The HPC Joystick Project

What about an NES gamepad?

Trouble with IR is that they put the ports randomly around the periphery of the device... and they're always facing the wrong way. You'd need a repeater to redirect the IR.

You want to base the driver on a basic, cheap gamepad.

What are the possiblities of a axis / button detection system? Is it at all feasable for the user to plug in a stick, run a wizard and have the daeomon listen for signals, kind of like the stylus calibration, but mapping buttons.
That way you're maximising the hardware audience.

An awesome idea...is there some kind of flight simulator game that will work on a hpc? I can just see it now...joystick hooked up to my j720...lost in my own little world of airports and sky as the Chinese countryside whizzes by out the train window.....

Yes, I've heard that Leo's Flight simulator works flawlessly on the Jornada 720.
About a NES pad I think it has too few buttons.
What I'll do is design a joystick circuit that will fit inside the SNES gamepad case. You can of course fit the circuit inside any joystick.
A DB15-to-Jornada adapter would eat too much current as it must feed the adapter circuit and the joystick itself.
making a [console joystick]-to-Jornada would be the same and even worse (where will you get a SNES (console side) connector?)
So I really think that the best way is to design my own joystick circuit connected to the serial port of the Jornada.

Would you be selling the modified joysticks, or just posting the building instructions here?

Yes, serial is best. It could be modified to fit serial ports in other handhelds.

Lol, I was about to mention that the IR signal would need to be redirected, but C:Amie took care of that. It's like those generic irda keyboards for ppc and palms, they have an ir port on the bottom for handhelds with a port there, and an extendable stick that goes to the top of those handhelds with an ir port there. (Mainly palm os devices)

I'll post the building instructions..

With a joystick, wouldn't it just be giving x and y coordinates? (for the simulation of mouse movement) Yeah, CE doesn't work with a mouse like that by default, but there are applications that have allowed a white point on the screen to be moved with several keys on the keyboard, and act like a mouse. I forgot what it was called, but I think that mouse was in the name.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-02-19 4:11 PM

That doesn't need to be fancy... Just a piece of optical cable works wonders: I use that to use an IR keyboard on my Zaurus...