Cigar Box Joystick

by rjkorn in Living > Video Games

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Cigar Box Joystick

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My local library had a bunch of Cigar Boxes left over from a crafternoon. I had this idea for the next gamer night. Make some USB joysticks….

I had been playing with the usb_game12 code from raphnet/usb_game12 on gutbub

I forked it here for posterity.. https://github.com/rjkorn/usb_game12

We soon realized 6 buttons weren't enough so we added 2 more.

They worked out really well and even morphed in to a monster portable game box in my other instructable...

https://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Arcade-Cases...

Putting It Together

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I used a clear joystick with color changing LED’s. It needs 12V to run the led's so I added a small boost converter to keep things USB powered.

I 3D printed a small housing to hold the usb port on the back.

A custom designed Atmega board with an Atmega8 provided the USB interface.

I made these proto boards to experiment with usb using the VUSB library

Not bad but my son keeps taking it to use with his retropi. I have to install a Pi in the bottom of the box and make it a complete game system….