Feb 27

Friday Post: DIY Joystick

Hey All!

Happy Friday!  This week I took video of myself building a small Arcade Joystick for the Raspberry Pi.  I hope you all enjoy.  Let me know if you have any questions!

MagPi

The latest issue of the MagPi is out, and in this issue, not only have they announced that they are officially part of the Foundation, but they have also reviewed PiPlay, RetroPie, and Raspicade!

PiPlay received the “Best Features” comment, while RetroPie and Raspicade received “Best of the Bunch” and “Best for Newbies” respectively.

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It’s a real honor to be mentioned in the MagPi 🙂

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

Aug 22

Friday Post: Joystick Contest

Hey All,

This week has been rough.  Fall semester startup is always crazy, but this one was just over the top.  Pushed a brand new application to production, and promptly discovered a slew of bugs that hadn’t cropped up during testing.  So many little fires being put out.  As exhausting as it is, it’s such a fun environment, I don’t even care.  I can’t wait to push the second release next week and go through this all over again!

During the PiPlay Kickstarter, I ended up buying a bunch of different joysticks to test.  I’m going to hold a contest.  All you have to do is enter your name and email, and I will randomly select a name and the winner gets a free joystick shipped to them.  I will be accepting entries until next Friday!

I have a few different styles like this:

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On another note,  a LOT of emails from my blog were going to my spam folder (but not all of them).  I’m going through the folder and trying to respond, so I’m sorry if I didn’t get back to you.

Have a great weekend!

-Shea

Jun 14

Friday Post: Joysticks

Hey All,

So, I’ve been looking at more joysticks, and I want to tell you about an experience I had with a cheap $15 Chinese joystick I imported.  I buy a lot of items from China.  This time it was a disaster.  I believe I ended up inadvertently getting a return rather than new stock, so I’m waiting for the vendor to explain the issue before I give up on them entirely (the other products I purchased were in good working order).

The joystick i purchased is supposed to be a Welcom WE-6200.  There are a lot of joysticks that look like this one, just browsing aliexpress will bring up dozens of similar products.

The one I received had:

  • solder on the underside,
  • a crack in the case that was “covered up” with sharpie
  • buttons that didn’t fit well.
  • mushy and sticking buttons
  • directly soldered connections rather than quick disconnects.

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Other than that, it does work.

PiPlay is coming along.  I’m finishing up the joystick config system.  I’ve add mednafen to the list of emulators.  I’ve done some code modifications to it to enable it to work on console with DISPMANX.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

 

 

May 30

Friday Post: Joysticks!

Hello All!

It has been a long week.  I plan on sleeping until Sunday.

PiPlay will be getting a joystick configuration utility in the next release.

Don’t mind the placeholder graphics.  The designer who did the PiPlay logo is making all the controller graphics to go in there 🙂

The next release is coming along really well.  I’m very happy with it so far.

I bought Mario Kart 8, so if anyone wants to race, friend me!  My NNID is SSilver2k2

On a cuter note, my wife and I went to the Humane Society and adopted a 6 month old orange kitten.

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Meet Applejack 🙂

Have a great weekend all!

 

-Shea

May 02

Friday Post: It’s Over 9000!

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The PiPlay Kickstarter has gone over $9000!!!!

So far, we are working on theme support, joystick support, joystick configs, auto grabbing of game screen images, screen image previews, and more emulators.

I’ve also started a joystick build so that I can test out different encoders easily.

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  • $30 for the encoder, joystick, and buttons from eBay.
  • $15 for the case and $5 for the drill hole bits from Harbor Freight.
  • Ability to carry around all my stuff in a joystick case: Priceless!

 

Custom menu from the PiPlay forums:

I’m going to go celebrate!

 

-Shea