So a little bit of a back story to this one. A long time friend of mine started streaming, I started poking round and asking questions about his setup. Turns out he had one one the most convoluted setups I had ever seen in my life. Me being me I decided to show him the error or his ways.
So I ended up setting up some title cards in OBS and then a lightening bolt hit me. I would either have to set up some hotkeys for OBS or be continually be clicking stuff with the mouse, which lets face it isn't ideal as keyboard shortcuts can be a pain in the ass to remember if your not using them constantly. Then I wondered if I could use a second controller as OBS hotkeys, a big fat no. Then I got to thinking I could write some software that mapped the buttons to keyboard. Wrote some software that did some basic mapping and it worked. Great I thought project done! Got talking to my friend again shared the software and he thought it was great ... one problem I had only set it up for single keys. Recoded the software to allow combinations and then, then I thought if I have gone this far I may as well go all the way.
Lurking in the back of one of my parts bins were 2 old USB controllers ( I think they were Logitech ) stripped them both down, carefully etched away the epoxi blob and salvaged the controller chip, looked up the data sheets and cobbled together the original version :
Long story short every eventually worked. So went and properly designed a pcb, ordered the right IC, more buttons, project box and now have a nice little obs switcher. Actually ended up making 2 one for myself one for my friend and he has never been happier. I know this project could have been done more simply, buying a crappy USB encoder from china but where's the fun in that ?
