Arduino to Unity Project Part 7: Something to hold on to

As I was testing my analog stick, since it was not attached to anything, I needed to hold the breakout board with one hand and steer the analog stick with the other hand. The next step in my project was to add a second analog stick at which point it would get impossible to hold everything still. I needed to build some kind of stand or board to fasten my analog sticks.

The aestetics and ergonomy of how the input sensors of a interactive controller are placed is of course very important for the user experience. If I choose to continue this project I would want to design a more embodied interaction. At this stage of the project though, I really just needed something that would allow me to place each of my thumbs on the left and right thumbsticks.

Since my arduino wires are quite short my best option was to somehow build in the arduino together with the thumbstick sensors and then have the much longer serial to usb-cable that connects a arduino to a computer, run out of the controller. I found a carton box of the right size. I placed the arduino inside of the box and cut holes in the roof of the box for cables so that I could have the breakout board and the thumbstick outside and on top of the box. I used blu-tack to secure everything. Not a very permanent solution but it worked for now.

From the inside: The arduino connected to the computer via a serial-to-usb cable running out of the box. The analog sticks are connected to the ports of the arduino. I also had to use a breadboard since I now wanted to connect both analog sticks to the 5V and Ground ports of the arduino.

From outside. This allowed me to hold the box with one hand on each side and resting each thumb och each thumbstick