Episode 56 – Analog WASD PC Gaming Keyboard

I do almost all of my gaming these days on PC – much better graphics, faster loading time and free online play.

But there is one aspect of console gaming that is better than PC and that’s analog control of your character in the X Y plane using the left thumbstick.

Я бы лучше взял для дачи дымоходы из нержавеющий стали

In the latest episode of our show I tackle this problem by building a PC gaming keyboard with Analog WASD keys. How hard – or rather far – you press the keys, the faster your character moves in that direction.

To those who might ask “Why not just use a Teensy HID as joystick?” the answer is I tried but it wouldn’t map to the same axis as an Xbox 360 controller. Xbox 360 controller “just works” on most games since they’re just console ports anyway (next generation please get here already!)

Download Case Files and Code for this project.

11 thoughts on “Episode 56 – Analog WASD PC Gaming Keyboard”

  1. I’ve had this idea before but I don’t know how easy it would be to accurately press a keyboard key partway. Also, diagonal movement would be hard.

  2. many games that support xinput (the input used on an xbox controller) or even direct input which the xbox controller uses in a pretty limited way do not support the use of both an xinput (or direct input) device at the same time that you are using a keyboard and mouse. bioshock is an example of a game like that (when you enable a 360 controller on bioshock you cannot use keyboard and mouse). this device has limited use, it is a good idea, but there are allot of games that simply would not support it, and some of those games are particularly popular.

  3. Hi, i was wondering if the same principle could be done with a ball mouse? Me theory is if you look inside a ball mouse there are two wheels that pick up the movement of the ball. Now if you soldered wires onto the wheels board ran them into a micro processor (arduino) and onto the Xbox controller joystick would that work?

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