The picture above is of a Skull Tattoo pedal adapted to connect to standard switch adapted equipment. This one takes nothing more than the pedal, a 3.5mm mono plug, a knife and a 5g pouch of SUGRU to create. No soldering required. Pop over to OneSwitch.org.uk's DIY guide for step-by-step help.
The costs using SUGRU broke down for me as £8.23 for the Skull pedal and £6.40 for the Acrylic pedal (see below). This was assuming I purchased a £6.50 three pack of 5g SUGRU.
Potentially reducing costs further would be to glue or solder the connections, with the cost going down to £4.98 or £3.15. In SUGRU's favour, the former solution is cleaner and removes the need for soldering.
Next on the agenda, is a DIY solder-less versatile switch and joystick interface for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, which you can glimpse below.
The very nice adaptation above was created for the quadriplegic brother of Bradley Boggs in California. He riffed off the DIY Switch Accessible Doro Learning Remote guide to create something unique.
The problem for his brother was that he couldn't change the channels on his TV for about 10 hours or so at night. Problem solved. Great work!
The video above is a glimpse of some of the research and development game accessibility work I'm doing at the moment for SpecialEffect.
When I first got my hands on the build your own controller Makey Makey kit, I was disappointed to find that it wouldn't connect to an Xbox 360 or PS3 via any adapters I had to hand. With the brilliant Cronus Device and a PC, it will. This enables custom very light pressure controls to be used in a wide variety of ways.
Quick D.I.Y. Help: 1. Link your PS3 and PC using the Cronus Device and supplied Cronus cable. 2. Start the Bullseye software. 3. Download, import then start this "Test: MM Pinball" profile. 4. Connect one control to the SPACE BAR or LEFT-CLICK for flippers etc. and the other control if needed to "W" for nudging.
The Tattoolan YouTube clip above shows how to make a Do It Yourself (DIY) Tattoo foot pedal. Interesting to see that on eBay there are hundreds of these from China starting from £1.89 delivered.
These will work great as accessibility switches with modern switch accessible toys, gadgets and computers, so long as you use an adapter (search for "6.35 socket to 3.5mm plug mono adapter") or you cut the plug off and fit your own 3.5mm plug. You could also just cut the ends off and screw the exposed wire into a MakeyMakey or the likes of an Ultimarc i-Pac or A-Pac (A-Pac for the easiest and greatest power using JoyToKey where you can latch controls, switch profiles and more). Use a Cronus Device and use these on a PS3 or Xbox 360. More to follow on this.
The Controller Project from Caleb Kraft of Hack-a-day is an excellent new addition to the gamut of people sharing and promoting game accessibility solutions.
I've long been an advocate of people finding their own solutions, but for some people the range of possibilities and barriers they face are utterly daunting. For that, thank goodness for the likes of the charity SpecialEffect (at least in the UK) and their loan-library, games-room, OTs and home visits. Anyway, here's some more D.I.Y. resources for accessible gaming tinkerers:
Acid-Mods: A forum full of ideas for hacks and solutions. It's dried up a bit recently but still worth trawling through.
Hack Ability Blog: A more "life-in-general" hacking blog with top ideas. Dual-Ring: A brilliant game accessibility site, that shares some very affordable/free hacks/get-arounds for improving access such from Auto Hot Key scripts to adapting Ikea furniture. A must see.
Makey-Makey Hackcess: The brilliant and very easy D.I.Y. controller that works on PCs out of the box, and using the Cronus Device and Bullseye software, can be used on Xbox 360 and PS3. Huge possibilities, especially if you link it other controls with JoyToKey. More on that soon.
One Switch D.I.Y. pages: also try searching this blog on "hacked", "adapted" or "enabled". Loads more links here to easy to complex adaptations from me, and the likes of Gavin Philips and Ben Heck.
Sugru: Wonderful blu-tack feeling material that sets hard for easy physical adaptations. More to follow on that soon.
And there's tons more besides this. If you have any that I've not mentioned though, do feel free to get in touch to share them. Happy hacking.
Sugru is a air-drying rubber compound that suits a lot of potential D.I.Y. fixes, hacks and mounting needs. One example is the hack above showing a pre-modified Evil Controller Xbox joypad with Kontrolfreek thumb-stick extension, further modified by the user using Sugru.
