XBMC Hiding In An SNES Controller

Here’s another SNES controller converted to house a USB system. The one we saw last time used a kit as an adapter for the controller but this version uses a home-built PCB and an ATmega8 microcontroller with the latest revision of an open source adapter for NES and SNES controllers. As you can see after the break, [Atarity] built the adapter, then added it along with a USB hub and thumb drive so that he could run a copy of XBMC from the controller. Now he’s got XBMC as a way to launch emulators for those classic games, as well as play traditional media.

You will be seeing more of this type of mod soon. We were tipped off that an in-depth tutorial for SNES controller hacking is on its way, although that is unrelated to [Atarity’s] work.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVFaY2ETQ_Y]

20 thoughts on “XBMC Hiding In An SNES Controller

  1. @Dan: I thought the same thing too. Would have been awesome, but would probably require some additional space for electronics, unless you can cram something powerful enough into the SNES controller.. Now an Xbox controller? Now we’re talking!

  2. I never thought he’d be able to fit the whole XBox circuitry and storage and controller into that case, but at least I thought it would run on an XBox. Otherwise it’s not really XBMC, it’s Media Center on a PC with an XBMC skin.

  3. Took me a while to understand what the controller actually does. The article is worded horribly, and the title is flat out misleading. The controller only acts as an HID and a filesystem for storing a bootable media center.

  4. What’s the hype with XBMC? I really don’t get it. It crashes frequently on ubuntu (9.10 and 10.04) and really doesn’t do anything that special. What am I missing here? What’s with the hype for XBMC?

  5. Plug into TV and go?!) And what about bunch of external cables, like HDMI or external power adaptor? It’s possible run such system on BeagleBoard (http://beagleboard.org/), i think. But what about size, power, heat extraction etc? Generally, it’s not into SNES controller.)

    And yes — it’s XBMC on my pad. And it’s possible to make it bootable.

  6. Had me with the controller project.
    Love the idea of XBMC as a dashboard for the emulators.

    Lost me with the Razer mouse pad.
    Please tell me you didn’t pay for that.

  7. @Thanice: surprised to see another HyperSpin user on here!

    I’ve done this with an NES controller too. Nothing special, stick a usb hub in the controller- then solder the buttons to a usb keyboard encoder and plug that in the hub. Then get a flash drive and plug that in the hub.

    It is fun though.

  8. Mr_Bishop, currently 64-bit. But since I don’t do anything that heavy, I might just switch to 32 for better compatibility. But even if XBMC didn’t keep crashing, I’m finding it hard seeing what benefit it has over well labelled folders. It grabs fan art which is nice but only if you go into a mode which shows movies and hides TV shoes, what’s that about. It regularly forgets what I have or haven’t started watching and is just generally not that amazing. I’m really looking for more from it because everyone raves about it and I honestly do want a ‘next generation’ media handler/player.

  9. Wouldnt be possible to stick a linux os on the usb drive then run xmbc off it? being honest while im typing this i dont think it would be possible but hey worth asking hey

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