We are all makers
One of my many hobbies is modifying game controllers for people with special physical needs. It could be a missing finger, a missing arm, muscular dystrophy, etc. I’m no mega genius with incredible engineering skills, I’m just a normal guy with a soldering iron (and a 3d printer). Since I can’t modify as many as are really needed, I try to publish the plans and share the information whenever possible. Hopefully others can reproduce these things for people near them.
I’d like you to meet Jay. Jay is pretty awesome. He only needs some quick mods done to his controllers, but puts up with my slow methods so that others can hopefully benefit. This controller is for Jay. He has Muscular Dystrophy, which means he has to use his controller with his hands at a specific angle. This also means that he doesn’t quite have the strength or control to do certain actions. Specifically, he can’t press down on the thumbsticks to activate the thumbstick “click”. Frankly, I have a hard time with that one too!
According to one of Jay’s friends, he may not even need this mod anyway
Pffff Jay does’nt need a mod.The guy dominates face even in high paced shooters like titanfall
So, lets begin with the modification to put new buttons in place to function as the “thumbstick clicks”. These should take less force to operate and less muscle control (since you don’t have to hold the thumbstick steady while you depress them). The thumbsticks will still operate as normal when we are done.
If you would like to volunteer to modify a controller for someone, or if you need one done, you should check out thecontrollerproject.com forums and DIYability.org.
That is pretty damn awesome. Will remember when I buy my Xbox One? Now someone needs to make a PS4 controller that is the same shape and size of an Xbox controller.
This is fantastic. One detail that might help others: What’s the best method for finding the solder points for adding external buttons? I presume you guess-and-check with a multimeter in continuity mode?
Nice work. I’d like to mention the AsTeRICS project (http://www.asterics.eu), which is intended to help people with muscular dystrophy and other impairments of the upper limbs. It allows the use of any useful sensor to create models to control computer and gaming input among other things that can be very flexibly adapted to the user’s needs. Maybe this is useful for you or one might want to contribute new sensors to this ongoing project.