Alright, so I created this project a little late to the game, I've got a basic hardware component made already.

I started with figuring out how I wanted to layout my buttons and cheapo screen on the raspberry pi, I then made a little object in openscad that would have through holes for wires that would hold those components in place. I have a 3d printer already and didn't want to bother making a circuit board. This got a little melty during some of my soldering but worked pretty well, I'll be uploading pictures of all of that in the next few days.

Once all the components were installed on the 3d printed 'circuit board' I tested it all out on an arduino uno I had lying around. Worked great!

Today I finally got my raspberry pi zero in the mail so I spent a good bit of time trying to get my USB gadgets to work properly (hint, if you're using a machine without admin privileges, sometimes it's just impossible - wait till you get home). But I've got some simple code driving the buttons and screens as well. I'll probably create a github project for this in the near future as well. For now it all lives on the SD card on my pi which is less than safe.

Pictures to come! And I'll try to keep this space updated as I keep working.