Optishot Foot Pedal Controller Project <<<Completed>>>

[alienator]

First let me introduce myself as I am a first-time poster. My name is Dave and I am a gold addict. I have only been playing since may of 2014 but The game has overtaken all of my free time since the first time I played. Why I waited so long in life to try it is beyond me.

Anyways the reason for my post. I bought an Optishot so I could golf in my garage while the weather was bad and give me the ability to work on my game. It has been a great purchase and has helped my game a lot so far. After using the optishot for a few games it became apparent it was not all it could be. I have slowly been upgrading my garage sim as I go adding a projector and such, I still need a nice impact screen and that's my next order of business. I did however find it took something away from the whole experience using the optishot and having to use the computer keyboard to swap clubs and aim when needed, so I came up with a solution. I have a lot of diy background and have actually taken a keyboard apart before to make a foot pedal for online gaming so it seemed like the perfect fit for my optishot.

What I did was took the controller board out of an old working usb keyboard. I tracked down the contacts on the board for the keys I needed for the optishot. I used the default hotkeys for optishot and made buttons for aim left and right, change clubs up and down, m for mulligan, and s for score. I could have added more buttons for shot trajectory in hindsight but I honestly don't mess with that much at all at this point. After I tracked down where the leads wear I made a housing out of aluminum at work, I work in a glass and metal shot and have access to some milling equipment. This could be done with wood or plastic also for anyone interested in making their own. I ordered some arcade game buttons from amazon for 16$ for 6 buttons and used them to activate the different hotkeys. I put this all into a nice package and used some sticker lettering on the outside of my case. I then put an entire can of clearcoat over the sticker letters to protect them, it was about 9 coats and it looks really nice and the letters are completely embedded under the paint. Here are some photos of the finished project. I will also post a link to a youtube video giving you some insight to how to take apart the usb keyboard and find the leads you need for the buttons.

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The Link to the youtube video for usb keyboard "hacking"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3NxQ60E72k&t=111