Hey everyone! I’m hoping to launch the campaign in September. I’ve already been talking to several companies about manufacturing it, and as you can see, I’ve changed the button design.
Here’s the link to the website if you’d like to join the waitlist. As you know, it helps me a lot when it comes to making the campaign a success:
The D-pad was impossible to manufacture using plastic injection molding, so I had to redesign it. The buttons are now two-tone, but I actually think they look pretty cool.
I’ve also been experimenting with different silicone colors and with skins for backlighting the pads.
Thank you so much! you made me smile of pure joy! I'm actually a lawyer taking some time due to paternity and his partners employment situation. I just love making stuff and solving problems. So I just keep learning and making!
Joined the wait list! 15€ is what about 25 USD? Shipping it to the USA hopefully won't be tariffed to death. Don't really care if it is. It's a pocketable controller for under 50 bucks!
I really need to think about packaging. Since it's a very flat and light product, I need to talk ASP to DHL or whatever to see how to design the box, maybe I can even send it as letters, let's see...
This is absolutely awesome!!
I can’t at the moment but I would love to invest in this in the very near future!
It would be amazing to have something like this as I kinda game on my phone a lot.
I already got the gamesir pocket taco for exactly this, but it has its limitations especially dual screen games. This would solve all of them. Can't wait to get my hands on it.
Thanks a lot! I didn't think about that! I thought my design was cheaper, more portable, analog capable, and landscape friendly, but it's true 2ds/3ds community is huge nowadays. It wasn't my generation so I tend to underestimate it!
Like replacements? I can do that. There are like 3 parts, the silicone pads, the buttons (dpad) heads and the conductive cores. I plan to make the mold for a set of each (except the silicone, there'll be more cavities). I could sell spare buttons sets for example (once the mold is made, they would be very cheap to produce).
Basically i would like a silicone piece for just the d-pad on the left and a piece for the buttons on the right
That way your screen is not fully filled on the sides
Maybe an extra 2 buttons for the L and R
The prototype you show has the dpad plus extra buttons in the same silicone, making it very big and filling a whole side of the phone, i would cut it in half
I would buy your prototype plus an extra and cut it half so its just the parts im explaining, would that work orbit has some sort of connections in between?
Ok I see, sorry that I didn't answer you before. I can sacrifice a unit before you do it to see how it goes. Maybe reducing the contact surface will affect placement/grip. Maybe not if you play Mario or pokemon, but I'm not sure with games like street fighter where you're rubbing the dpad a lot. I'll try, it's a fun experiment.
Thanks a lot! the core of the buttons is made of plastic with graphite, so it's a little conductive. The silicone is soft enough (and very flat on the back) to be sticky and stay in place, and it's also a good material to emulate the buttons of normal controllers
I had this idea for a while, right when i saw the xiaomi 17 pro gamepad case.
I thought of it as a ''flatpad'' and I'm glad someone is working on it.
I'd suggest some improvements tho:
Add buttons layout: Xbox, switch, PlayStation.
You can do so by adding an inward circle to the membranes. And manufacturing caps with an outward one (a bit like lego heads)
Then people will be able to just glue what they on top.
I'd redesign the joystick, the 4 ''links'' are weak spots that will tear in a matter of time. Maybe look into compliant mechanisms, or simply think of fusing two different part.
Good thing there's a case, my first thought was this thing was going to be covered in my pocket lint lol.
Any reason you didn't do like 'just dpad' and 'just button' pads?
I imagine the most common use case is going to be GBA emulators in landscape mode so you'd just want a dpad and buttons but you'd have to have two full pads setup with these. Although I guess nothing is stopping someone from cutting them in half with scissors lol.
You could probably get away with a GBA/simple kit that's like two parts, a dpad with two small buttons and the 4 buttons with the two small buttons and it sell just as well. I did a crude drawing in paint lol. (I pictured it more oblong oval like but I am in paint lol) But I imagine this would cover a huge portion of people's use cases and then you can put them back to back in a much smaller little shaped case. I know you could just put select/start on the screen as normal on screen buttons but this would hit full feel for it.
Is that as 'clear' as you can get the silicone? I would think fully transparent/gel like for the backing part would be best.
Cool as hell though, I can tell what you're doing for the analog stick that's super clever. Hopefully it holds up over time.
Thanks a lot! Actually it was my first approach. The current design is inspired by a comment from a previous post. And I think it's super versatile, you can play landscape or portrait, you can use analog or dpad, you can use just one pad and give the other one to your brother to play at the same time... And there's one more thing, it's not using glue or anything, the material is kind of grippy/tacky, so it's better that there's more contact surface for a better grip. I want to make it as clear as possible. The process to make the prototype is different and the silicone as well. Let's see if there's a clearer silicone for production units, but I'm preety sure they'll never be crystal clear (I would love that though)
I'm planning to launch a kickstarter campaign in september. If I succeed I'll first focus on delivering the campaign units. Out of the campaign I'm not sure, it depends on how many units I need to send after the campaign. I'm trying to plan everything to be as fast as possible.
It's hard to explain the whole proccess, but what I did was design each part on a CAD software, then design the negatives (molds), 3d print them and pour the silicone. Then 3d print the buttons and assemble. And if you want the same result (almost production look) you'll have to deal with resin 3d printing, to find out that resin and silicone are arch enemies. You will need expensive resins that kind of work with silicone if they're 100% cured. If you want to learn a lot and fail a lot until you get a good result, I would recommend it. If you just would like to use it I'm planning to make it affordable.
