PS3 Gun/controller Hybrid

March 29, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Luis] is very particular about his gaming controllers. He wanted to mod a Six Axis controller to fit into a Nerf gun body but there wasn’t really enough room for all of the components. After shopping around for a while he discovered a wired gun controller made by Namco which was developed for use with the game Time Crisis. He picked one up and went to work replacing the guts with a set pulled from a wireless controller.

The majority of the work on a mod like this one comes in extending the reach of each component. After cracking open the gun controller’s case, [Luis] begins preparing and soldering all twenty contact on the Six Axis controller PCB, then completing the connections necessary for each relocated component. This does make us wonder if there won’t be some element of noise introduced to the signals coming from the analog sticks? He mentions that one of them is ‘glitchy’ but that could be because he started with a used controller from eBay.

We took a couple of good tips out of this. Since the plastic housing is designed to hold each of the original PCBs securely, [Luis] reused them as a mounting surface for the replacement components. A little creative use of protoboard and some time in the paint shop and you’re done. Check out a video of the entire process, which also shares the finished results, after the break.

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Clever Hack Tethers A Kinect Sensor To The PS3

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 5 Comments

kinect_for_ps3

Now that Kinect has been hacked to work with just about everything from robots to toaster ovens, someone finally got around to tweaking it for use on the PS3.

[Shantanu] has been hard at work writing code and experimenting with some preexisting Kinect software to get the sensor to talk to his PS3. The Kinect is hooked up to a PC, which captures all of his movements with OpenNI. Those movements are mapped to PS3 controls via NITE, a piece of middleware used for interpreting gestures into commands. All of the captured button presses are then relayed to the PS3 over a Bluetooth connection using DIYPS3Controller.

As you can see in the video below, the solution works pretty well for what should be considered pre-alpha code. He has been able to map several custom gestures to button presses, and the Kinect does an overall decent job tracking his limbs and translating their movements to on-screen actions. The actual in-game use is a bit rough at the moment, but aside from the infancy of the code, you have to remember that these games were never meant to be played with the Kinect.

It’s a job well done, and we can’t wait to see where this project goes.

Looking for more Kinect fun? Look no further than right here.

[via Kinect-Hacks]

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Reverse Engineering The Playstation Move

March 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

playstation_move

[Kenn] is working on building a quadrocopter from the ground up for a university project. Currently, his main focus is building an Inertial Measurement Unit, or rather re-purposing a PS3 Move controller as the IMU for his copter. He previously considered using a Wiimote Motion Plus, but the Move has a three-axis magnetometer, which the Wii controller does not.

The ultimate goal for this portion of his project is building custom firmware to run on the Move’s STM32-Cortex microcontroller, allowing him to obtain data from each of the controller’s sensors. Through the course of his research, he has thoroughly documented each sensor on his site, and dumped a full working firmware image from the Cortex chip as well. Recently, he was even able to run arbitrary code on the controller itself, which is a huge step forward.

[Kenn’s] project is coming along very nicely, and will undoubtedly be a great resource to others as he continues to dig through the inner workings of the Move. Be sure to swing by his site if you are looking for information, or if you have something to contribute.

All About PS3 SixAxis Controller USB Communications

March 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Austyn] is currently working on reverse engineering a PlayStation 3 SixAxis controller’s USB communications. You may be thinking that this has already been done but [Austyn] was unable to find useful source code so he’s started his own project called libopenaxis.

The process he used to sniff out USB communications makes for an interesting read. He utilized GlovePIE to get the USB request block for the controller. With that in hand he grabbed the Python script used in a DIY Kinect hacking tutorial to start dumping controller data. With each keypress the script reads out the full data packet, which is used to figure out how the data structures are organized.

The project has come as far as knowing all of the data types, but right now the purpose for the majority of those variables is unknown. Hopefully the blanks will be filled in over time. Two things are for sure; if you’re interested in writing Python code that can communicate with PS3 controllers this is a great source of info, and the Kinect hacking that was so fun to watch over the last few months is still bearing fruit.

Xteardown

February 23, 2011 by Kevin Dady 9 Comments

A hot topic in the gadget world right now is the Sony Ericsson XperiaPlay phone, and while that is not our usual cup of tea, when we see the newest toy stripped down to its bits n pieces it piques our interest.

This 8 page teardown of the XperiaPlay (google translated to english) takes you though all the steps needed to dismantle your new joy. Every screw, clip, header and connector, each in order so you can get it back together again.

As the carnage progresses time is taken to point out some of the parts of the phone. From the mundane like I/O jacks, to the more interesting like the Synaptics touch pad driver that are handling the “analog” sticks, the Cypress multi-touch controller for the screen, and of course, the brains.

(thanks Frogz)

Measure Earth’s Rotation With PlayStation Move

February 19, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

This somewhat odd-looking apparatus is being used to measure earth’s rotation. At the heart of the system is a PlayStation Move controller, used because of its dual-axis gyroscope which has the highest dynamic range compared to other available products like the Wii Motion Plus. It rests on a column perched atop a record player that was chosen because of its precision rotation rate. The two rings that flank the controller make up a Helmholtz coil which is used to cancel out the earth’s magnetic field which was found to be interfering with measurements taken by the Move controller. By recording data over time the experimenter can prove that the earth is indeed rotating, as well as ascertain longitude data and find true north. Check out the data-packed video after the break.

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Take Your PS3 On World Tour

January 28, 2011 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

[Lossfresnos65] must be planning to do a lot of travelling because he’s entombed his PlayStation 3 in a Pelican case. Inside you’ll find some diamond-plate bezel to cover the console itself and used to surround the 19-inch high-definition television that is mounted to the lid of the case. In the picture above you see the door that lifts to reveal foam cutouts for a TV remote and two six-axis controllers. There’s no battery and no wireless Internet, but connection for the power cord, Ethernet, component video, and HDMI have an external port on the base of the enclosure. There’s also two fans to keep everything cool, and on the front you’ll find two USB ports and a headphone jack. After the break he shows off the finished product but there’s no internal build photos to be found. We linked his forum post at the top as ask him and perhaps he’ll deliver the goods.

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