With thanks to Bill Donegan for sending me some originally. Added to the OneSwitch D.I.Y. area.
Happy new year to you all. It's great to open up with a remarkable treasure trove of game accessibility hacks via Eiichi Tanaka's YouTube channel.
You'll find Angry Birds played with a single switch on an Android Tablet, a tilt Tablet to play driving games, an iOS made switch accessible via the surface (making many tap-to-play games playable with a switch), finger targeting with a Wii-remote, hacked Nintendo DS's and more. Absolutely brilliant work!
Many thanks to Sun Sun and @jalpsjp on Twitter for posting the link.
AccessAble Games have made fun use of the Makey Makey DIY controller kit. Playing Dirt 3 with spoons. Gives an idea for how light-pressure control can be in this way. Would love to see this made compatible with modern games consoles.
Half-silvered mirrors. That could be the solution. Previously I'd been wondering about getting eye-gaze and more versatile switch control over console games, having a Heads Up Display to assist. Seems this could be easier now than I'd previously thought. Three steps...
1. Getting PC compatible controls to take control of an Xbox 360/PS3 seems possible already (via an XIM 3 or Cronus adapter). That's potentially great news. The PC has by far the largest range of compatible accessible controllers and controller utilities of any platform. How well this works needs to be proven through more testing.
2. Getting key PC graphics such as the mouse pointer on top of a games console image may be less expensive than I feared, stops your eyes having to dance between two screens rapidly, and makes eye-gaze control feasible.
I wondered about using professional HDMI video mixing technology until "Georgli" on the Accessible GameBase forum had the inspired idea of using half-silvered glass mounted at 45 degrees between a console monitor and PC monitor (see the video below). This is a slight variation on an old coin-op arcade game trick used to make basic black and white displays more appealing in the 1970s (see the Space Invaders picture above). Not sure how well this would work, but it's got to be worth a try.
Things needed? Some carpentry skills, a half-silvered (aka two-way) mirror such as from Mirror World, two identical monitors, with at least one that can reverse flip it's image across the horizontal plane (via a PC graphics card if not).
3. Test playing to see how well it works in practice. It would be great to see this become a reality for players, and maybe there's a chance that the likes of 4Noah switch utilities, anti-tremor devices, head-trackers and eye-trackers will be enabled more people to play console games. It's likely that head-tracker and eye-gaze users will need something like Alt-Controller or Mouse Raider to get greater control. Looking forward to finding out.
NERF make some nice toys. Gavin Philips first brought Nerf Guns to my attention with his superb work at the Switch It Up (previously AbleGames) events.
Their Thunderstorm Super Soaker battery powered water-pistols are great too, and pretty simple to adapt for switch access once you know how. Here's probably the simplest guide I've written.
1. Remove all screws. Prise the casing open. 2. Drill a hole for your switch socket above the spring as pictured. 3. Carefully drill a hole at the bottom right of the battery compartment, as pictured (next to the blue dot), to expose the negative battery terminal. 4. Connect one side of the socket to the red wire, and the other to the exposed negative battery terminal. 5. Reassemble. Put the two long screws either side of the water cartridge.
Test. If there's any problems with constant operation, try removing the loose clear plastic rocker mechanism. Have fun!
It looks like our 2010 Christmas wish (Number 9 at SpecialEffect) is coming true at last! A truly simple D.I.Y. build your own accessible game controller kit. What massive fun, and such huge potential. Here's some MaKey MaKey ideas...Beach ball to play one-switch games, draw your own controls to play Pac-Man (or anything else), Banana piano keyboard, alphabetti-spaghetti keyboard, water bucket Dance Dance Revolution and Play-doh joypads.
What particularly excites me, beyond how this could bring down the cost of accessible controls, is that it acts as a keyboard/mouse. This has me hoping that it will be possible to plug into game consoles too via an Ultimarc iPac interface. And that could change access for some forever in a positive way.
Meanwhile, I may dig out my original 1996 PSone switch interface which used crocodile clips to see if it will work in a similar way whilst waiting impatiently for MaKey MaKey to go into production. Many thanks to Tam Toucan for the link.
