Custom PS3 controller: software emulation version

posted May 5th 2010 10:00am by
filed under: playstation hacks

[Matlo] posted a tutorial that will walk you through setting up a six-axis controller emulator. In April he developed a hardware solution using the Teensy but this version just needs a Linux computer with a Bluetooth adapter. If you don’t mind adding a computer to the mix you can use any peripheral controller that will talk to Linux and then adjust the six-axis PS3 controller mapping accordingly.



21 Responses to Custom PS3 controller: software emulation version

  • spook says:
    May 5, 2010 at 11:47 am

    2.4 ghz yagi + PS3 emulation via linux over BT + PS3 controller macros = interesting potential for abuse

    guess you still have to register the controller w/ the target, but it should be fairly straight-forward.

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  • Owen says:
    May 5, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    Great, but one day someone will release code for my mobile phone to control PS3/WII.
    The smart mobiles have sensors and bluetooth

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  • fluidic says:
    May 5, 2010 at 12:39 pm

    @Owen

    There’s this smartphone OS called Android which is basically a modified version of Linux, maybe you’ve heard of it. Should be fairly easy to adapt the above to work off a Droid phone if there aren’t permissions limiting what you can do with the Bluetooth adapter.

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  • Jordan says:
    May 5, 2010 at 12:54 pm

    I cant get ubuntu to ‘make’ in step 2 located here http://diy-machine.blogspot.com/2010/05/hidemulator-tutorial.html

    Anyone have any ideas?

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  • eldorel says:
    May 5, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    @jordan
    You probably don’t have gcc and the kernel headers installed, try this.

    “sudo apt-get install build-essential”

    That should fix it, if not post an error message and I’ll see what I can do to help.

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  • MS3FGX says:
    May 5, 2010 at 3:05 pm

    @fluidic

    That isn’t really how Android works. The underlying OS is Linux, but apps themselves all run in a Java VM. There is an NDK (Native Development Kit) that gives you limited support for compiling C code and interfacing with some of the system libraries like BlueZ, but there is really no way to run Linux applications on Android.

    His implementation here looks pretty involved, so I don’t think it could be easily ported to Android. But perhaps in the future a simplified version might be do-able with the NDK.

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  • ToMaC says:
    May 5, 2010 at 3:56 pm

    Got it working, technically. Everything installed correctly, changed my mappings, recompiled. However every input I make has about a ten second lag. I also noticed on the term running emu, there is a flood of ‘emu: send_report: Cannot allocate memory’ errors. Any insight on this?

    I’m on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, running on a thinkpad T42. Is there anyone out there that has got this working correctly, or at least in a playable state?

    Also posted this in the blog comments, not sure which site would get more attention.

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  • Matlo says:
    May 6, 2010 at 1:32 am

    If you have the same problem than ToMaC, please follow the procedure described there:

    http://diy-machine.blogspot.com/2010/05/sixaxis-emulator-tutorial.html?showComment=1273130020268#c8080182507544460710

    I may take some time to respond, depending on your time zone (I’m UTC+2).

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  • PharmDad says:
    May 6, 2010 at 6:42 am

    Anyone know of anything similar for windows? Or a slick way to do use this in a windows environment. I currently have a HPTC set up with Win7 and am looking for a way to control my PS3 over bluetooth for blu-ray playback. I know that windows is evil and all but i don’t need that lecture. It has to work smoothly and reliable from my wife’s viewpoint so i use what i have.

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  • Matlo says:
    May 6, 2010 at 7:02 am

    @PharmDad

    Read these posts:

    http://diy-machine.blogspot.com/2010/04/pc-as-sixaxis-joystick.html

    http://diy-machine.blogspot.com/2010/04/pc-as-sixaxis-joystick-tests.html

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  • ik00R says:
    May 6, 2010 at 1:21 pm

    some way to control ps3 by bluetooth with aino would be cool, the aino does have “remote play” so it’s already registered witht the ps3, like a touchpad remote, would be awesome for blu-ray :)

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  • Matlo says:
    May 7, 2010 at 12:28 am

    Note for those who don’t have a dongle with a compatible chip: there are cheap CSR dongles on ebay. Just enter keywords ‘CSR’ and ‘dongle’ for your search, and select ‘Include title and description’. I ordered some of these and I’ll test them as soon as I receive them!

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  • Matlo says:
    May 7, 2010 at 5:41 am

    Warning: it seems these cheap CSR dongle will not work!

    http://www.evilgenius.de/2008/03/05/worlds-smallest-bluetooth-dongle/

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  • Matlo says:
    May 17, 2010 at 1:05 am

    Good news, I succeeded in pairing a dongle without modifying it (no bdaddr modification). Now any bluetooth device can potentially emulate a sixaxis, and as a consequence the emulator can now be ported to any other OS. See last post on my blog.

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  • koprax says:
    May 19, 2010 at 11:13 am

    hi,

    I don’t find “test_enable=no” in gedit…So i continue, it says error; could u help me please, i m french

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  • Matlo says:
    May 19, 2010 at 11:57 am

    Salut,

    Pour avoir de l’aide en français, le mieux, c’est de me mettre un commentaire en français sur le tutoriel en français ^^

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  • koprax says:
    May 19, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    salut

    Je n’y arrive pas, car il me faudrait un compte google; Désolé
    Sinon je vais devenir fou, cela fait des heures que j’essai de trouver ce fameux test enable no en lisant toutes les lignes dans gedit mais impossible!!! Je sais que j’y suis presque pourtant… Sinon pourrais tu m’aider par mail peut être,,,

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  • Matlo says:
    May 19, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    Euh attends le fichier fait plus de 10000 lignes…

    Tu avais plus vite fait de créer un compte google…

    Je viens de re-télécharger bluez 4.63, et je vois bien, à la ligne 13015: test_enable=no.

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  • koprax says:
    May 19, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    Bon finalement c’est ok je l’ai tapé sur le tutoriel en français. Désolé d’avoir pollué ce post!

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  • Matlo says:
    June 24, 2010 at 12:42 am

    Note for those who are looking for cheap dongles to use with this hack:

    I was wrong about cheap CSR Bluecore4-ROM dongles that can be found on ebay for a few $.
    I bought some of these for 3$ each, and I got their bdaddrs changed.
    See http://diy-machine.blogspot.com/2010/06/about-cheap-csr-dongles.html

    Reply Report comment
  • shao says:
    August 11, 2011 at 2:43 pm

    how about getting drivers manually to get connectivity http://www.androidsim.net/2011/06/how-to-20-connect-ps3-controller-to.html

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