After making the original Androcade with real arcade controls I felt that I needed a smaller device that was a little more portable. I decided to use a joystick/button shield for prototyping this device.

Taking the same configuration I had in the original Androcade I added support to the arduino program to allow for an analog joystick to control the up/down/left/right. This was pretty straight forward, instead of triggering a serial send via a button I just looked to the value of the analog input and triggered based on thresholds.

The device is a little large at this point because of having to stack a few shields on top of each other but, it works great! The next plan would be to shrink down the prototype into something that fits into your hands. I’ve had a couple ideas – like taking an existing controller and replacing the insides with an Arduino mini but that’s left for another time.

Androcade Handheld

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I’ve always loved to create my own graphics for websites, videos, even the family photos. One thing that stopped me was the price of good editing software.

In my search for a great editing package I’ve come across a real gem. Paint.NET (sorry mac users – windows only) This software has everything and then some.

The interface is extremely intuitive everything is laid out simply allowing you to easily find the tools you need. It has a thumbnail interface allowing you work with multiple images.

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