Hey guys, I just made a guide on how to create one. I thought some of you might be interested https://vmod.wordpress.com/wireless-joypad/ Let me know what you think.
Really cool, thanks for sharing and taking the time to post instructions! Next step, embed the receiver within your Genesis\Mega Drive console itself?
Fantastic work. Always wanted to do this for other consoles but wasn't familiar with the nRF24L01 transceivers or associated coding. This will act as an excellent reference point, thank you. Also definitely hardware the receiver inside the Sega Genesis like wombat said.
Thanks guys, I knew there will be interested people here Yes, integrating it in the console would be very nice option.
Were those Arduino boards chosen because of price? For $3.65 you can get the Arduino Pro Micro which uses the Atmega32u4 and has native USB support so you can skip the UART $15 dongle. Speaking of which can the code be used in an Atmega16u4(2)/Atmega32u4(2) ? http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Arduino...318977?hash=item4d52202081:g:rC4AAOSwUKxYd8eZ So the receiver uses the controller chip to pass the info to the console? Do you ignore the chip on the controller where you cut the traces?If so can't you just transplant the chip on the receiver? (still looking over all the info on your site) Is it possible to skip the controller IC on the receiver and just use the Arduino to send the info to the console? this would make building the receiver much easier. Nice job by the way.
@WarRen22 Unfortunatelly no, the process is very time consuming for me. @Helder Yes, everything was chosen by the price, no problem if you use Arduino Pro Micro, but then you'll have to place it soemhow near the edge so you can access the USB port and this is not so easy. The other way is to move only the USB socket, not easy either. As far as I know my code can be used with every MCU that can be programmed via Arduino IDE. The libraries for the nRF chip were written for Arduino. I don't know if there's nRF libraries for Atmel's IDE... Yes, you can use the chip from the donor controller and transplant it to the receiver, but I had a spare board with a black blob so it did the job. The original chip suited very well for a stand haha And on the last question - My original idea was to use the receiver arduino to talk directly to the console. It turned out it's not that easy, because the Nano gets very busy with the nRF chip (talking with it) and in the same time making external interrupts to handle the game's requests. It was breaking the communication between the joypad and the receiver.... It's just not that powerful to handle both the console and the nRF. So then I decided to use the original chip for all the busy work with the console. This way communication is very clear and fast. I hope this answers all your questions
If we can only find those blob chips without the blob and use them instead of killing a controller. So if I read right you actually have the code to emulate the blob chip? Mind sharing it?
Cool! I bought a bunch of cheap controllers with wires too short (like 3 ft.). Could be a cool project.
If we can find those blob chips as loose chips it will be easier to build this in a smaller package or even in the system internally.
I'm afraid you can't find such chips loose. The originals were SEGA's chips. Cheapest way is to buy some clone joypads and use only the blob inside.
It should be pretty easy to use the AVR to recreate the blob. Its a pretty simple system. More Info here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/infopg/segasix.txt
I've read the various information about it but I'm not very programmingly inclined and no one has done it at least no publicly. I've searched quite a bit even before this project and I only find how to read it not actually emulate it.
Maybe if I get some free time in the next few months I'll hookup the pad to my scope and try to emulate the signal with uno. I'm in the process of selling my house / buying a new one. So things are about to get crazy for me
Thanks I appreciate the interest in it, and it's no rush. I plan to do the same thing later this year to (house selling and buying).
is it possible to add another button line to this setup? since its a raw translation of the button presses, it could be adapted to ANY controller to make it wireless (saturn controllers require 13), also, if possible to set up with another line, i would be interested in buying 1, maybe 2 sets preflashed and tested with the software, for me to assemble into a couple of projects... what would that cost me?
also if these could be adapted to pass resistance levels of pots instead of a simple on/off, they could be used in the same way for dreamcast controllers (also 13 lines)
