If you follow the posts at out website, than you couldn’t miss all those loads of custom game controllers and joysticks, made by enthusiasts. And while enthusiasts don’t even think about stopping, making more and more custom controllers, most of their controllers at least look like regular game controllers, but not the game controller which will tell you about today. Just yesterday Harbingerx81 posted the information about this coolest game controller, on which he is currently working.
Left side view of the game controller and its parts
Not only is this custom game controller made by Harbingerx81 in the form factor of a full-size assault rifle, but a realistic Airsoft replica of an assault rifle was used as the basis of the project. The best part? This controller doesn’t only look line an assault rifle, but is used like one — the aiming isn’t done by a regular analog stick or a D-pad, but by rifle itself! The whole thing works because of gyroscopes and accelerometers, which are installed in the rifle’s chassis. As you already guessed, this custom game controller wasn’t designed for flight simulators or fighting games — it’s a tool for First Person Shooter (FPS) games, or more precisely, Call of Duty on the Xbox 360.
Right side view of the game controller and its parts
To make the controller functional and easy to use, Harbingerx81 used a wireless gamepad from a Xbox 360 for parts, placing the buttons on rifle’s chassis. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the fire button was attached to the trigger, while the reload button was attached to the magazine releases button. As we mentioned earlier, the aiming is done with the use of gyroscopes and accelerometers, the information from which is processed by an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller and then output to digital potentiometers, which are connected in place of the analog sticks.
The controller in a disassembled state, with a display and wireless signal transmitter
Harbingerx81 also plans to install a 10 inch LCD display on his rifle controller, which will provide the player full freedom of action with the ability to turn 360 degrees. In order to keep the wireless nature of the game controller unaltered, Harbingerx81 connected the display via a wireless HDMI adaptor. Even with all that stuff inside the rifle’s chassis, this game controller still weighs less than a real assault rifle, Harbingerx81 however decided to move the battery (which should last for at least four hours of gameplay time) and the wireless HDMI adaptor onto the player, because of their size.
The inside of Harbingerx81’s game controller
At the moment, the game controller is almost done with 95 percent of the work completed. According to Harbingerx81, to complete the project he needs to make a mount for the display, finalize the code that is responsible for processing the data from the gyroscopes and improved the aiming precision. Also, after completion of the project, Harbingerx81 plans to share the code for microcontrollers and other design information with everyone, and to publish the video of working controller. As to the cost of making this custom controller, Harbingerx81 already spent over $600 on it. You can get more details about this project on Reddit.
Source: Reddit
