Possible source for BYO wireless controller info
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Possible source for BYO wireless controller info
Could something like this be used to build your own wireless SNES controller? http://jap.hu/electronic/codec.html
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Life of Brian
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That's a pretty cool page. I don't know enough about RF transmitters/receivers to answer whether what's provided on that page would be enough to successfully build a wireless SNES controller or not, but it sounds possible... Let's think - what all is sent from the SNES controller to the system that would need to be accounted for?
dragonhead wrote:sweet. ive spent a third of my life on benheck!
I've done some more research on this and here's what I've come up with. First off, you'll need 2 pics, a rf transmitter and a rf receiver. One of the pics will take the place of the IC in the snes controller. It will have each button mapped to a pin and will constantly read in the states for all the buttons. Once it has read all the states, it will send the data via an output pin to the rf transmitter. I think I can handle all that stuff, especially since some pics can be programmed in c and my brain was coded in c (if you know what i mean).
The next part gets a little tricky and would take some playing around with it to see what would work, but here's the theory. The receiver part connected to the SNES would have the IC from the controller and the other pic, both of which can be powered from the SNES, and since the SNES would be talking to the IC from the controller, it would take care of the clock, data, and latch info. All I'd have to feed it would be the button states. The rf receiver would receive the data from the controller and input it into the PIC through an input pin. The data would be decoded by the pic and then each button state would be sent to the corresponding pin on the snes IC each time a button state packet was received. Or if I wanted to be really ambitious I could take the snes controller ic out of the picture altogether and just use the pics. And now that I think about it, that would be the better way since the receiving pic could just act as a passthru for the controller data, updating the button states in between clock cycles and then dumping them to the snes when the clock signal hits an input pin.
Here's some pseudo code for each pic
transmitting pic:
- check all button states and write to a bit array
- send bit array out to transmitter
- repeat
receiving pic:
- receive bit array
- iterate through bit array and update button states
- dump button states when clock signal is sensed
- repeat
The part I'm unsure about would be whether or not I could receive an array of data on a single pin all at once (which I doubt) or if it would have to read the data until a special termination sequence was detected and then change the state of the pins. All in all, I don't see this as being overly complicated, however I've never dealt with pics and this is a bit of a jump into the deep end for someone with no experience.
sparkfun.com has a small, cheap rf tx/rx set for about $12.00 (http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc ... cts_id=872) . Pics and a programmer aren't horribly expensive, but the whole project would probably cost about $50 to $75 plus time and effort. I may give this a try in the future.
The next part gets a little tricky and would take some playing around with it to see what would work, but here's the theory. The receiver part connected to the SNES would have the IC from the controller and the other pic, both of which can be powered from the SNES, and since the SNES would be talking to the IC from the controller, it would take care of the clock, data, and latch info. All I'd have to feed it would be the button states. The rf receiver would receive the data from the controller and input it into the PIC through an input pin. The data would be decoded by the pic and then each button state would be sent to the corresponding pin on the snes IC each time a button state packet was received. Or if I wanted to be really ambitious I could take the snes controller ic out of the picture altogether and just use the pics. And now that I think about it, that would be the better way since the receiving pic could just act as a passthru for the controller data, updating the button states in between clock cycles and then dumping them to the snes when the clock signal hits an input pin.
Here's some pseudo code for each pic
transmitting pic:
- check all button states and write to a bit array
- send bit array out to transmitter
- repeat
receiving pic:
- receive bit array
- iterate through bit array and update button states
- dump button states when clock signal is sensed
- repeat
The part I'm unsure about would be whether or not I could receive an array of data on a single pin all at once (which I doubt) or if it would have to read the data until a special termination sequence was detected and then change the state of the pins. All in all, I don't see this as being overly complicated, however I've never dealt with pics and this is a bit of a jump into the deep end for someone with no experience.
sparkfun.com has a small, cheap rf tx/rx set for about $12.00 (http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc ... cts_id=872) . Pics and a programmer aren't horribly expensive, but the whole project would probably cost about $50 to $75 plus time and effort. I may give this a try in the future.
if its going to cost 50 to 75 bucks might as well use the messiah snes wireless controllers. theyre $60 and you get 2 of them.
i dont mean to shoot you down just that its a little expensive when it doesnt really improve on whats already commercially available.
but if the cost lets say was like 20-25 each controller i would say this is freaking awesome. as ive been dying to make a wireless one handed controller for rpgs.
i dont mean to shoot you down just that its a little expensive when it doesnt really improve on whats already commercially available.
but if the cost lets say was like 20-25 each controller i would say this is freaking awesome. as ive been dying to make a wireless one handed controller for rpgs.
I did a little more looking and the pics are pretty cheap. I think they can be had for less than $3.00 or $4.00 dollar a piece. The programmers are the expensive part. Electronickits.com has several pic programmers that you can buy assembled or in kit form, but even the ones in kit form are around $45.
Found this on Hack a Day: Wireless RF SNES and NES controllers for Gamecube/Wii
Interestingly, the PIC in the SNES/NES controller doesn't monitor the buttons itself, instead it decodes the normal chip inside. Even cooler is that the reciever does the protocol for the gamecube controller on it's own.
Interestingly, the PIC in the SNES/NES controller doesn't monitor the buttons itself, instead it decodes the normal chip inside. Even cooler is that the reciever does the protocol for the gamecube controller on it's own.