone show me what I’m missing with a simple example or a pointer to a tutorial? A blueprint that reads and prints the analog thumbstick x&y and whatever setup is needed to make it work would be enough.

at the moment I don’t need to create a 3D world, just a hud/ui screen with some gauges

Have you set up your InputAxis in the project settings?