My case is a little bit different and my introdution will be probably longer than others.
Who am I?
Daily im working as a web programmer - php, laravel, jquery , css and things like that). Im also newbie DIYer - have some basic knowledge about electronics , some small experience with arduino - I made wireless humidity sensor and switcher for my humidifier to keep humidity in 40-60% range in my room. And have some very small experience with PCB making, you know - nail laquer, pcb pencil, acid - very basic stuff
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Why im here?
Im not very interested in mechanical keyboards stuff (sorry guys) but before you throw some tomatoes at me i want to say that im a HUGE fan of thumb-pads as im naming them like Nostromo, Orbweaver, Tartarus, Logitech G13, Saitek PZ31A, Genius Ergomedia 500. And also flat devices like Z-board fang, Revoltec Fightpad, Wolfking Warrior, Cyber Snipa (also known as Tracer TRK 400), a4tech g100 and Tracer Avenger. But thumb-pads and common gamepads - their drivers, software, Xinput, Dinput, emulators are main area of interest. Im happy owner of two Saitek PZ31a units which as I believe are closest to perfection in terms of ergonomics, even though their quality cant match with Orbweaver or Tartarus.
My love for those devices begun somwhere arround 2007-2008 when i wondered how to merge main advantages of keyboard (many buttons) with advantages of gamepads - only one finger requirement for moving istead of classic WASD which requires 3 fingers and makes key combinations very uncomfortable. I even started to gather some information about them. But meanwhile some folks form Lineage2 forums showed me Nostromo and this was a revelation to me. I started to search deeper for more and more of such devices in the marked and finally after some reasearchs and long thinking I came to conclusion that PZ31A is the best from them.
My Crusade
I strongly disagree with common thinking about mentioned devices (thumb-pads not flat ones) as gadgets. I strongly believe that their ergonomics of use is placing them in very own part of the market and the same way people buy Wheels for racing games, gamepads for action games and console conversion, the same way thumb-pads should be placed for WASD games as HUGE improvement in ergonomics and comfort. But the saddest thing is people dont know it. They use them as WASD deviced, binding WASD to keys, not d-pad/joystick and thus in fact making this device completely obsolete. Which is even worse, reviewers test this device the same way! And spread false opinion that "yeah, its cool device, but you wont improve you gaming experience much. Keyboard is enough". When i see such things, well it triggers me really fast.
My dream.
I love my both PZ31a, i use them for games and also for some graphic stuff in GIMP or Photoshop. When one of them started to break (Saitek used very weak model of joystick) I asked Saitek twice (second time MadCatz) about chance of restarting/remaking of this device. They replied twice that there is none. I also shared my thoughts to Razer about improvements to Nostromo, especially in replacing D-pad to joystick - maybe working in digital mode but joystik. And I wasnt the only one asking about d-pad improvement. Well, they didnt listen as we can see looking at Orbweaver and Tartarus. I repaired device by replacing original joystick with PS3/Xbox model which required making new PCB and replacing one switch (second is under joystick)
Yeah, yeah i know its ugly but i dont know EagleCAD and rules of designing PCBs. But this repair provoked me to think about other improvements that can be made to this device and there is so much of them that modding originals is out of the question.
This is why im here. To share my thoughts i keep in my mind for couple years and confront them with much more experienced users, to estimate the ammount of work,ask about parts needed for making my own DIY thumb-pad and learn some more things needed to make such device. Offcourse this is an introducion so those thoughts i'll put in separate topic.
PS. Im from Poland and sorry in advance for any gramatic mistakes.
PS2. Oh i forgot - Im also many-buttons-mouses and their ergonomics fan and in the same time Razer Naga and clones antifan
