Posted this on SRK too. I've got a friend that his PC won't run Black Ops and he wants to get a 360 but hates the controllers. He's a keyboard and mouse guy. So I was thinking of solutions for him.
Before you guys tell me I know there are converters. They leave some things to be desired.
So here's what I was thinking.
All the buttons, triggers, and dpad are easy to hack to other buttons which can be arranged to conform to his keyboard layout. Even the analog stick "click in" buttons are just tact switches, easy.
Where the issue comes is the look and movement which are done via Analog stick. From my understanding, analog sticks are really just 2 potentiometers.
Lets start with the movement analog stick, since it'll be only mapped to 4 buttons for move directions. Would it be possible to just use a resistors for the full value so when a button is pressed it just emulates the analog stick being pressed all the way?
And onto looking, course he's used to a mouse. So my though was basically remove the electronics from a rollerball mouse, and replace the rollers with long shaft unlimited rotate potentiometers of the right values and wire that to where the right analog stick on the xbox controller are so when the mouse is slid, it will roll the potentiometers either increasing or decreasing the resistance and the controller pcb will interpret it and move character's viewpoint
The only issue i forsee is that moving the viewpoint that way, would keep moving untill the potentiometer is turned back.
Wondering if anyone has any input on any of this.
Edit: maybe the potentiometers don't have direct control of what resistance is sent to the 360 pcb. Maybe there's an IC in between that will continually monitor those potentiometers and as long as there's movement it'll send the resitance to the 360 pcb and when no movement it sends no connection.
Before you guys tell me I know there are converters. They leave some things to be desired.
So here's what I was thinking.
All the buttons, triggers, and dpad are easy to hack to other buttons which can be arranged to conform to his keyboard layout. Even the analog stick "click in" buttons are just tact switches, easy.
Where the issue comes is the look and movement which are done via Analog stick. From my understanding, analog sticks are really just 2 potentiometers.
Lets start with the movement analog stick, since it'll be only mapped to 4 buttons for move directions. Would it be possible to just use a resistors for the full value so when a button is pressed it just emulates the analog stick being pressed all the way?
And onto looking, course he's used to a mouse. So my though was basically remove the electronics from a rollerball mouse, and replace the rollers with long shaft unlimited rotate potentiometers of the right values and wire that to where the right analog stick on the xbox controller are so when the mouse is slid, it will roll the potentiometers either increasing or decreasing the resistance and the controller pcb will interpret it and move character's viewpoint
The only issue i forsee is that moving the viewpoint that way, would keep moving untill the potentiometer is turned back.
Wondering if anyone has any input on any of this.
Edit: maybe the potentiometers don't have direct control of what resistance is sent to the 360 pcb. Maybe there's an IC in between that will continually monitor those potentiometers and as long as there's movement it'll send the resitance to the 360 pcb and when no movement it sends no connection.
