Hi! Previously I made a game controller with a keyboard style. You can check this blogpost of the previous progress.
This time I revised and refurbished the design a little bit more. Here is the last look of the Keycon before this update:
First of all, I changed the assembly system to mount the case with screws to make it fully accessible for maintenance.
I nearly reached to the boundary of the build plate of my 3d printer which is Creality Ender 3 - V2.
And then, I added a led switch to turn the LEDs on and off.
After seing that the screw mounting works, I changed the front design to make it look more like a gaming keyboard.
And 3d printed it as well:
I covered the surface with two sided tapes to fix the cover art I made in Substance Designer.
I have used PBR render node to pre-render my Electronics / PCB Substance Material, to get a 3d shaded visual to put behind the glass design on the design.
I put the images into Rhinoceros to scale and crop the design as the exact shape of the top surface outline I have extracted from my CAD model.
I printed and laminated the print and then I fixed it over the top surface of the new case.
Before that I bought brown rubber keycaps to make a better looking final look on the design. These keycaps with rubber grips are amazing for playing fighting games with keyboard! Here is an amazon link for them:
https://www.amazon.com/Ranked-Rubber-Translucent-Mechanical-Keyboard/dp/B09WPM4MD3?th=1
I put the cover design, keycaps and also the "hole caps" There were 4 holes for letting the screw driver in for fixing the controller circuit to the case. I closed those holes with rivet looking caps.
By the way, I tried to made a 90 degrees USB cable. I soldered it first and drew a rough outline:
I made another controller too!
So that's it, I really liked the result and happy that the controller is really useful on playing especially fighting games. I hope you like it, and see you on the next creation :)
23rd June 2025 Wireless Upgrade!
I changed the usb encoder board with a 2.4ghz wireless version which works with a USB dongle. As far as I tested it, wireless controller latency is pretty much the same as the USB cable connection unless you're using a bluetooth controller. Because 2.4ghz connection has really low latency which I was in doubt at the first place. Now I see that it's a great connection type.
Here is the encoder I've used forthis upgrade:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006772813674.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.17.66954bf2qc8duE&algo_pvid=fbb64007-bdcf-41ef-bba2-a464c3b3f647
I revised the bottom part of the case to place a BL-5C rechargable battery which is widely available now and was commonly used on Nokia cell phones in 2000s.
After 3d printing the bottom part, I re-soldered the cables and the battery and now the controller is fully rechargable and wireless which is a better way to use in means of the cable mass.
I have even added a Dsub port to connect commodore 64 joysticks to play on emulators.
And also I made an area to put the dongle.
