Build my own controller?

[Eliakith]

Have had a wild concept to try to wire together my own controller with a 3D printed shell and a custom pcb and things like that. I’m a complete novice, curious about resources to get started looking into this stuff, and thought here might be a good place to ask.

 

I’m aware I’m unlikely to accomplish this without months/years, sweat, tears, and moolah.

[minibois]

The basics of a custom controller are really not that difficult, it's just a couple buttons (and perhaps analog sticks) that a microcontroller reads out, transforms into dinput/xinput and plugs into a PC/console/device to play a game. It's just about how complicated you want to make it.

Adafruit has some videos on controller making, which should cover some of the very high level theory and practice of making a controller. Once you understand the different components that go within a controller, you can make it more complicated.

 

What I've learned over the time of making some projects, is that it's important to write down a list of "must, should, could", where you outline what you project must have to be at least a minimum viable project, what it should have to be really cool and what it could have, if you seek a bigger challenge after accomplishing the first two lists of goals.

If you set out your project without a proper vision, it will often be dragged down by feature creep, where you endlessly tack on features until your project has become unrecognizable from your initial goals.

 

So don't set out to work for months or especially not years on a perfect project, make mistakes; and make them quickly. It's very cliche, but you learn a lot from mistakes, as they prepare you for what can go wrong. Don't set out to build a perfect controller, you will make many prototypes along the way.

Especially with controller shells, that is something large companies have been trying to refine for years. It's no coincidence that some controller projects are designed around existing shells. Such as being designed around the legendary GameCube controller, with project such as the Goomwave and PhobGCC (the latter of which is open-source, so be sure to take a look at its design and documentation).

 

While I don't have experience designing controllers, I do have quite bit of knowledge on them and have experience with designing PCB's for keyboards as well as 3D modeling some simple projects, so if you have any questions I might be able to help!

[Eliakith]

I’ll check out the channel, thank you so much! 
 

My hands are larger in a way that makes most controllers uncomfortable to hold for periods I’d like to; the steam deck is the first that feels like a super nice size.
The steam controller is what first got me interested in a project like this, with its dual stage triggers and trackpads. 
i didn’t think about checking open source projects, that’s a great idea, thank you.

 

My first plan of action was to iterate on controller Shells until I find something with room for what I’d like and has a good fit for my hands. I figured since I have no aspirations for making this a marketable product, I’d be able to really make it fit *me* rather than fill a more generalist structure.