As soon as I saw the announcement video for the Framework 12, I knew I had to make these.
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With the form factor as well as official Bazzite support, it seems like Framework was just waiting for someone to turn their Framework 12 laptop into a mobile gaming device (despite the constant warning about low specs).
I initially tried designing my own custom controller modules like Wiktor_Tomanek’s Joystick Modules but with the shoulder buttons that I consider essential, but when I saw the quote for assembled PCBs (I don’t have the ability to do SMD soldering yet), I realised I was much better off adapting a commercial product instead. Joycons are great because not only do they have all the necessary inputs for most games, they also have rumble and gyro as well. Furthermore, with the release of the Switch 2, I expect the second hand market to begin flooding with controllers. There’s also a lot of 3rd party Joycons that can be used as well.
While I have reverse engineered charging circuitry for the Joycons, the price of custom circuitry is a bit prohibitive at the moment. If there is enough interest in the project, I may come back to add charging to the modules too.
Some points to improve on:
- The rails should be raised up a little so that the laptop can lie flat, the triggers currently prop it up a little
- The rails completely block the slots next to them, maybe some sort of cutout would allow access to the other slots
- Light channels to see the LEDs that show pairing information
- Charging circuitry
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Pricing of everything scales down drastically with scale, but I think your approach might be better. I did the custom design of my joysticks also just to prove that I can, which led me to an internship as a circuit designer and then to my current job building underwater drones for the military. In other words, the work that I put into joysticks paid itself back already. I am considering just opensourcing everything, as they do work, but need some final touches (the last 20% always takes 80% of the time).
How do you deal with having 2 separate HID devices? I wrote a custom Linux driver to map both of them to one virtual Xbox controller, but I have no idea how to fix this on M$ Windblows.
I see your raised points, but also, isn’t the framework 12 kinda heavy to grab by the joycon only? I love the concept, but was planning to remix this or publish a new model with grips when I get my laptop.
Steam supports Joycons natively and there’s a settings option to combine/split them just like how you’d use them on the Swtich. If I was custom designing my own controllers, I’d assign master-slave and communicate between them via Bluetooth and have only one of them act as a single HID device.
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The laptop is quite heavier than expected but it is handheld-able. Like I mentioned, I want to move the controllers slightly closer to the screen so the laptop can lie flat and I think doing that would move them closer to the center of mass. I printed mine with almost no infill so it bends a little but with more infill, I reckon it’d feel totally solid.
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It makes me happy seeing the dorks at major outlets publishing the stuff that happens here.
I’m too stupid to link but PCGamer likes this.
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Other media articles about this project!
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how well would that work with the framework laptop 13
It’d be upside down and be a lot more awkward to hold. Folding the FW12 into a tablet is what makes it manageable, but if you really want a flipped version, I could whip one up for you.