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A Heartfelt Gamepad

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A couple of friends announced their upcoming wedding. Both are gamers, so what would be a good gift? A heart-shaped gamepad for two!

For the base, I tore apart a cheap USB keyboard. After a brief analysis of the flexible PCB, it showed that the keys are arranged in a matrix, with the "rows" and "columns" conveniently separated by a few mm on the breakout board. Through experimentation, I found a 4x4 sub-matrix containing only "standard keys", so no F-keys or similar.

The rest was carving styrofoam, screwing in buttons, soldering, and gluing on plush fabric. Time spent: about 2 hours.

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