From BUILDS

Revision as of 19:30, 23 April 2012

The NES Controller and Arduino in a very primitive set-up. I am going to make a better connector in the future.

Overview

Chris Woodall wanted to play video games with an NES controller (the motivating games being Cave Story and Jamestown, the former was successfully beat with the controller). To do this he decided to use an Arduino UNO (definitely overkill). The best method for doing this is to announce your microcontroller as an HID Keyboard so that it can write to the keyboard buffer like any other USB peripheral keyboard. This adds the convenience of portability and flexibility; however, it requires flashing the ATMega8u2 on the Arduino UNO, which normally only handles serial communication via USB with a firmware that handles HID communication via USB. To do this you need to do some sketchy (explained below), but there is little risk of bricking your Arduino because you should always be able to flash the original atmega8u2 firmware.

Electronics

Parts List

• An Arduino Uno
• A NES Controller from Amazon
• Lots of wires (solid core preferably)

Future Upgrade for SNES Controller version

• SNES Controller from Adafruit or Amazon

Schematic

NES Version

Basic Schematic for the NES Controller to Arduino interface

SNES Version

Coming Soon...

Software

Getting Data from the NES Controller

Making Your Arduino an HID device with LUFA

References

• USB HID Usage Table
• A Bunch of useful information for HID Arduino Hacks
• Putting arduino in DFU mode

Sending the Keyboard Commands

References

• USB HID Usage Table
• A Bunch of useful information for HID Arduino Hacks
• Putting arduino in DFU mode
• NES Controller Arduino Code