I am new to the arduino platform and just received my first Ardiuno MEGA board in the mail yesterday. I am eager to get started with some hacking! I am a software engineer hoping to get a better understanding of interfacing with hardware/software at a very low level. I was thinking about attempting to use a Xbox 360 controller for my PS3. Essentially, I was wondering if it would be possible to purchase/link up a MAX3421E USB Peripheral/Host Controller with my board. I would monitor button presses/inputs from both the PS3 controller and then the Xbox 360 controller. The idea would be to recieve input from one, translate it to the expected out of the other to allow the PS3 to "think" it was talking with a PS3 controller when in fact the arduino is translating the xbox 360 input and communicating with PS3. Is this even possible?
the concept sounds do-able but the main question is WHY?
the PS3 controller is so much better than the 360 one.IMHO
and I get the feeling with all the proccessing and translation there will be quite a bit if lag, which will make game playing impossible.
I personally think that getting the PS3 controller to run native on the PC is worth doing! especially if you can get it to work with the keypad attachment.
it has to be wireless though, USB has already been done.
Not Possible, there are special chips that microsoft use in all their controllers that are designed to stop un licensed controllers from being used on an xbox, im fairly sure sony use them too, so short of buying the licensing chips for your controller, no, its not possible.
I can see where you are getting at, I should have explained it better. Basically, you can use the controllers from any console to input to an arduino, things like usign the wii nunchuck to control stuff is easy. What you cant do is use an arduino as the device that plugs into the console on behalf of a controller. this stops just any chinese companies from making substandard xbox controllers and selling them for $5 and putting the reputable firms out of business.
I'm really interested in this project, and in fact, in anything related to using Arduino as a controller converter or PCB. This kind of stuff is seriously interesting if you are into custom building arcade sticks or you have an expensive one and want to make it useable in more than one system.
About 360 controller security, the 360 system checks the pad with some handshaking and refuse if not success, but the 360 pad connected for example to a PC will work ok without this handshaking.
PS3 normally accepts USB controllers quite fine.
There is a project based on PIC called UPCB used for making custom arcade sticks , sourcecode is available so if you know something about PIC it can be a good reference.