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Helping A Fellow Gamer (Analog Joysticks and PS2)

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KevSteele:
I got a very interesting RetroBlast email yesterday from Steven Dent, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy. He's trying to find a way to use larger analog joysticks with his PS-2 game system, and...well, he can explain it better than I:

My name is Steven Dent. My disability is Cerebral Palsy. I am in a wheelchair and my hands don't work. I enjoy playing video games. I send a e-mail to Sony and I ask them, can they make me a big analog joystick controller but I got the run around. They said, they can't help me. I can't use the small analog controller that comes with the video game system because I can't hit those little buttons with my wrist and elbows. I use a digital Shadowblade joystick controller for Playstation 2 but 90% of video games are analog now. It is very frustrating for me. Can you put 2 analog sticks in the Shadowblade joystick controller? Can you help me? Please!! You are my last hope.

I'm going to try and do some research on this, but I don't have any answers yet. If you have any suggestions or solutions, please let me know and I'll forward our findings to Steven. Don't let a fellow gamer down!

Kevin

ani:
This seems to be a standing problem in the community that alot of people have intrest in, myself included. I am all for doing everything I can to help, especially to help someone disabled be able to play. I hope others will also possibly reappropriate some of their time to help out.

First we need to figure out our objectives, and may need to get Steven involved in this.
so here we go...

1) 1 stick or 2 (per individual)?
2) Should they be sticks that are digital 8 ways that simply interface with the analog inputs, but that are not actually analog?
3) Should they be 49 ways that are analog direction wise, but not pressure wise? Or can we pull off analog pressure and direction?

my opinions-
1) 2 sticks per player, l and r analog
2) I think we can pull off analog
3) We can probably get directional with the 49 ways and some modifications to the newly released 49 way usb interfaces, as the xbox is simply a usb port with a different size plug.

To do pressure wise we could allways try a modification like someelse suggested of physically attaching the joysticks to the controllers hidden in the control panel. This would work as long as the right size hole was drilled in the mdf to restrict the movement before the sticks were snapped off in the pcb. Would still have problems with vertical movement on the sticks though.

That's all I got for now, anyone else have any thoughts?

KevSteele:
I'm definitely thinking he needs dual analog joysticks large enough to control with his elbows (talk about a dedicated gamer!)

We need either a product that will do this, or some way to modify an existing product, or some way to create one from arcade parts.

Any Dr. Frankensteins in the house?

Kevin

NoBonus:
Could you just hack apart the current analog mushroom sticks on the PSX controller, modify the interface between the pots and the joystick to fit into a PC flightstick of some sort, then hack them into a couple of pc flight sticks?  This would give you a much larger analog control joystick using the same pots. My only concern would be breaking the pots (since there are tiny comparitively) and the amount of movement needed to move the controls seeing as they were once very short and only needed to move a little ways, but now they are very tall and would need to be moved quite a bit to get the same effect.  You would have to find a way to mount it, but that should not be too terribly hard.  

Additionally, you could do the PC flightstick hack like we just discussed and instead of putting the flight stick back on, you could replace it with some sort of other joystick without buttons; this may require some grinding, filing, and drilling, but should not be too hard conceptually once you get the flight stick apart. This way you end up using your choice of sticks, the pots and wiring from the PSX controller, and the analog interface from the PC flightstick.

Any thoughts on that approach?

NoBonus

NoBonus:

--- Quote from: NoBonus on May 18, 2004, 07:07:05 pm ---Could you just hack apart the current analog mushroom sticks on the PSX controller, modify the interface between the pots and the joystick to fit into a PC flightstick of some sort, then hack them into a couple of pc flight sticks?  This would give you a much larger analog control joystick using the same pots. My only concern would be breaking the pots (since there are tiny comparitively) and the amount of movement needed to move the controls seeing as they were once very short and only needed to move a little ways, but now they are very tall and would need to be moved quite a bit to get the same effect.  You would have to find a way to mount it, but that should not be too terribly hard.  

Additionally, you could do the PC flightstick hack like we just discussed and instead of putting the flight stick back on, you could replace it with some sort of other joystick without buttons; this may require some grinding, filing, and drilling, but should not be too hard conceptually once you get the flight stick apart. This way you end up using your choice of sticks, the pots and wiring from the PSX controller, and the analog interface from the PC flightstick.

Any thoughts on that approach?

NoBonus

--- End quote ---

If you need more info on this idea, let me know, I am working on something sort of similar at home.

NoBonus

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