3D Printed Gamepad to Control Your Robots

This is a DIY 3D printed wireless gamepad designed primarly for controlling an arm robot. It has two thumbsticks, each one pressing four buttons disposed in the left, right, top, and bottom directions. There are two additional buttons in the center and a hole for a feedback LED.

The pieces to 3D print are:

• The external frame, in brown, and the thumbstick eye-balls that together compose a print-in-place object (i.e., you print it in position, not separated),
• Two round buttons, and
• Two thumbstick handles.

There is no need for support when printing, and the assembling requires no screws or glue.

The most challenging piece to print is the frame as sometimes the thumbstick eye-balls fuse to it. However, you can successfully print it with 0.2 or 0.3mm layer height, using ABS or PLA, in a well-calibrated printer. Slow it down in case of fusion and tune the retraction option. I printed it successfully in a very customized Anet A8, and hence, it should be not that difficult in a better printer. The expected result after print is this, although more tight as this was from an early prototype:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uetGYyZBsZk

The .stl file contains all needed objects in its correct orientation.

You can check other details and get the source code, board files, etc. here:
https://bit.ly/3dozdbH

It was developed under a technological research project¹ in Brazil at the Federal University of Jataí – GO². The project aims to build very low-cost robots to use in educational activities in Brazilian public schools.

Although there are many readily available gamepad or similar wireless controllers, and their quality is a must, the cost of bringing several of them to enable a class activity didn’t fit our budget. By the way, we also want to empower the students and encourage them to pursue STEM careers, and nothing better than presenting something they can create themselves in a maker lab!