Home made arcade style joystick - Buying of parts and materials

2. Getting the parts and materials

Having decided on the design of the joystick, it was time to get the parts and materials!

a) Buttons, Joysticks, PSone Controllers, Wires and Connectors

Surfed around forums.shoryuken.com for some advice on which buttons and joysticks to choose and learnt that SANWA buttons were mostly used for fighting games. As for the joysticks, SANWA's was used mainly for fighting games and Seimitsu's for Shmups and not too bad for fighting games. As I play both genres of games, I decided to get Seimitsu joysticks and SANWA buttons.

I managed to find these parts from lizardlick.com. Great service! (Thanks Chad!)

Seimitsu LS-32-01:

SANWA OBSN-24 and OBSN-30 (They are similar except that OBSN-24 is smaller):

Total damage for 2 x LS-32-01, 2 x OBSN-24 and 16 x OBSN-30 = ~S$130.

Out of sheer luck, I managed to find a guy selling 3 old PSone controllers off ebay Singapore for only S$10! Whee! I immediately created an ebay account and sealed the deal and got the controllers the very next day (well, only 2 controllers are working but hey, still a good deal~~).

As for the wires and connectors, I went with multi-core gauge 24 wires for the flexibility and ease of use and 0.110" connectors for the buttons. I recommend getting at least 5 meters of wire and 40 connectors (each buttons need 2 connectors).

From top to bottom:

Gauge 24 multicore wire and 0.11" connectors; close-up of the connector; terminal blocks to join the wires from the controller PCB to the button and joystick wires.

b) Materials for joystick body

This was my main problem: I have no idea where to get cheap wood planks. -_-'' Looked around IKEA but was too expensive. Luckily my wonderful dad said that there is a wooden plank at home that I can use. YAY! Money saved!

Bought the black acrylic plastic sheet (1mm thickness) from Art Friend at Bras Brasah, and the long wood plank (x-section 3cm x 3cm) for the top panel support and wood glue from DAISO at Vivocity.

With all the materials on hand, next will be getting the necessary tools and then time to start work!