infusion / node-gamecontroller

A node.js driver for several gamecontrollers

Gamecontroller.js is a small layer on top of HID to interact with any USB game controller, like Sony PlayStation, XBOX, SNES, ... with node.js, depending on a small config for each controller only.

Installation

Installing node-gamecontroller is as easy as cloning this repo or use npmjs:

npm install gamecontroller

Usage

Plug in your game controller and run the following code:

const Gamecontroller = require('gamecontroller');
const ctrl = new Gamecontroller('ps2');

ctrl.connect(function() {
    console.log('Game On!');
});

ctrl.on('X:press', function() {
    console.log('X was pressed');
});

ctrl.on('X:release', function() {
    console.log('X was released');
});

To get the full parsed HID data stream, you can run

ctrl.on('data', function(data) {
    console.log(data);
});

Supported Events

Data

• data- Get parsed data as it comes in

Buttons

• {type}:press - Button with given type was pressed
• {type}:release - Button with given type was released

Joysticks

• {type}:move - Joystick with given type was moved in either x or y direction. Object with positions gets passed

Status

• {type}:change - The status of a measure like battery changed

Misc

• error - An error has occurred
• close - The connection was closed successfully

Supported Controllers

At the moment, the following controllers are supported:

• Playstation 2 Ripoff ("ps2")
• XBOX 360 ("xbox360")
• Tomee SNES Controller ("snes-tomee")
• Retrolink SNES Controller ("snes-retrolink")

If you've connected a supported controller, you can run the following to find the name of it:

var Gamecontroller = require('gamecontroller');

var dev = Gamecontroller.getDevices();

console.log(dev);

Adding new controllers

If your controller isn't supported yet, add the config to the lib/vendor.js file and send a pull request or file a bug ticket. To get all the information follow the following simple steps. Run the following snippet, locate your controller and note the vendorId and productId:

var HID = require('node-hid');
console.log(HID.devices());

Using the vendorId and productId you can run the following snippet, press all the keys on your controller and get the array position of what key changes what array index:

var hid = new HID.HID(vendorId, productId);
hid.on("data", function(data) {
    console.log(data);
});

Copyright and licensing

Copyright (c) 2017, Robert Eisele Dual licensed under the MIT or GPL Version 2 licenses.

node-gamecontroller's Issues

Needs PS4 controller support (DualShock 4)

I will be adding this from my fork soon. This will work for USB-connected DS4 controllers, with limited support for Bluetooth-connected DS4 controllers, as the input is reported differently over Bluetooth.
This will only support button presses and joysticks for now - I plan to update gamecontroller.js to allows for L2/R2 pressure reporting, battery level reporting and accelerometer/gyroscope reporting soon.

Axis value only updates when X updates

Currently, the hid.on function is coded so that an axis update is only emitted once the X coordinate moves, not the Y. I plan to fix this soon in my fork.

this._hid.disconnect is not a function

When using the xplorer guitar, calling .close() will generate an error. Looking at the _hid property I can see that there is no such function.

node-gamecontroller/gamecontroller.js

Line 94 in deebd1c

this._hid.disconnect();