Pales in comparison to what I’ve seen some of you doing, but this is a little companion button box I’m working on.
When complete it will be teamed with an updated 80s CH Flightstick, for possible cap’n side stick action.
Edit: Final labels and colors. Knob is a 4th axis, used as a tiller. Switch beside it disables the pot and centers the axis.
NICELY DONE…Congrats.
Dynamic text labels like a Streamdeck?
Very nice work even if not.
Dynamic text via peeling off and replacing the labels LOL. 
The “brains” are a simple $9 joystick board off Amazon.
Deets on the board I used:
TAPDRA Zero Delay Arcade USB Encoder PC to Joystick Amazon.com
There are many like it, the important part is that it has the parts circled below.
Removing R1 and R2, and cutting the bridging traces between R2,4,6, and 8 frees the axis inputs. Shifting J1 makes the board default to analog mode. From there pots with their wiper connected to the R1,2 and R3,4 and R5,6 and R7,8 junctions act as variable inputs.
12 bottom connectors are 12 push buttons, top 4 hat switch. The side ones are for auto fire modes, so they’re unused.
(J5 is the USB, J4 is a duplicate of the hat switch inputs, but arranged for some joystick I’m guessing)
[Sensible Chuckle]
I know what you mean. My company sells expensive A/V switchers, and I train end users. We sell the low end of the product line ($5,000) to schools that do TV morning shows. There’s an optional control surface that was used on an older version which costs around $2,000. I end up having to relable some of the buttons because they don’t match the newer user interface.
Pop the caps, get out the old labelmaker, trim the labels, and pop the caps back on…
We try to convince them to buy this control surface (which has dynamic text) but for some reason schools just don’t want to spend the money. 
I haven’t figured out how to map this one using SPAD yet…
A few texts in place,
And a bit of wire. This is just the backlighting - like me, 12v lamps on 5v aren’t very bright.
Not my best work, but my eyes aren’t what they once were - nor my hands.
Two more photos. Powered on for testing and one of the final wiring. That nest of diodes allows for using all 8 hat switch directions. Glad I added those solder points even tho I had no use for them at the time.
All that remains is adding on pot for the 4th as yet unconnected axis.
Updated the top post with the finished picture.
Very nice! for some reason it reminds me of my old Atari 800, which I received in exchange for my Austin Allegro.
Probably the beige, although it matches the 80s CH Flightstick nicely.
