slaingod

okay, so maybe that was a little dramatic for a title. Along the lines of my discussion of searching for the perfect shopping cart, this is the fruitless culmination of my grand search for a game controller that has a thumbball (i.e. trackball manipulated with your thumb) in the place of the traditional analog right stick. Sadly any mention of this idea on message boards tends to bring out the ‘sky is falling’ people who think that will ruin first-person shooters on the console. To be honest I could care less what they think, as it’s more of an issue of playability for me rather than just trying to get that little extra edge. I have what you would call I guess mild RSS, in that I can’t really use a mouse at all for more than a few minutes at a time without causing tremendous pain to my wrists. I basically worked around this through the years by using various other methods of input. It is pretty amazing that once you step away from the standard mouse concept that there really are a crapton of other options out there, at least for basic computer usage. But there is one glaring exception to this: the inability of any company to bring a game controller with a trackball to the market. The sad part is that, for those of use who care, we would pay almost any price for a solution. I have even looked into building one myself, as I do have some small experience with electronics.

So this is a documentation of my own journey of trying to find an acceptable substitute in this lack of market satisfaction.

so let’s back up. I’m not a huge gamer though I do get obsessed with a game on occasion. And I’ll play through a game from start to finish in a few days time once a month or so. But at the moment I’m really having a hard time finding a usable controller configuration for my needs. A few years ago was a little more into playing first-person shooters I had a game controller called the Panther XL, which combined a trackball and a joystick. It actually worked pretty well, where the trackball was used to manipulate where you are aiming, and the joystick was used for movement and firing. Sadly the Panther XL suffered from poor quality and tended to break frequently. It also really didn’t solve the whole pain problem I was suffering from as you tended to be flexing your wrists to a certain degree to reach the trackball properly. and most computers don’t come with game ports anymore.

Fast forward a few years, and panther XL no longer exists. my initial spelunking came across a site discussing the exact product I’m looking for, along with links to a promising product that fit the bill perfectly along with cool pics, but unfortunately has yet to make it to market, and probably never will. this product was called the paradox or reflex game controller from a company/person called BodieLobus. It seems they were accepting pre-orders for a year but have since returned any monies for the pre-orders.

I came across a number of other products before finding the fragFX controller from a company called Splitfish. they had mockups of another controller called the glideFX, which was also along the same lines except the controller was split into two parts with the trackball being on the right portion of the controller and left analog stick and D. pad being on the left. This product looked promising as well as there were mentions that it would be available over the summer of 2008, but when I contacted them by e-mail recently they said the product was essentially shelved for now.

I still haven’t come up with a final solution yet, but I just purchased a 3D Connexion/Logitech SpaceExplorer (there are special community-provided gaming drivers in the forums) trying to fit part of the bill. I was able to find a deal on it at Dell, for like $190 delivered, and I plan on using it for things other than gaming. Essentially my goal would be to use that in some sort of handheld trackball for a first-person shooter games. At least on a PC. For the console I might be able to use the same setup in combination with an XCM XFPS keyboard/mouse converter for the PS3.

UPDATE: So I got my 3d SpaceExplorer but I also ordered an AlphaGrip iGrip, realizing that I don’t really need an analog left stick for FPS, though it is nice. I also got an XBOX360 when Dell had a $50 off sale for the Pro model ($270 delivered with tax, 2 games, 60GB). The AlphaGrip will be used with PC FPS’ for now, once it comes in, as there are plenty of those, and the AlphaGrip would probably require the XCM XFPS for most PS3 and all XBOX360 games. Will let you know how it works out.

Other links and products you may find interesting if your needs are slightly different from mine:

Zalman FPS FG1000 Mouse

Cheap handheld trackballs

There are some decent ones like those in these pictures that could be useful in combination with a Joystick/keyboard/space explorer or space navigator.

Doing it yourself DIY - Build Your Own Helpful Links:

Touchpad replacement of RIght Analog Stick

Adding a trackball to a ps3 controller

Great Parts place

DIY SIXAXIS Airplane model

BenHeckendon Links:

Put the PS3 guts into an XBOX 360 controller

Completely customizable controller

That’s it for now! I will let you all know how it works out!

So whenever I prepare to buy something I tend to agonize over every little decision. search engines are great, but you really have to know what exactly are looking for to find what you need. Otherwise you end up spending hours and hours searching through the same pages over and over. That’s basically what I did for about a week recently. I needed a new shopping cart as the one I had was beginning to show its age. It was big, wide, too wide to fit through most New York City grocery aisles, rattled and shook, and it felt like the wheels were always about to come off, until they finally did.

So in my grand tradition of hunting and gathering in cyberspace started searching for pretty much every combination of “cart, grocery, shopping, aluminum, casters, foldable, collapsible, etc.”. I finally came across my first contender, the polder aluminum cart pictured below. It really seemed to have a lot of features are looking for, such as being narrow, having rubber wheels, and being lightweight. But the reality was far far removed from those perceptions. This is arguably the worst product I have ever used for its intended purpose. Where to begin? First, the handle is too short and too close to the cart so you can’t really walk or pull it without it blocking your feet. Second, the wheels are barely held on by tiny little plastic clips, which the instructions didn’t even properly indicate how to use. The front wheels were also entirely too small intended to catch on tiny little sidewalk cracks, almost causing a pitch head over heels every few feet. Finally, the cart that I received a manufacturing issue where the brake would engage every few feet, making the card essentially useless without modification. Before realizing all the other issues the cart had, I had taken a Dremel to the brake, thereby removing any chance I had of returning it.

So $60 later I was back to the drawing board. Armed with my new knowledge and my desire not to waste my existing purchase entirely, I struck upon the idea of finding a much sturdier handtruck style cart and then attaching the light weight aluminum foldable basket portion of the cart from hell. I finally found something usable at handtrucks.com(I know, who knew!) in their folding hand trucks section.

there were some other products that might have sufficed, but I went with the high-end Wesco folding aluminum handtruck for about $100. This car is pretty amazing and it collapses up into a pretty small area for discreet storage. It has awesome rubber tires, can hold 150+ pounds, and it is very lightweight. Once I received this, it was now time to turn part-time cart. At this point I took a hacksaw, and cut off the arms and wheels of the crappy Polder cart leaving just the foldable basket. Now it was just a matter of being able to attach the basket to the handtruck and a quick release manner. in the pictures below you’ll see that I use reusable zip ties, but I have since moved on to using Velcro Velstrap (2 inch wide by 3 foot cut to size ) as my quick release mechanism, which I found at CyberGuys for around $10 delivered.

Below you can see the final product of my efforts minus the Velcro with some added foam grip for the handle. this bad boy doesn’t grab some attention on the street, as easily the most maneuverable cart in the store. It is lacking the second set of wheels so does require a little more effort to manage when fully loaded, but all in all it is a huge improvement and should last for a really long time, and the handtruck will find other uses besides just holding the basket.