I’ve been building USB Joystick controllers for the teen group at the local library. Last time I made Midi controllers and they loved it. Especially using Garageband to play with their creation.
This time its arcade joysticks. We had such a good time at the last Retro Gamer Night in 2017 that I want to have something fun at the next one in March. I have some boxes and Happ parts ready to go.
When I did the Midi I used Arduino Leonardo boards and PIC 16F2550 chips. That way t here was the beginner option and the pro option…
This time I’m going in the middle using VUSB on Atmel chips. This is a bit bang USB for chips with no native USB hardware. A couple of resistors and Zener diodes and a nice piece of software…
To make prototyping the different interfaces simple I made these little boards with the VUSB hardware to tuck under a small protoboard. If you add the micronucleus bootloader this is a perfect portable board to add to your Arduino collection.
Heres the complete hardware with a couple of added caps to filter the +5V USB power.
Cheap little protoboards
And Duct Tape. Gotta have that.
The ATTINY85 is my favorite for small joysticks and the Atmega8 is a good choice for anything else….
just to make sure it works I uploaded the Adafruit Trinket USB Volume Knob Code. 
Now for a real test. Found these up in the attic. Probab;y should clean them up but I want to see how it works.
These are old Tandy Color Computer Analog Joysticks with only one button….
And they don’t self center either….
But they do work….
