Racing Controller With Gearshift Using Makey Makey

I made a controller with a gearshift, in order to play some racing games without having to buy one of those expensive driving shifters.

- a PVC tube

- Some screws, depending on how many extra options you want you add

- Some plastiline (optional)

- A Makey Makey board with alligator cables.

First we will have to take the PVC tube and add some holes. The holes are going to be the buttons for this controller, so you have to make them considering that.

Important: Add a hole in the right part of the tube in order to add a mobile screw. I suggest you to make a bigger hole.

For the second step, you have to use the screws and place them in a way that is easy for you to attatch the alligator cables from the Makey Makey board. Those are going to be your left / right buttons.

For the gearshift, you only have to use one screw.

In my case I added break and throttle buttons, but you may want to add some extra ones (reverse for example). Feel free to add as many as you want.

For this part you have to place one Makey Makey alligator attached to any conductive material (in my case I used some aluminum foil) inside the tube, which is going to trigger your shifter up. After that, you have to add another one just right at the opposite side in order to trigger your shifter down. I attached a video in order to show you how it is done

In order to make your gearshift work, you have to remap your makey makey buttons, binding and alligning them with the buttons inside your videogame.

Considering my case, the yellow wire would be up and the green one would be down, so I had to configure those specific cables with the corresponding hotkeys inside the game.

It is possible that you may encounter some issues regarding the length of the screw. You may add some extra aluminium foil in order to make the circuits work. The idea is that both buttons (shift UP, shift down) are not touching by any means. Otherwise, the buttons won't work.

Have fun!