After the presentation we did on Tuesday, we started to think designs for the controller casing. While we had general idea what the housing would look like, we didn’t really know what would be the best encasing mechanism for the casing. We thunk out 3 following ideas:

  • Two piece housing, connected with clips

Two piece housing was the initial idea. In this idea, both pieces are connect together with small sawtooth grip on both sides of one piece and small notches on the other side to keep the other piece in place. These pieces can be easily modeled and fabricated with 3D printer along with the housings. The main drawback with this solution is that if either the clip or the notch breaks it’ll be difficult keep the housing cases stuck together. If there is any need to pull the controller apart from the housing it can be difficult.

  • Living hinge

In this solution there’s only one piece housing and theres living hinge on one side of the housing. This is very simple and effective solution. Some people might not enjoy how it looks, though and there is the question of ripping apart the whole apparatus to get the controller out.

  • Two piece, a tray that slides into other piece

This solution is built again from 2 different pieces. One side basically an empty half cylinder that is missing it’s top half circle side and inside the half cylinder has two rails. The counterpiece is a tray that has the missing half circle cover with small grip for user to grap on to. The tray should slide into other piece’s railing for snug fit. In case the controller needs to be accessed, it can be pulled out neatly and without taking apart the entire setup from the wall. Main difficulty with this solution is making sure the tray can slide snugly into the other piece. If there is a problem that the cover on the tray can’t be slid from top part of the housing, we are planning for it to be slid from the bottom and securing it in place with even more snug fit or small plastic bolt.

Currently, these are all still in design phase. When we get the materials ordered, we will calculate the necessary housing size and figure out best casing solution from both functionality and aesthetical standpoint.

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