Originally Posted by alexjzim

EDIT: improvising on myself, i came up with how it could work. might need more plastic than there is on a credit card :/. anyone know that type of material, but in a bigger...card? doesnt need to be exactly the same, just close enough.

Assuming your are in the states...
The grocery store area I was talking about has cards for Disney Land they are like 6 inches long, and CC type plastic. The lower portion is a gift card (cc sized) but the upper portion is the part you would break off an toss.
After you remove the bottom the remaining part is the length of a CC squared.

If your not in the states...I could mail you a couple.

Originally Posted by H@OBouget

Assuming your are in the states...
The grocery store area I was talking about has cards for Disney Land they are like 6 inches long, and CC type plastic. The lower portion is a gift card (cc sized) but the upper portion is the part you would break off an toss.
After you remove the bottom the remaining part is the length of a CC squared.

If your not in the states...I could mail you a couple.

im in NY. i have a king kullen and a stop and shop in my town. so ill check them out over the weekend. thanks for the info. if u get a chance though, can you post a picture? i wanna know what exactly im looking for. not exactly sure what ur talking about

The ones I used looked like this....

Black out for trademark protection.

Oh and thats the little phone holder I made with the CC plastic.

I can make one out of 5 business cards too.
Useful for holding the phone while watching a vid.

Originally Posted by H@OBouget

The ones I used looked like this....

Black out for trademark protection.

Oh and thats the little phone holder I made with the CC plastic.

I can make one out of 5 business cards too.
Useful for holding the phone while watching a vid.

thanks. ill look into that over teh weekend. i wonder whats behind those scribbles. this will bother me for the rest of my life!!!

alexjzim, thanks for the camera button tip! I have those as my quick load and save buttons now so I think I am done!

I originally designed the last prototype with some old school nintendo coloring, but wasn't digging all that grey. I'm changing to all black with grey and red buttons. Will post pics of the final soon.

I'm sticking with the cd case build, I know all of you don't have access to dremel tools to grind it out, but for me it works. Its bigger than a credit card so I can cover whole area, and the thickness keeps it tight in place while I'm doing some heavy button mashing.

alexjzim, love to see what you come up with for the button mod with your old gameboy!

Here is my second prototype I whipped up tonight

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I used a CD case this time like wakeupkeo suggested, it worked great. It especially made it easier to find where to put the holes using clear plastic.

I used an eraser from a mechanical pencil for buttons, it worked perfectly sliced into small segments.

I just played some Yoshi's Island and it is 100 times easier than just trying to use the regular keyboard. I'm gonna make all my friends with G1's one of these for christmas.

Update: DIY Gamepad Final

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Link to all pics

Well after two more prototypes and a lot of hard work, I feel that Prototype 4 was the winner. I made a little more adjustment to the top where it wedges in, and of course some coloring for asthetic reasons, and I am through with this project. I have a great final piece, thank you to everyone who helped with advice along the way, and I hope my work helps others save time on their creations.

Project result: a great little gamepad that hides in my wallet until time to play some games! Buttons respond great, have the tactile feel I was looking for, and no longer slides during heavy button mashing! Not easily replicatable but worth the time.

I can't stop tinkering, and working on other ideas.

I was worried that overuse of my current design could eventually lead to a loose screen, so I have been working on a design that is thin enough to slide through under the screen. I'll post a pic when the design looks good, but until then, I thought I'd share some diagrams i am working on for these next "thin" prototypes.



I wanted clear plastic to work with, and one with curve already in it as to slide around the phone edges, so I am using plastic from packaging, like in this instance, the plastic packaging around a ping pong paddle. Also, I am no longer using original buttons, I have laid a thin piece of rubber on the back of the gamepad and created buttons on top, its much easier to reproduce and the added plus is a mush more aesthetic look. Pics up soon, but until then if you want the original Adobe Illustrator PDFs to work with and edit as well, download here.

Hope this helps a little!

OK, after three more builds and still no definite solution on the sliding issue besides a rubber band that works but is not the most attractive solution, I have tried one more thing, and I am done now.

All this time I have been making buttons that are raised in all my previous prototypes. Finally, I have just decided to bypass the whole game pad, and I just added some raised bumps on the actual keypad using a clear coat nail enamel. Simple. Done. Now I have raised buttons on only the buttons I want, raised just enough to be able to sense them with touch, but not raised enough to cause issues with the screen sliding back over them.

Months of prototypes just to find that my solution of simply adding dexterity to the existing keypad is all that I needed. Figures!

Thanks again to everyone who helped me on this project!