Kerbal Controller

Pew pew!

What Even Is This?

Kerbal Space Program is a spaceship flying game that I absolutely love.

The only part about Kerbal Space Program (KSP) that I have to use my keyboard to play. It really takes the immersion out when I have to look for random keys to do actions in game.

To fix this super pressing issue, I spent WAY too long creating this panel to play KSP with!

My Kerbal Space Program controller.

My KSP controller

Overview

Joysticks
The joysticks control the direction of the spaceship/aircraft! They have 3 degrees of rotation: forward-back, left-right, and rolling.

Rainbow Buttons
These are the action buttons! They each have their own affect in game; blue toggles the landing gear, white toggles the lights, red is abort flight

How Does It Work?

My controller uses an Arduino Mega to connect with my computer thought USB.

Our first attempt at this was essentially a USB keyboard. My computer and KSP would think that I was simply pressing keys on a keyboard (like "Space" or "Shift" or "Left Click"). However, we very quickly found a better solution: kRPC.

kRPC is software that lets us interact directly with KSP. This means we can set values and trigger events through code.

Through some very professional wiring...

My Kerbal Space Program controller.

Very professional wiring

... we were able to get everything working!