Classic Controller usb hid gamepad

[Jimmdean-1]

Greetings - enjoying your work here and looking to build my own usb adapters to use my older classic controllers as straight-usb gamepads in Dolphin, and probably nes/snes classic controllers in OpenEMU.
You have code examples published for making nunchuks into usb devices using your driver (and the Adafruit hardware), but do you have any for your classic controller driver? The necessary USB HID descriptor seems pretty standard and is published elsewhere, but I haven’t been able to locate any code for the communication itself - I assume because very few people would choose to use a classic controller instead of something already natively usb-compatible. Or that I’m late to the game and people who have already did this did it in Arduino long ago. Being new to this in general (let alone Python itself) writing all that myself from scratch seems like a pretty daunting task.
thanks a lot.

[jfurcean]

It should be pretty straight forward to combine the CircuitPython Adafruit-HID library with the Classic Controller examples from this library. I am happy to help if you have questions. What microcontroller are you using?

[Jimmdean-1]

QT PY RP2040 (w) QT breakout adapter

[jfurcean]

I created a gist for now that maps the classic controller to a USB HID game pad. https://gist.github.com/jfurcean/6d15effe779367c8d51dddab12ba4cb9. I tested it on Linux and it works as expected, but had some issues on Mac OSx so your mileage may vary. Let me know if you have any questions.

[Jimmdean-1]

Did your triggers work as expected? I just noticed in your driver that the code and/or comments for the classic controller are reversed. I have the original classic controller, so I know the triggers are analog potentiometers (0-31) with the button click at the end. The “pro” model is a misnomer here - by the time it was released the potentiometers we’re gone and analog triggers haven’t been seen since in a Nintendo controller (boo). I suspected maybe you had the later “pro” model (0 or 31).

[jfurcean]

I have a third party version (0 or 31). Are you saying that I just need to reverse the Pro and non-Pro comments on this line?

CircuitPython_WiiChuck/wiichuck/classic_controller.py

Line 106 in b407fcd

"""The current readding from the triggers (0-31 for Pro) (0 or 31 non-Pro)."""

[Jimmdean-1]

Hard to say for me right now - the triggers do not work for me here, but that is primarily because they are not being account for in the code or the descriptor. This descriptor is very basic and needs some work for my controller, but that's not really my primary problem. I have been able to get limited functionality in Windows - all buttons and one joy, but only in Windows, and not even in the gamepad tester. In MacOS I get nothing, which is my OS of choice for this.
What exactly were your MacOS results? Do you have any idea which portion of the code it is that MacOS is not responding to? My guess would be the descriptor, but it's just a guess. I just don't know the tools or how to get feedback from the OS on the MacOS side.

[Jimmdean-1]

make anything of this? (from console)

AppleUserUSBHostHIDDevice:0x100000cc1 Matching has vendor DeviceUsagePage : ff0c bundleIdentifier com.apple.AppleUserHIDDrivers ioclass AppleUserHIDEventService but transport and vendorID is missing

[jfurcean]

Yeah, I didn't account for the analog triggers in my code or the device descriptor because my device doesn't have them. On the MacOS side it looked like I had an additional 6 buttons and an additional joystick axis that weren't usable and threw off the results. This is the tool I tested with on both mac and linux - https://gamepad-tester.com/. I am not sure the best way of trouble shooting on the MacOS side either. I posted in the Adafruit Discord, but haven't heard anything. I will try some more testing tonight.

[jfurcean]

I updated all the files in the gist. These updates include the analog triggers (not sure if its correct, but it works). It showed up in EMU once I removed the usb_hid.Device.KEYBOARD, unplugged it, and plugged it back it. You will need to change the values for the trigger buttons to 0 in code.py if you want the analog triggers to work instead of using them as buttons.

[Jimmdean-1]

Your revised code and hid_gamepad are fine as-is.
I put my revised boot.py in the gist. I had to tweak the analogs a little to make them act a little more like the axis of the joysticks, and make sure they had unique usage numbers - you had 2 with a 33.
Once I did that it wasn't pretty in gamepad-tester, but it was completely mappable in Dolphin with perfect functionality.

[jfurcean]

Thanks for catching that error and for testing this. I ended up putting together a repo for this work and included examples for the wii nunchuk, the wii classic controller, the nes controller, and the wii guitar hero controller.

[dglaude]

I don't find that repo: https://github.com/jfurcean/CircuitPython_WiiGamepads/ is it public?

I only noticed this very interesting conversation now... but I think this is great idea.
There are already product to get a retro joystick and turn it into USB, but here if we convert I2C Wii controller to USB and this is understood by emulator, it is really great (as I am collecting all the Wii accessories I can find).
Thank you very much both of you, this work need to be known.

PS: My attempt at making a custom USB descriptor were a total failure, also I had two SNES like USB controller, and they were not advertising the same way so I did not knew where to start.

[jfurcean]

Sorry @dglaude, it looks like I forgot to make it public. Just made the change.

[Jimmdean-1]

same here - and the negatives worked as well for the joys. I’ll test out the rest this weekend - funny thing about the v1 classic controller is the triggers are analog to begin, then a digital button press (same as a Gamecube controller). I don’t think the code will matter as even though they are shared the signals come from different components of the board.