Giving A Console Controller Mouse-Like Precision Aim

September 4, 2021 by Danie Conradie 23 Comments

Controller vs keyboard and mouse is one of the never-ending battles in the world of gaming, with diehard proponents on both sides of the fence. [Tech Yesterday] has been working to create a controller that’s the best of both worlds. His latest Mouse Pro Controller V5 features an inverted mouse riding on ball bearings.

Mouse Pro Controller V1-3‘s main focus was to create the largest possible moving surface for an optical thumb mouse for precision aiming. However, [Tech Yesterday] found that one’s thumb doesn’t work well for traversing a large flat surface, but works better with a concave surface. On V4 he flipped the optical sensor around, embedding it in the controller, with a small circular “mouse pad” attached to his thumb. The concave surface was made from the diffuser of a large LED light bulb. It had slightly too much friction for [Tech Yesterday]’s liking, so he embedded an array of small ball bearings in the surface using magnets.

While this “thumb mouse” has excellent precision, it can be a bit slow when you need to make large movements, like when performing 360° no scopes for the clips. For these situations, [Tech Yesterday] embedded a thumb stick on the back of the controller to allow for fast sideways movements using his middle fingers.

[Tech Yesterday] is already working on V6, but feels close to the limit of his skills. If you are interested in working with him, be sure to get in touch! Modding controllers for fun and performance are great, but for gamers with prosthetic fingers it’s a requirement.

Continue reading “Giving A Console Controller Mouse-Like Precision Aim” →

Rapid Fire Mod For A Wireless Mouse

August 30, 2014 by Rich Bremer 18 Comments

Rapid Fire Wireless Mouse

Sometimes changing your computer mouse can be uncomfortable for a while until you get used to the replacement. It may also take some time to get used to new features or the lack of features the new mouse has. [Jon] bought an awesome wireless mouse that he really likes but it is missing one critical feature: rapid fire for gaming. He previously modded his old wired mouse to have a rapid fire button using a 555 timer. That worked fine as the mouse ran off the USB’s 5 volts, and that’s the voltage the 555 timer needed. The new wireless mouse has a 1.5 volt battery and can not support the 555 timer. What’s a gamer to do?

[Jon] searched around the ‘net but could not find any wireless rapid fire mods. Eventually, he did find a low-voltage variation called the LMC555 and ordered a few for his project. The new wireless mouse was taken apart in order to find out how the mouse buttons work. In this case, the signal pin is pulled low when the mouse button is pushed. Now that it is known how the mouse button works, just a couple of resistors, a capacitor, an NPN transistor and a push button switch are all that are necessary to finish up this mod. When the push button is pressed, the LMC555 timer activates the transistor in order to ground the mouse button signal pin. This happens to the tune of 1236 times a minute! That is a lot of rapid firing.

The few components were soldered up neatly and packed into the limited spare area inside the mouse. A hole drilled in the side of the mouse’s housing holds the new rapid fire push button in an ergonomically pleasing location.

Earlier, we mentioned [Jon] has done this mod before on a wired mouse. He learned about that project here on Hackaday. Check it out if your wired mouse is craving a rapid fire button.

Video after the break…

Continue reading “Rapid Fire Mod For A Wireless Mouse” →

Modifying A PS4 Dualshock4 Controller To Use A Mouse And Keyboard

December 12, 2013 by Mathieu Stephan 14 Comments

[Mori] wanted to use his keyboard and mouse to play his favorite games on the PS4, so he decided to modify his Dualshock4 controller to feed it custom input signals.

In the heart of this build is an STM32F407 discovery board, which is connected to a USB hub. To perform this hack, [Mori] tore open the Dualshock4 controller to find the PCB traces coming from the sticks and buttons. He then used the STM32F407 and 2 Digital to Analog Converters (DACs) to create similar signals. Unfortunately for us, [Mori] only released the schematics but not the firmware. Our guess is that he had to configure the microcontroller as a USB host, enumerate the mouse/keyboard, parse the HID reports and feed the controller the corresponding inputs.

We embedded a video of the hack in action after the break. If you own a PS4, you may also want to see how to disable the Dualshock LEDs.

Continue reading “Modifying A PS4 Dualshock4 Controller To Use A Mouse And Keyboard” →