And done. Do you want a simple breakout board for #Adafruit's ADA504 5-way navigation switch (it clicks in four directions, and straight down in the middle)? You can download the Gerber files for one here, and get a few of them made for yourself at Oshpark, JLCPCB etc for a few bucks: https://github.com/timixretroplays/simple-breakouts/tree/main
Do you want one and happen to be in Australia? DM me and I'll post you one of mine.
It boggles my mind that it's possible to order a completely custom little circuit board to be made and posted to you from overseas for less than the cost of a bag of chips.
This is an almost functional breakout board for a little 4-way-with-middle-button thing with a mildly cursed footprint. I got the important pin spacing right, but left them 0.1" too wide; having tested V1 here, V2 will arrive in a few weeks, which I will then also validate, and release as another #SimpleBreakouts project.
The eternal battle of needing an adapter for an old game controller I've collected - but retail ones are only available from the US for $toomuch, and hobby-grade versions for half that on eBay... then buying a handful of the connectors on AliExpress and resolving to make my own instead.
I mean, the NES controller looks trivial to read from, you just blip one pin and read from another: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/projects/nes-controller-interface-with-an-arduino-uno/
The hard part is making a PCB to match. Sounds like another #SimpleBreakouts project!
First draft for a less janky version of the first answer here: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/63865/rs-232-serial-sniffing
All nine lines are continuous from the PC end to the Device end (device end is male with pins, all others are female sockets), with the TX and RX lines also tapped out to the TX lines of the left and right ports, and GND is shared between all four ports.
I'll be adding this to my #SimpleBreakouts project once validated, so what might make this more useful to others? All 9 lines broken out to headers maybe?
Introducing the #SerialStinger, a project that exemplifies "I could make an adapter for that, if only I had a breakout board for its socket" (#SimpleBreakouts).
My goal is for this to become a general purpose serial-device-to-USB-adapter - ambitiously, I want it to support PS/2 KBs and mice, some RS-232 gear (eg. Gravis Stinger), Apple ADB, and bus mice. Most of this stuff is already well-supported in #Arduino or other libraries - it's the hardware implementation that's tough. #retrocomputing
Introducing my #SimpleBreakouts - can you handle through-hole soldering, and want a simple breakout board for a PS/2 keyboard connector or whatever, but haven't ever yet dipped your toes into #PCB design? I'm starting a public repository of all the little breakouts I've had made for my own #Arduino projects, in the hope that they may save some time for others as well.
I'll add more as I go, or by request even, but for now, here's the start of this project: https://github.com/timixretroplays/simple-breakouts
Tim 🎮
