Solved the thing on paper. “all” I need now is to pick up a controller or two and a handful of pieces.
I’m going with the ‘two sticks and a centerpad’ model. The centerpad carries the original guts, keeps the main button and the power unit.
Right stick has the ABXY buttons and the start button. It also has a ‘zero’ slide, the 3-way accelerometer, and a rumbler. ABXY and start are obvious. The ‘zero’ slide is a three-pole slide switch that when set overrides the motion detector and sends a constant “zero-zero-zero” position message. In other words – ain’t moving regardless of how the stick is moved.
X and Y axes measure the tilt of the stick for fore-back and left-right. (Right hand, this is “look” up-down and left-right). Y replaces the button. Jerk the stick down to ‘click’. Jerk it up to “click and hold” with a jerk in any direction canceling that. (If I traced the pattern right that’s the default. The other possibility is up-on, up-off. I’ll go with default.)
Left stick replaces the ABXY with a d-pad, the start button with the back button, but is otherwise the same.
oops, forgot – both sticks will have stacked triggers. Sorry, a trigger and a ‘button’. I think ergonomically I’ll be better served by two triggers, naturally under index and second fingers, but I’ll see what happens when I start modeling the thing.
Both sticks connect to the centerbox with wire – wires running from the signal points to the appropriate link on the controller card. The center button remains untouched.
First version will probably leave the original buttons and knobs in place and duplicate the effect. If it works, a later version will reduce this to a single button.
I hope to play with carved and hacked models over the next two weeks.
