Super Stick

This was my evening project for learning more about product design, electronics and Arduino.

There are plenty of options available if you want a bluetooth gamepad or arcade stick, but I have not been able to find something with the form factor of the old Commodore 64 and Amiga joysticks. So I decided to make one myself!

The stick has an Adafruit Feather M0 as its Bluetooth controller, making it appear as a keyboard when connected. The joystick and buttons are Seimitsu Arcade parts. The stick has some mapping options you can choose when you turn the stick on. For example; holding up on the stick makes one of the buttons an up direction, which can be nice for platforming games.

I'm have plans to improve the design. First, I'd like to make it connect as a gamepad, which will easier to setup with most devices and software. Also, a non-Bluetooth cabled version would be nice for playing on original hardware. If there's any interest, I can put up instructions and files for making the stick.

If you're into retro emulation, you might be interested in my iPad C64 paint app and my Super CRT shader.