Is your grandma great sufficient to utilize XBMC? perhaps it’s a testament to the performance of the wildly prominent house enjoyment suite rather than the hipness of your elders. however indeed, [Brian’s] grandma is an XBMC individual who needed a controller with larger buttons to fit her. This is what he built. He sent us a set of pictures as well as a description of the build, both of which you can see below. He was influenced to get in touch after reading about the custom-made controller which [Caleb] has been working on for [Thomas].
[Brian] didn’t get bogged down with electronics. He went with the simple, cheap, as well as prominent option of gutting a wireless keyboard. After tracing out the secrets he needed he got rid of whatever except the PCB. A wiring harness was crafted by soldering jumper wires to the PCB traces as well as terminating them with crimping slide connectors. The arcade buttons he utilized have terminals for the connectors which will make it basic to mate the electronics with the mechanics.
The enclosure is a bit wooden pastime box. It originally had a lid with a mirror. [Brian] broke open the lid’s frame to replace it with a thin piece of plywood which holds the buttons. inside you’ll discover a battery power source. These keyboards last a long time on one set of batteries so he just needs to keep in mind to preemptively replace them from time to time. The completing touch was to add decals to ensure that granny can figure out what each button does.
The donor keyboard
Cracking open the wireless keyboard
Soldering to the crucial matrix on the keyboard PCB
All wiring soldered to the keyboard PCB
discoloring the enclosure
Arcade buttons prepared for utilize
Replacing the box top with a plate for the buttons
buttons in location
All interior wiring done as well as battery pack added
completed controller includes decals for the buttons.