Friday 2 December 2016

Retrofitting a gaming controller from a Linx Vision onto my Surface Pro 4

The finished thing! A gaming controller mounted onto my computer. :D



STEP 1
I bought a faulty Linx Vision from ebay. I thought the controller design was fantastic and wanted it on my Surface Pro 4. The Linx Vision was much smaller than my Surface Pro so I had to build a custom mount.


STEP 2
I took all the screws out to disassemble the whole thing.


STEP 3
Cutting the wires and attaching a USB cable to it instead. All the wires are colour coded so connecting a USB was very straight forward.


Moment of truth! Plugging in the USB. All the buttons lit up. :) Windows 10 reconised it as an xbox controller. Perfect. :)


Fired up Alice Madness Returns to test the controller. Everything works fine. I was very happy at this point.


STEP 4
Building the mount. A bit of wood I cut to 12.5 inches. I then cut and carved the ends to fit the control pads.


I used black acrylic paint. Applied with a sponge to get a smooth finish.


 Once the paint was dry I started screwing everything in.


I then carved a channel to tuck the wires into the wood. Applied some masking tape and painted over it again with black paint. 


STEP 5
Attaching the controller mount onto the backplate stand of my Surface Pro hard case. You can see the wire slightly pushing up the tape. But that's fine, not a big deal.


All attached. When folded back, the controller also works as a stand. Ta da!

Before.
Without the gaming controller case attached.


After.
WITH the gaming controller case attached. :D
Since the controller is only attached to the case I can still easily take it out the Surface Pro 4 which is handy.