Second Week: Gathering Materials
This week, I focused on gathering materials for my prototype. However, I needed a concrete design to do this. For quite some time I had a general idea for a foot-operated controller, but I wasn’t sure of the specifics. Currently, I am thinking of splitting the controller into two independent halves and putting the buttons on one half and the control stick on the other half.
The main difficulty is figuring out the placement of the buttons. I created a preliminary cardboard panel, but it was a bit uncomfortable. I am not sure if that was because I am not used to this control scheme or if it was due to the locations of the buttons. I arranged the buttons to follow the curve of my toes—like how arcade sticks follow the curve of a hand—but now I am unsure if that will actually make it comfortable. I am also having some trouble finding a place to put buttons 5 and 6. I feel like I need to build and test a fully functional prototype with real buttons to find what works.
As for materials for this project, I dismantled my old arcade stick to repurpose the internal PCB (circuit board) and the joystick. Fortunately, my PCB does not require soldering to customize, but PCBs from any arcade-style controller will work. I hope to complete my first functional prototype for the foot-controlled joystick by next week, and to try out new button positions. If it works, I can focus on creating the shell of the controller.