Slashdot Mirror
How One Man Helps Keep Game Controllers Accessible
capedgirardeau writes with a clipping from the AP about engineer Ken Yankelevitz: "[W]ith the retired Bozeman engineer's 70th birthday approaching, disabled gamers say they fear there will be no one to replace Yankelevitz, who has sustained quadriplegic game controllers for 30 years almost entirely by himself. The retired aerospace engineer hand makes the controllers with custom parts in his Montana workshop, offering them at a price just enough to cover parts." Yankelevitz builds interfaces to control an Xbox 360 or PlayStation.
Shouldn't this be something Microsoft and Sony should be doing anyway?
TFA: "Quadriplegic gamers now have around a dozen different actions they can work with their mouth."
Damn, I need a quadriplegic gamer consultant to provide training for my wife.
Really what a great and admirable hobby. This is a gentleman that must sleep well every night.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I didn't know consoles were marketed to octopi...
nearly 15 years reading /. and I still fall in a goatse.cx trap !
on the Xbox 360? The controllers have special chips in them to lock third parties out? I can see him getting permission, but those chips are complex and hard to come by... Is Microsoft giving him a supply as charity? Kudos if they do.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wondered whether he decided to patent his design, in an effort to license it to a manufacturer. The reason I wonder about this is that if he stops making these because of health or death, no one else will be able to make them either, unless the patent ownership is passed on, sold, or the patent expires. Which would seem like a shame.
Still waiting for my Wii Fleshlight
Similar projects and people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83nSodg-HTU
http://benheck.com/03-16-2008/new-single-handed-controller
http://benheck.com/Games/Xbox360/controls/1hand/singlehandcontroller.htm
I think it's great that there are a handful of people focussing on gamers who would otherwise struggle with standard controllers. I only wish the Sonys, Microsofts, and Nintendos of this world would occasionally take the lead in this research, or at the very least contribute to some R&D once in a while.
As a gamer who has a mild neurological condition that limits fine motor control in one of my hands... and have become increasingly annoyed at the complexity of controllers and control schemes (the shoulder buttons on a dualshock controller are particularly hard to reliably control)...
I both salute this man, and I wonder what kinds of games one can actually play with such a controller... the amount of reflexes and reaction time required to play most (90%?) of the games, seems like it would be beyond what you could convey through one of these devices in a useful amount of time..
If someone wanted to fill his shoes, it wouldn't be an easy task.
He puts each controller together by hand, using his engineering skills to solder dozens of switches and circuits. Controllers are offered for just over $200 and include a 1-year warranty for repairs.
"If the bottom line is profit, there's no way to make a profit on these," Yankelevitz said.
Yankelevitz said larger companies and game manufacturers have shown no interest in producing the controllers because the market is so small. He's sold just over 800 of the devices through 30 years. Factory construction of the controller would be cost prohibitive, over $1,000 each.
Man builds 30 years of quadriplegic gaming
If Mr Yankelevitz's nice designs are not open source, then there should be an alternative design that is.
Have you considered the possibility these controllers may have to be customized for each client or patient? That solutions have to be found for each new generation of controller? That training the user is a problem in itself?
You can freely experiment on tech without someone suing you for medical malpractice. It's much harder to make advances in medicine when nothing can ever be tested.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
"Have you considered the possibility these controllers may have to be customized for each client or patient?"
Great job for a makerbot.
Change design.
Print.
"Why is medicine so Stone Age still?"
Because not enough people donate computing time to Folding@home ( http://folding.stanford.edu/ ) instead of leaving those other 1/37 cores run idle.
They also have version that runs on that expensive gaming graphics card you've got.
It's not much, but it helps me sleep better.
Publish the schematics for what he does, let the community deal with it.
Guy's a star and I want to hug him but there are a LOT of people out there who would do this gratis if they knew how.
There are some problems in medicine that can be solved by throwing processing power at them. There are a lot more problems that can be solved only by throwing biologists at them. Science needs to go faster. This body is only good for a century, a little more with luck - I need a new one ready before it wears out.
Considering how much Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo spend on advertising, you'd think they could offer the same service in-house.
Even if they gave away the modified controllers for free, they'd more than recoup the cost through increased goodwill and word of mouth.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
For those that would like to see the actual hardware here is the PS2 and here is the X360. I hope he has released the plans so that when he does pass on someone can pick up the torch without having to reinvent the wheel, as these things do look to be seriously complex.
BTW if you are gonna be a dipshit and post old troll crap? Why not do it on one of the articles where there is plenty of fanboy bullshit and nerd rage and NOT on an article where poor cripples are afraid they are gonna lose the only way they have to interact with their friends and kids like normal folks.
It is called having class and style man, you should try it sometime.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Greed and capitalism.
We have a thousand companies all trying to win a single race where the winner takes all and the 999 others lose billions.
If they all worked together, we'd have cracked all illnesses by now.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
That's EXACTLY what Nintendo used to do. At least during the NES era.
I wrote about this once before on Slashdot.
Basically the controller (which worked in very much the same way as what this guy builds) was $120 by itself, or $180 if you purchased it as a complete package with a new NES. Since a new NES was the same price in stores at the time, it essentially made the controller free if you didn't already have a system.
They used to distribute these to children's hospitals too. And I can't find a link to verify this bit, but I believe it was in cooperation with The Starlight Foundation.
Sadly, I never heard of a similar project for later Nintendo consoles. I can see why they don't still make these for the Wii. It's control scheme is a bit too oddball to translate to a controller like that. But I don't know why they couldn't offer something like this for the SNES / N64 / GameCube eras.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
You are all thinking along the right lines in my perspective.
If he could publish some of the plans from the past,
what the thinking was for the specific controller,
and how to formulate the right devices together
it would be a benefit for the 'home brew' hackers that
wants to help.
open source for the project would just be a benefit for
those that are disabled.
Just think, I got a cnc in my basement, another guy ...
has spare chips, another has got the tubes they need
and everyone could donate to the project. and make gifts
of these things every year. Find a non-profit sponsor
to help hire the right people to advise the group of what
the needs of the disabled are and in no time a mock-up
is made on the computer, the logic is reviewed, and
final confirmation for making is made. Heck this could
be a start to finish project that each controller could take
only 2 months to make as initial prototype, then basic
models could be made and proper adjustments could be
built in
Well I am off to help Hatti and solve that problem
if you see me, smile and say hello.