Hi everybody. New member, been a lurker on and off for years though. This site is amazing. My go-to place for inspiration all the time. (If this is the wrong place for this thread, I apologize.) I wanted to get your thoughts on a controller I made. This was an attempt to combine the best of both worlds from console and PC gaming into one controller for PC games. The base of the controller is an Xbox "S" controller shell, to which I added a trackball, thumb keyboard, buttons, mouse switches, and more. I optimized the layout as best I could to accommodate FPS games. This means less movement of the thumbs across the controller, and the keys you hit most are right at the fingers they need to be. The full write up on how I made it, as well as more detail into how it works is here http://dufentech.com/keyball-controller-v2/ (chromes hover zoom addon works well for viewing the thumbnails) There is also the first version I made that used an Xbox "Duke" controller shell. You can see there have been improvements in this new version. (smaller, better button layout, better trackball, etc) http://dufentech.com/keyball-controller/ I am already working on a third version. New features will be; click-in analog stick in place of d-pad, click in trackball (like an analog stick), all black paint job (the white dirtys up a little to easily), white buttons backlit with blue LEDs all around if I can work it in as well as labels for all the buttons. What do you think of the layout? I know it is different, but it actually does make sense when you use it. A video would help demonstrate this, but I wanted to see what people thought of it first. I have already beat four games with it, and besides a few things to change, the design is pretty great. Any input I can get is great! Be it positive or negative. before I start building another I wanted to see what others had to say. Thanks for looking
I will get a youtube video up soon to show you how comfortable it is. I didn't spend many hours in the garage just to get hand cramps ha ha In short, it is very comfortable. While building it I asked my brothers who vary in age from 10 to 20 to handle the controller to be sure they could use it comfortable. It feels just like an Xbox S controller, with a slightly extended edge to fit the keyboard. All the trigger/bumper buttons feel great since they use micro mouse switches (click-click) and the whole thing feels pretty darn comfy once you get used to it. The button layout is different, but that is on purpose. The whole "D-pad and X,Y,B,A" button combo is not a good setup for PC specific games, hence the odd button layout. I found that most buttons only need to be pressed occasionally and made the layout accommodate that. That is why it is set up specifically for FPS/MMO games. For Tony Hawk, racing games, or platformers, it's impossible to beat the specifically set up 360 pad. But for everything else there is this. The perfect mouse/keyboard emulation controller. I used a 360 pad for a while and found that there were either too many buttons, or not enough where I wanted them. Hence this controller build. The trackball is basically an analog stick that just keeps on going when you push it, and once you get used to it, it is very hard to go back to a 360 controller. I was lucky enough to get featured on hackaday http://hackaday.com/2012/07/25/building-a-controller-for-mmos/
