Wanting to mod controllers to make them more usable.

[Lemony Lime]

I have tendonitis in my wrists... which is essentially carpal tunnel, except I've had it for over a year, and though I've more or less stopped using my hands all together, it doesn't seem like it'll ever go away. I'm sick of not being able to play video games anymore, and I think it's time to change that. (I'm actually in school learning to be a video game developer, and have to have friends do all the testing because I can't play my own games. It's my dream job though, and absolutely worth it even if I never play another game again.) The hardest thing for me is actually pushing a button. Putting my hands in any specific shape or position (other than a fist) isn't a problem, and so I can hold a controller no problem, and even move my fingers up and down, as long as I don't have to put in enough pressure to actually push down the buttons, especially the triggers on most controllers. (Pathetic, I know... but yes, buttons are now my arch nemesis.)

Hands are going to kill me if I keep typing this, so I'll cut to the chase. I want to make a glove with touch sensors on the end of the fingers to serve as buttons for the controller (Specifically looking for a Gamecube controller in this case.) I would then wire them up to the wire of a standard controller and plug it into the console normally. Hopefully, I will be able to simply tap my desk to press most of the buttons. I'd also like to use a laptop-style mouse touchpad as the analog stick, but if that's too much hassle, an analog stick is still usable for me, and might be preferable anyway, considering the games are designed to be used with it. Another issue is the L and R buttons detect how hard you push them, which would obviously be difficult to achieve with a touchpad, especially because I'm trying to not push hard in the first place. The only solution I can think of is have a larger sensor that uses the location that it's touched to represent how hard the trigger is pushed.

Of course, this all sounds either ridiculously expensive, or ridiculously difficult to do... probably both. I have very little experience with this stuff, but am willing to do the work myself if I can figure out how. Do you guys have any ideas on how I could pull this off, or maybe an alternate solution to my dilemma? (Before you start, yes I've seen several doctors about this, and have another appointment tomorrow.)

Thanks for taking the time to read all that, and an even bigger thank you if you can help me out.

 

[SNEAKxxATTACK]

Look into makeymakey

On a side note, won't a game developer require to work lots with keyboard? How are you working around that?

 

[Lemony Lime]

On a side note, won't a game developer require to work lots with keyboard? How are you working around that?

By working very slowly, lol. Still in school anyway, and the assignments aren't big enough to force me to work at an uncomfortable pace yet. Not sure what I'm going to do when they do get to that point. That's why I'm not playing much in the way of games anymore though... can't risk not being able to do work.

 

[grossaffe]

Have you been diagnosed with tendonitis, or is this a self-diagnosis?

 

[Lemony Lime]

It was a, "It's probably tendonitis, but we can't really find out for sure without spending hundreds of dollars on testing."

 

[grossaffe]

It was a, "It's probably tendonitis, but we can't really find out for sure without spending hundreds of dollars on testing."

For about two years I dealt with what I thought was tendonitis of the wrist (after about the first year, I started to have my doubts), but it turned out to be an occult ganglion cyst.

If I were you, I'd definitely have it looked and fixed rather than accepting that you're gimped and trying to work around it.

 

[Lemony Lime]

Well, like I said I have an appointment tomorrow. I'll bring that up.

In the mean time, I'd like to start playing again.

 

[grossaffe]

As for the project itself, a if you don't know how to make a touchpad work as a joystick, then it'll be too difficult to learn how to do (not exactly simple compared to the rest).

For the buttons, as someone else mentioned to look at the makey makey, but you don't even need the makey makey itself, but rather just look at the concept behind it. If you solder some wires connecting the to the contacts of the controller and then you could potentially draw buttons on paper with a graphite pencil (or any other manner of conductive material) that connect to each of those wires via alligator clip or something. Then buy an anti-static wrist-strap and connect it to the ground and now your body is grounded, so when you touch any of the other contacts, you're completing the circuit.

 

[Lemony Lime]

Cool, this actually does make a pretty good amount of sense to me. Would it be possible to make the R/L buttons still detect how hard I'm pressing them? Maybe by the position of my finger or something?

 

[grossaffe]

Cool, this actually does make a pretty good amount of sense to me. Would it be possible to make the R/L buttons still detect how hard I'm pressing them? Maybe by the position of my finger or something?

Theoretically, if you found a conductive material with a good amount of resistance, then depending on where you touch it, you could create a shorter path. By traveling through less of the resistive material, you are lowering the resistance, much like a potentiometer but instead you are the wipe.

However, the theory is easier than the practical, because you'd need to find the right material (I've read that a lot of pots use graphite) and then use the right amount to get the proper resistances to properly emulate the trigger's potentiometer.

 

[Lemony Lime]

So, I bought a cheap generic controller, and how the board works is there's a piece of metal on the bottom of the buttons, which touches two separate contacts, connecting them. Using the ground strap and my finger doesn't connect them... so I'm not sure what to do. I was planning to emulate this same setup, by replacing the buttons with two metal pieces that are slightly separated, and then when I touch both of them, the button will have been pressed... but it looks like this won't work. I'm thinking I may have to buy some sort of touch sensor to replace the button, and connect that to the contact. I wouldn't know what to buy though. Any ideas?