Taking a quick flight across the internet to the Swiss Defitech Fondation will find you a brilliant site packed full of assistive technology work and ideas.
I especially enjoyed reading through their Handigeek blog which features some switch access ideas and do it yourself guides (click on "contacteurs"). Excellent!
Have just added a DIY guide for switch adapting the Doro EasyHandle 321rc. This device allows you to clone specific infrared signals from the likes of TV remote controls, and assign them to a switch. There's only room in this remote for two-switch sockets, but by rehousing the guts of it you can give access to all of the available buttons (although six sockets is about the limit for reliable use I'm guessing).
So what can you do with it? Some quick ideas are: To give switch control over some of the Robosapien line of toys, control a train-set (such as the LEGO City Passenger Train - Set No 7938) and of course control many different types of TV and music remotes.
"Advancer Technologies' USB Biofeedback Game Controller harnesses the power of electromyography to allow players to directly control video games with their muscles."
"At the core of this plug-in-play controller is the powerful yet low-cost Arduino UNO microcontroller, a favorite among hobbyist and students, acting as a HID keyboard interface. Integrated with the Arduino UNO are four of Advancer Technologies' new Platinum Series Muscle Sensors, allowing four muscles to act independently or in combination with each other to control over four buttons. In their setup, Advancer Technologies elected to use a six button setup with the left forearm controlling the B button (RUN/ATTACK), the right forearm controlling the A button (JUMP), the left bicep controlling the LEFT button, the right bicep controlling the RIGHT button, and combinations for UP and DOWN.
During gameplay, the Arduino UNO program constantly senses the muscle activity of each muscle via the muscle sensors. When the player flexes a muscle, the Arduino registers a spike in muscle activity, triggering a button press, and sends this information to the computer via USB connection, all in real-time.
You can learn how to build your own controller by reading Advancer Technologies' easy to follow tutorial posted on Instructables.com and their website. These illustrated instructions go through each step in detail to reproduce and program this remarkable controller."
The clip above shows off the VRAA! box I built for SpecialEffect a while back. It stands for "Variable Reverse And Accelerate", and works as a speed-limiter for both pedal and switch users. But why?
Well, a problem that turned up at road shows with the likes of Forza 3, is that some kids wanted the most powerful and impressive looking cars, but just couldn't handle the speed of them. The VRAA! box enables them to pootle around the track at 20 mph if needed but under much greater control.
This works well for free-driving, but led us to think of another wish for accessible driving games: An in-game option to set the speed-limit of your own car, and separately for your opponents. Until then, if anyone would like to know how the VRAA! box was built, feel free to get in touch.
"How about a big old bear hug?" I got asked that a lot whilst I operated on Lots-O-Huggin Bear to make him switch accessible. My wife does worry about me sometimes overhearing the sounds from my loft work-room. I worry about me sometimes.
There's a good D.I.Y. YouTube guide to switch adapting similar soft toys here. I didn't follow that same technique, as I prefer to go closer to the PCB, and find a stronger point to mount switch sockets to, but this works and is easy. More D.I.Y. switch accessible tips here.
Continuing the international affordable assistive technology riff, comes two fascinating Japanese sites. First up is Educational Ideas for Q-Brittle, run by "moroQ" a talented disabled teacher of learning and physically disabled kids in Tokyo. He has 91 posts to date on a variety of low-cost imaginative switch adapted gadgets.
Secondly, is the PowerPoint bo-yd's style site. One thing I immediately loved was this simple power-point slide show for splitting a water-melon with a rolled-up newspaper, or whatever you use best to activate a switch. It gives the advice to repeat the number of whole water-melon slides, if you want to make it harder to crack open. What fun, and a lot kinder than the alternative black cat whacking game they have.
Kate Ahern has posted a splendid range of simple eye gaze boards which are free for people to adapt and use. The starting basic advice is good and simple: Print on card; Cut out the middle; Use consistently.
Really nice and pretty simple D.I.Y. guide for an accessible PC USB controller over at Instructables. What was new to me was the freeware utility AutoHotKey being used to make the stick talk, detailed in step 11. This is something that JoyToKey can't do.
