Home made arcade style joystick - Planning and Design

My first blog post and I'm here to brag about one of my achievements in year 2008 lol~

My very first home-made arcade-style joystick!

Have been playing versus games and shmups on PC and Playstation 1/2 using a controller since young and then one day, it struck me to make my own arcade-style joystick after visiting several webbies and forums that this is possible. So, the adventure starts here!

1. Planning and Design
Well, as it was my first home-made joystick, I want to keep the design easy and simple to get the needed experience before I move on to more complex ones. A simple butt-jointed box design was thus chosen. For the panel layout and dimensions, I obtained them from http://www.slagcoin.com/. A really great website with all the information that you need to build your own joystick!

I decided to keep my joystick to a height of 7cm (initially was 10-12cm) so that the joystick will be a lot less bulky and more sleek-looking.

Final design and dimensions (Top view):

As of many home-made joysticks out there, this joystick will be made using the pad-hacking method, which means using an old controller's PCB and connecting the buttons and joysticks to it using wires and connectors.

Next up:

Getting the parts and materials for the joystick!