DIY Joystick/HOTAS kits

About

The Real Robots Game Controller Construction Kits are a series of game controllers including gimbals, sticks, throttles, and button boxes, each with multiple options.

The files are available on Thingiverse or you can get the kits, ready to go over here.

How do they work?

The controllers are separated into devices, such as a base or a stick. Each device has it's own Arduino Pro Micro microcontroller, any of which can act as a USB HID device. Only one device has to plug into the computer through USB though, the rest connect to each other using chunky aircraft style plugs. So you can have multiple sticks wired up with different buttons and knobs and swap them on a whim. The communication protocol is i2c and is super fast.

Coding

This is my first publicly available project but for the past 6 years I've been teaching kids in Hong Kong how to make this kind of thing. I'm making videos showing how to assemble and connect every part of each component along with coding lessons.

Not everyone wants to code though so I also made up an app that let's you assign every button, key and dial a button or axis from the comfort of a graphical user interface. You can make one of these guys yourself without every looking at a line of code if that's not your thing.

Building

The most fun part is definitely building these guys though, I've put up detailed instructions on building and wiring as well. Every device is designed to be easy to hack, drill and weld your own buttons and inputs as well and there'll be instructions on that too.

Finally

I've had a lot of fun designing these guys and hope theres enough interest to keep me going improving the current designs and adding more to the list, below are some of the earlier models I made during the development process.