Mechanical keyboards are popular among gamers and programmers. Redditor wildpanic outgeeked them all by making his own keyboard. Inside the 3D printed case and keycaps are Cherry MX Green switches, 1N4148 diodes and a Teensy microcontroller, which wildpanic connected using 20 gauge copper wire.
In case you were wondering, the center four keys on wildpanic’s keyboard replace the standard spacebar.
You can download wildpanic’s keyboard frame 3D file on his Thingiverse page. He used Thingiverse member rsheldiii’s 3D files for the keycaps.
We’ve seen a BMO toy with a LEGO case and another one that appears to have a wooden case. Mike Barretta’s take on the living console has a 3D printed case and buttons. That’s right, this BMO works much like a Game Boy in that you use the buttons on its body to play.
Mike used a Raspberry Pi Model A+ and a Teensy 2.0 to power the gaming device. It has a 3.5″ LCD, a pair of 0.5W speakers and a 2200mAh battery.
Here’s Mike playing on his brand new BMO:
Who wants to play video games? Head to Mike’s Thingiverse page to download his custom BMO 3D files. Mike also left links to his parts list and build log on that page, so be sure to thank him for his meticulous generosity.
So you think your Steel Battalion controller is the bees’ knees? Redditor MrTheOx would like to have a word with you. Preferably while playing a tank-based game. He repurposed a surplus gunner’s turret yoke from an M1 Abrams training simulator and turned it into a computer joystick.
The image below shows the gunner’s station inside an M1 Abrams; you can see the stick (or at least a variant of it) in the center. The American Fighting Vehicle Database also has a great image of the stick inside the M1.
MrTheOx bought the stick from BPB Surplus for $100 (USD). According to MrTheOx, the stick “rotates like a steering wheel”, while the handles “pitch up and down.” Each of the handles has two triggers and one thumb button. MrTheOx used a Teensy 3.1 board to make computers recognize the stick as a joystick and a keyboard. He ended up having a few pins to spare on the Teensy, so MrTheOx made and connected a switch panel to the Teensy for more controls.
MrTheOx says the joystick works great and that he’s used it in several games, including MechWarrior Online, War Thunder and ARMA 2. He complements it with a pair of rudder pedals and the Track IR head tracker. My favorite part about this project is that MrTheOx actually learned how to program and solder in the process of converting the stick. Aim at Imgur to see more in-progress shots of MrTheOx’s mod.
The Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to run a software emulator for classic consoles. We’ve seen it used to make a custom portable gaming system, a tiny arcade machine and even a gigantic Game Boy costume. Travis Brown aka XodusTech may have come up with the best take on the computer as a retro console. He stuffed a Raspberry Pi (among other things) inside a Game Boy Pocket’s body.
The image above shows a vanilla Game Boy Pocket on the left, and Travis’ Pi-Pocket on the right. Using RetroPie, Travis loaded emulators not just for Game Boy games but for the NES, Sega Master System, Game Gear and Linux as well. Travis connected the Game Boy Pocket’s buttons to the Raspberry Pi with the help of a Teensy 2.0. A Li-ion rechargeable battery lets him play up to 3 hours per charge.
Head to Travis’ website to find out how you can make your own Pi-Pocket. If Nintendo has reached a point where it’s willing to borrow Mega Man, Pac-Man and Sonic for one game, it might as well go all out and make a multi-system retro console like this one.
A few years ago Ben Heck made a breath-operated controller to substitute for the kick drum pedal of the Guitar Hero drum set, allowing a wheelchair-bound player to rock out. This time, the master modder made his own USB-based pedals to give him added control options when playing video games on the PC.
Ben’s pedals are run by a Teensy board. His computer will recognize them as a keyboard, making it easy to map commands in games. Ben made it so he can map up to two commands per pedal: the first command is activated with a slight press and the second command is triggered by pressing harder on the pedal.
Watch Ben build them the video below. Skip to around 15:25 to see the finished pedals.
Don’t have Ben’s hands to help your feet? Don’t worry. There are commercially available PC foot pedals like the Stinkyboard, the Fragpedal and the Alto Edge Infinity.
A couple of months ago we found out how Redditor dekuNukem hacked his Nintendo 3DS to automatically hunt for shiny Pokémon in Pokémon X/Y. It turns out he built on that hack and drastically improved it. His new hack, which he calls Poké-O-Matic, not only hunts for shiny Pokémon, it also hatches eggs and does all the other time-consuming tasks associated with hatching.
The Poké-O-Matic is powered by two microcontrollers an Arduino Micro and a Teensy 3.0. dekuNukem switches between his hack’s functions with a push of a button.
As I mentioned, Poké-O-Matic can hatch eggs on its own. That includes biking back and forth to pass the time until his Pokémon at the Day Care Center produce an egg, then retrieving said egg, then walking back and forth until said egg hatches. Then Poké-O-Matic deposits the hatched monster into his PC and repeats the cycle. It can even release Pokémon if his deposit boxes become full.
As before, dekuNukem’s hack can also catch shiny on the field by entering battles repeatedly. It can do so on water…
…on land…
…and even against hordes by using the Sweet Scent skill.
So far so good for the lazy gamer, right? But dekuNukem’s Poké-O-Matic has one more ability, one that is straight up cheating. It takes advantage of the trading glitch in the game to clone Pokémon. It doesn’t work all the time, but dekuNukem himself seems to regret putting this mode. It’s bar none the quickest way to get a shiny, and therefore ruins the monsters’ value.
With all three methods – endless hatching, brute force catching and cloning – it’s no surprise that dekuNukem now has a ton of shiny Pokémon.
Watch his video for the full details and demo. Be sure to turn annotations on so you can read dekuNukem’s explanation.
You can download the Poké-O-Matic program from dekuNukem’s Dropbox, but he recommends that you streamline it further as it’s a mess as-is. As for the merit of this hack, I think this will only cheapen shinies for anyone who uses the hack. As with many things, if you’re not the one who earned it, you probably won’t appreciate its value. But I still admire dekuNukem’s skill and ingenuity for building Poké-O-Matic. The man practically invented a gamer, albeit one that’s a cold-blooded cheater.
