Generic video game console controllers have certainly gotten better and more ergonomic since the hard corners of the Atari joystick. As beautiful and engrossing as games have become, the controller is still the least engaging aspect. Why race your sweet fleet of whips with an ordinary controller when you could pretend they’re all R/C cars?
[Dave] found an affordable 4-channel R/C controller in the Bezos Barn and did just that. It took some modifications to make it work, like making a daughter board to turn the thumb grip input from a toggle button to a momentary and figuring out what to do with the three-way slider switch, but it looks like a blast to use.
The controller comes in a 6-channel version with two pots on the top. Both versions have the same enclosure and PCB, so [Dave] already had the placement molded out for him when he decided to install a pair of momentary buttons up there. These change roles based on the three-way slider position, which switches between race mode, menu mode, and extras mode.
We love the way [Dave] turned the original receiver into a USB dongle that emulates an Xbox 360 controller — he made a DIY Arduino Pro Micro with a male USB-A, stripped down the receiver board, and wired them together. There’s an entire separate blog post about that, and everything else you’d need to make your own R/C controller is on GitHub. Check out the demo and overview of the controls after the break.
[Dave] is no stranger to making game controllers — we featured his DJ Hero controller modified to play Spin Rhythm XD a few months ago.
Via r/duino
Nice implementation. This is a great idea to add some life into racing games when they start to get boring. Well done man.
That’s a nice compact wiring job on the reciever, which reminds me: I really need to add enamel wire to my tacklebox.
Hmmm all my RC controller stuff has a usb port on the side for various things to attach to. My PC has drivers to read/modify that handshake. Never thought of this.
many years ago i bought a cable to connect the trainer port on my 4-channel (airplane) tx, and used it to play slope soaring simulator (before it became the android app picasim). it let me get over that basic challenge of which-way-is-left without crashing so many models. i got it as a home-made-looking product from milehighwings.com, which surprisingly still seems to exist!
I had an idea years back to do the opposite and use a pc+wheel to control an RC car, with a wireless camera on the hood. Sadly I never could figure out how to hijack the RC remote commands.
It’s all in the translation… the potentiometers and switches are being changed into a string of R/C pulses which are remarkably similar to what drives a standard servo. Essentially all you would need to do is directly substitute the pots in your transmitter with the pots in your PC+Wheel with a cord and a maybe a switch to change inputs… You could also put some kind of processor like an Arduino Nano or ESP8266 to give you finer control and/or scaling between the systems.