Dragon's Hobbies - Blog

I recently decided that I needed to start walking more. We&#39;ve had a treadmill for a while, but I wasn&#39;t using it much. I finally got the RetroPie setup on the treadmill, so now I can get some walking in while I&#39;m playing video games. I also got a new DIY joystick that I put together using a cardboard box, which is shown in the attached photo. I bought this one from Amazon for less than $25. I was a little surprised that this kit doesn&#39;t have any instructions. Even the Amazon listing provides more information because there wasn&#39;t a bit of paper that came with the electronic components. <br /><br />Fortunately, I noticed the labels on the Amazon listing, which I&#39;ve also saved for myself, and I found that it wasn&#39;t too hard to put together. I only used 4 of the buttons with the joystick to test it out with my cardboard box, since I was just using it for NES games anyway, so I have the other 6 buttons leftover. I used the 2-Pin Joystick Interface slots, assuming that the labels were intended for Up/Down/Right/Left. I plugged 4 buttons into K1-K4 slots, for Start/Select/A/B. I haven&#39;t looked up with the Turbo, Mode, CLR, or Auto ports would do and I didn&#39;t try them. And, of course, I plugged in the USB cable into the USB slot. <br /><br />I just used duct tape to hold everything onto the box since it was just intended to make sure it was all working. I plan to make a wooden box for the joystick, but I&#39;ve just been trying it out a bit to make sure I like the button positions. So far, I&#39;ve been very happy with the outcome.