If you fancy building your very own custom arcade cabinet, then the Howler all-in-one open source arcade controller designed by Josh Wolf based in Calgary, Canada is definitely worth more investigation.
The Howler open source arcade controller is a 4 joystick, 26 button, gamepad controller, keyboard controller, mouse controller, 96 channel LED driver USB composite all-in-one device. Allowing you to build your ultimate games cabinet.
Wolf explains a little more about his opera source games controller and how it came into being: “I was building my home arcade machine and wanted the ability to light up each of the buttons and joysticks with an RGB LED. I also wanted to be able to configure each button and joystick as keyboard, mouse, or joystick input. I did a thorough search on the internet but there was no single device that could do everything I wanted. In order to do what I wanted it would have cost over $250 and require 5+ circuit boards.
I thought to myself, “I am an Electronics Engineer, I will just design my own” and that is how the Howler Controller was born. I slaved away designing a prototype: drawing the schematic, doing the board layout, soldering the parts, writing the firmware, writing a Windows driver, and Testing (this required many hours of Punch-Out!, Pac-Man, TMNT Arcade and Track & Field ). “
The Howler project is currently over on the Kickstarter website looking to raise enough pledges to make the jump from concept to production. So if you think the Howler Open source arcade controller is something you could benefit from, visit the Kickstarter website now to make a pledge and help Howler become a reality.
Source: Kickstarter