8bitDo Zero 2 Phone Controller Holder

I saw the 8bitDo Mobile Clip and my first thought was that just like some meetings should be emails, some products should be STLs. Then, as tends to happen, the product of a couple days of fiddling only turned out marginally better than what I first designed in less than an hour.

I got a little too obsessed with activating the shoulder buttons and ultimately landed on a design that activates them equally well with a tilt or a squeeze, with the levers being physically constrained and force-limited by contact with the phone, which is kind of slick IMO.

That said, if I was actually going to use this thing regularly, I would most likely play games that didn't use the shoulder buttons at all, so it was mostly a fun waste of time. I suspect that owners of the 8bitDo Mobile Clip will not be fans of the grip required to use them either (it's quite uncomfortable to have your index finger in front of your phone and your middle finger behind it). Ultimately, some suctions cups on the back of the controller would probably suffice instead of any of this nonsense.

However, I was surprised to find that not much like this was already out there in the world, so I thought it was interesting enough to share. For my final print, I gave up on fighting with stopping TPU from warping and printed it with flexible PLA. I did some color swaps to make it look cooler, but also because printing the first layers with normal PLA just gives it a better finish. It does require a flexible filament though, or the controller won't be able to slide in.

If I was going to adapt this to become something more universal, I would either make the inner ring that holds onto the phone swappable, or I would try something with a stretchy zig-zag around three sides. I would also need to rework the levers a bit so that they could hit the buttons over a wider range of angles (but like I said above, I'd rather just stick to games that don't require the shoulder buttons).

Anyway, feedback is always appreciated, it's why I go to the trouble of posting files and rambling like I did above. Thanks for reading!