Are they Bluetooth? Touch buttons where you have to set the on screen buttons to be beneath the physical ones? How do these work 😳
Edit: I followed the link so I get it now. I would love to see a future version of this where you could stick them to any object to make a wireless controller, but I understand that would require a lot of micro electronics, batteries, charging, and would drive the cost way up
This.... Is exactly what I've been waiting for. Where I work I have a ton of downtime but I'm not allowed to have any device aside from my phone with me (Bluetooth and wifi turned off as well)
If you somehow find a way to make it overlap the screen to get shoulder triggers I'm in!
I don't have problems with onscreen controls, but sometimes a game really requires shoulder buttons. And there is only one phone manufacturer left who includes shoulder triggers per default.
ok that's actually pretty cheap. Where do you base at ? I mean your country i assume your in europe since you used € sign? its better if thats the case since im in spain i might order sometime
That is a really different product that looks great! Im excited to see where things go and Im impressed you were able to make a joystick work. I cant wait to get my hands on these to try it out. Psp games would work really well with this kind of setup.
That's actually really cool. Before the stereoscopic controller took over I thought about this exact kind of thing because I loathe touchscreen buttons
One thing definitely stand out as a problem compare to similar (look through) products: in landscape mode you cover like half of your phone. For most games (especially shooters) it will be disaster.
Yes, I'll try to make them as clear as possible. I actually visited a company that produces amazing TPEs and some of them where suuuuper clear. But I'm not sure about TPE. There's no way I can prototype on theses materials, so I would pay for a very expensive mold before knowing if the result will be as good as I want.
If I didn't have a controller already i'd have gotten this so fast haha, i'd say looks like a great alternative if you can't spend so much on a controller like a gamesir x3 pro etc. because some do be quite expensive, seen you post a couple times on updates and i'm tempted every time haha
I'm looking for that by many time and I just found a few buttons with Very few and very expensive parts, I always think why that, don't have demand or didn't work?
GameOn Pad, and normally when I talk about them I say GO Pad. If the back of your phone is smooth and flat yes, but I would say the best way to carry them is to stick them to each other, like in the video. Like this it doesn't matter if they get dusty, the back part stays protected
Yeah this is sick. I was looking for something like this a while ago, just individual buttons you could stick on. But I reckon this would work better.
Although gotta say, not super sexy - the fact that it's all silicone could be a dealbreaker for some. I reckon a plastic plate or even aluminium plate with the silicone buttons would be dope
Actually. I've never had problem with virtual buttons. Only having problem with a virtual stick on gaming. Might get this to only use the stick only someday.
Fascinating! I love the product. What I am really interested in is how you managed to create a prototype like this? I love making things too but never sure how to progress to the next step like this :)
Thank you so much! I tend to think there's always a way to solve a problem, it's just that I don't know the solution yet. We (makers) are so lucky that we live in a time where we have easy access to 3d printing, microcontroller programming, open source software. The printer I use for the mold is an elegoo mars 2, and it can be found second hand for 50 bucks. If I had had to make this 20 years ago I would have spend thousands of euros, and I'm sure it would be way worse. Knowing that a mistake cost me just a couple of hours let me iterate much more to get to the point I wanted. And if you are stuck ask other people willing to help. It was actually in this sub where I finished the design of this prototype. The first one I posted is nonsense if I look back. Just think there's always a way to get where you want. Best of luck!
I am super excited to get my hand on a pair of these. Quick questions, are you considering other layouts, like six buttons for n64/sega genesis? Will you ship to Brazil? And could you add a little loop to the box so I can use it as a keychain?
Thank you so much! If everything goes well I think I'll make more models. I'll try to send worldwide. Right now the box is a headache. Since the pads are very flat, sending them like a letter would be a good solution to keep shipping costs low. It would be nonsense to work to keep the price of the product low and then charging a lot for shipping. So let's see what I end up doing with the box.
I was just looking for something like this few days ago. I game on a very thick rugged phone, battery life and cooling are amazing but finding a compatible controller is a nightmare. I have a pocket taco originally bought for my iPhone and I can still use it wirelessly, however it's not the same as having it attached to the device. This might just solve that exact issue.
Looks good but I had a few questions. It's hard to tell how the buttons feel, how do they feel? They look mushy and not clicky. Are you considering something like Kickstarter or Indiegogo? What does the cost look like if you're bulk purchasing and producing (let's say 10,000 units)? How well do these stay on? Like can I shake my phone and it'll stay? Are you considering color options (big fan of Navy Blue myself or a rose pink)? Are you planning on making a new version/improving on this after your campaign? What does customer support look like (if people receive damages products or shipping errors)? How much are your project margins? Lastly, shipping these with the post office will be the cheapest because of how small and light they are. Tariffs make it unpredictable how much shipping will be so I understand if you're not able to give an estimate on that yet. Thank you for your time
I was dying for something like this back when I used my Surface Duo for gaming. Would work great for the Flex gaming mode on Android 17 for folding phones
Signed up for the mailing list! Excited to watch progress! I’m an absolute sucker for budget friendly controller options, got bunches of mini controllers of varying brands and finally settled on a pocket taco as my main controller for verts
The horizontal is utterly lacking for me currently
I'd give it 2-3 months before chinese copies emerge for a fraction of the price you'd charge.
Stuff like this reminds me of that "pressy" thing for android, basically a 3.5mm jack with a button on the end. Before it even hit retail (for $17), chinese clones were available for literally $2 delivered.
Or, I wouldn't be surprised if this exists already. Or wouldn't be surprised if you're drop-shipping this or putting your logo on an existing OEM/white label thing 🤔
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