PS2 Controller Emulation

I finally ran into some success at this point :).
On the teensy project page, I found the blog of someone who was using a PS2 controller along with a capture card to teach his computer to Autonomously play Guitar Hero using a Teensy2. He emulated the SPI protocol (used by the PS2 controller).

I ordered:
PS2 extension cables $4.34
PS2 -> 360 controller adapters $8.50
project enclosures (3"x2"x1") $3.50
teensy2 (i already had this but I'm including it here anyway) $19

Total: ~$35 before shipping

You will also need a mini USB cable. I used a regular one and just made a hole in the side of the project box for it.

I was able to successfuly control my xbxo with one minor change.
The program that makes the Teensy2 emulate a PS2 controller allows three different modes. Digital only (3 byte record), Digital buttons & analog joysticks (7 byte record), and all analog (19 byte record).

Apparently the adapter I used falsely indicates it accepts analog button presses, but then indicates the 12 bytes of analog button data as additional 7 byte reports. So i had to change the Teensy2 program to only send the 7 byte report, even if it was reported as supporting the analog buttons.

With that change it was working great.
There were three limitation of the PS2->360 adapter however:
It is a little bit finicky in terms of resetting. It will not properly sync up with the 360 if the PS2 controller/teensy is already connected to it. So that needs to be removed before it is connected to the 360, and then reconnected after the 360 controller has been recognized.
It can only be used with a vanilla wired 360 controller. It will not work guitars, steering wheels, etc at least as far as I tested. I am not sure how it would behave with an off brand controller (Gamestop, etc) as I didn't have any at that time.
You can only use 1 at a time. Something seems to be hard-coded in there. If you attach a 2nd adapter, it will take over the controller # of the 1st one, and the 1st one will no longer function.

Salamax & Teensy

At this point I ran across Salamax, a guy who had used a protocol analyzer to look at the Xbox security handshake, and then used a TI-83 calculator connected to the Xbox as a middleman to relay that handshake to a Xbox controller connected to his PC and send the correct responses back, and then to relay the HID report packets back once authentication was complete. He also had an alternate solution using a pair of Teensy2s.

Once again I was bitten by my naivete. I order a pair of Teensy3s, since they are significantly more powerful. 32bit 48Mhz processor vs a 8bit 16Mhz, 128k of flash vs ~32k. 16k of ram vs 2.5k, and 3 UARTs (capable of much faster speed) vs 1.
Unfortunately the hardware architecture is very different, and while it wouldn't be a big problem just for the code used by Salamax directly, it also included LUFA a USB framework for the AVR processor family (used by the Teensy2). I didn't really want to spend the time to rewrite that for the Teensy3, so I set my Teensy3s aside (but will come back to them later), and ordered a pair of Teensy2s.

I tried getting them working with Salamax, but they were apparently the red headed step child (compared to the TI-83). The code in the Salamax App on the PC wasn't all there for the Teensy option, and the USB descriptors the code running on the Teensy presented didn't match up with the app seemed to be expecting, so I put it aside for a few days.

HID emulation and Netduino

My next stop was naively believing it would be as simple as emulating a HID joystick and hooking it up to the Xbox.

To accomplish that I got a NetDuino plus 2. Since my day job involves .Net programming I figured this would be the simplest route to follow, since it allows you to program it using the .Net micro framework, and includes the USB port as well as up to 4 UARTs  and an ethernet controller.

Unfortunately the Xbox employs a security handshake that prevents you from using just any controller on it (which I would have realized if I had tried to hook up a random joystick to it).

It will however let you hook up a USB keyboard which you can use to enter text during text entry which is a lot more convenient than using the on screen keyboard with the controller.

Our story so far

This blog is to cover my attempts to control my Xbox360 using my computer.

First, I'll be catching up on what I've attempted so far, so the post dates will have no bearing on when things actually happened.

I started out with a desire to see if I could control my xbox using my computer.

There were a couple of out-of-box products that I ran across the XIM3 (Discontinued) and XIM EDGE. Unfortunately, both seem to suffer from some limitations, one is price (although by now with all the gadgets I've gotten, that is ironic in retrospect). The other is that they are meant to be controlled via mouse and keyboard, so while that could certainly work, I'd have another level of emulation, since I would need to then emulate the USB mouse & keyboard to attach to the XIM.