Homebrew Theoretical difficulty of adding Xbox 360 controller support to an app?

[LeifEricson]

I'm a coding novice and have been writing a few small apps for Wii. In short, what would be the dificulty of coding support for Xbox 360 gamepads? Are there any libraries that can help? Or will a whole new driver need to be written in order to work...? Basically I'm looking for the challenge of the task, and figured this would be difficult.

Thanks.

 

[DinohScene]

Only the wired ones would work.
The 360 controller don't have bluetooth.

 

[FAST6191]

Only the wired ones would work.
The 360 controller don't have bluetooth.

True but you could also build a USB adapter from a RROD 360. There is also stuff like http://maxbuy.cc/?page_id=1009

Anyway I can not recall seeing any Wii homebrew programs claim 360 wired pad support. I would not be shocked to hear Wii linux has support though.
There are plenty of open source drivers ( http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/xboxdrv/ ) and from what I have read it is a pretty standard USB (it works on a raspberry pi).

However yeah you will probably end up porting drivers, the holy grail here would be adding it in at IOS level but that would be a serious hack.

 

[DinohScene]

I think it's easier to port the USB drivers over rather then to the RF to USB conversion ;p

 

[LeifEricson]

I was recently looking at the Nintendont project -- would it be any harder coding support into that? (considering the Gamecube games running)

 

[tbgtbg]

You could try coding in PS3 controller support (definitely possible, as Devolution shows) then using a 360 to PS3 adapter like this.

http://www.amazon.com/HDE®-Xbox-Playstation-Controller-Adapter/dp/B007SO06O6

I in no way endorse or condemn that particular link or product, just an example of an adapter.

However, this will still limit you to wired 360 controllers. And before anyone asks no a wireless controller + play and charge cord will not work.

 

[TecXero]

If you wanted to use a wireless 360 controller, I'd imagine it'd be easier to put a library together for this.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Xbox-Wireless-Receiver-Windows-Pc/dp/B00E0OB7MW/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1397944784&sr=1-1&keywords=360 wireless controller adapter

Either way, it would probably take a lot of work. You'd probably be better off finding an open source driver and trying to port it. Might be able to setup a windows driver in some sort of library wrapper. Even then, you'd have to get the source code of all the programs you want to use it with, set them up to work with the new library, then compile the program with the library. It seems like it'd be easier to just go grab a Classic Controller or Gamecube controller. But purely for a challenge, it'd be a bit of a task. If you want it to be especially difficult, setup a library for the wireless 360 controller adapter and include support to have the 360 chatpad act as a keyboard.

 

[LeifEricson]

Thanks for all the replies. The Nintendont project already supports all HID controllers with a bit of modification of config files.

The wired 360 controller however is not HID. Therefore I will see what I can do. Please note, Nintendon't doesn't even have Wiimote support outside of the initial game selection menu.