Beautifully Lasered Kerbal Space Program Controller

Hugo Peeters loves playing Kerbal Space Program, but controlling the game with a keyboard and mouse leaves something to be desired. To level up his gaming, he built his own simulated cockpit using an Arduino Mega as the brains, with a laser-cut housing.

In order to get his controls properly laid out, he first attached everything into a shoe box, and hooked the controls up using a solderless breadboard. While this certainly didn’t look elegant, it allowed him to fine tune where joysticks, buttons and controls will be without having to manufacture an enclosure a second time.

To attain a clean look, he hired an outside company to do the laser cutting. While it cost him somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 Euros in the Netherlands, the result is an extremely professional build without the hassle of actually buying and storing a laser. In addition to extra controls, Peeters added an LCD display for feedback, along with beautiful LED fuel gauges, controlled using shift registers.

The results are excellent, and should mean a much enhanced experience while playing this game. If you’d like to build your own — or something similar — you can find Arduino code on GitHub, as well as the needed KSP plugin for this enhanced interface.