I found an old Nintendo clone controller so I decided to see if I can make it communicate with a PC via bluetooth and emulate keyboard key commands. The setup proved rather difficult since there isn’t much space inside the controller for a battery, bluetooth module, a 3-axis gyro-accelerometer, Arduino Mini Pro, buttons, switch, a DC-DC converter and LOTS! of wires.
Once I had the controller setup, the real challenge was communicating with the computer. First I tried using Processing (processing.org) along with the Java Robot library. It worked well however, many programs/games did not respond to the simulated key strokes. Then I decided to try something I’ve done before, using a PS/2 to USB adapter along with the ps2dev.h library for Arduino. I’ve demonstrated another version of a game controller here: https://sourcelion.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/arduino-game-controller/ . However, in this example the controller was wired. This time, the design is a bit more complicated since it incorporates a bluetooth module and not a direct communication with the computer.
Here’s the result. I’ll add the source files once I’ve cleaned up the code.
Embedded Hardware Blog 