ctroller-android

ctroller-android lets you use your 3DS as an input device for your Linux Android system via the uinput kernel module. It consists of a client that runs on your 3DS, continously streaming the 3DS input data to a server on your Android device. The server exposes a virtual device to your system, interpretes the data it receives and writes it to a event node under /dev/input/event* or similar. The kernel gamepad input documentation can be found here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/input/gamepad.txt

Prerequisites

You will need DevkitARM and the ctrulib to build the 3DS component.

Building the 3DS CIA requires bannertool and makerom to be in your $PATH.

To run the server, the uinput kernel module needs to be loaded:

$ modprobe uinput

Building

To build the 3DS app, run make in the "3DS" directory.

To build the android binary, run CC=path/to/th/android/cross/compiler make. replace the path with the patch to your android cross compiler (the gcc binary).

Installation

1. Download and run the ELF binary manually or use my android app: https://github.com/hacker1024/ctroller-android-app

2. Download the latest release of the 3DS binaries.

   Or you can build them yourself:

   $ cd 3DS
   $ make release

3. Install ctroller.cia with the CIA-manager of your choice.

   If you want to install the 3DSX-executable:

   Copy ctroller.{3dsx,smdh} to /3ds/ctroller/ on your SD card. You can also directly upload the application to your 3DS using upload.sh (do not blindly execute unknown scrips, I'm not responsible if this accidentally deletes your SD card or unfreezes your fridge). To do so, start a FTP server (such as ftpd) on your 3DS on port 5000, then run:

   $ cd 3DS
   $ make upload DSIP=<IP of your 3DS here>

   This requires ftp to be installed on your system.

4. Create a directory ctroller in the root of your SD card

5. Place 3DS/ctroller.cfg in there and replace the IP with the one of your PC. (The config file should now be at sdmc:/ctroller/ctroller.cfg)

Running

Run the ELF binary manually or use my android app: https://github.com/hacker1024/ctroller-android-app

Start the ELF binary manually by copying to a executable location (like /data/local/tmp/) and running:

$ ./ctroller

Flags if you manually run the binary:

  -d  --daemonize              execute in background
  -h  --help                   print this help text
  -p  --port=<num>             listen on port 'num' (defaults to 15708)
  -u  --uinput-device=<path>   uinput character device (defaults to /dev/uinput)
  -k  --keymap                 use a keymap file (if not set, ctroller will use the default keymap)

Then launch the ctroller.3dsx or ctroller.cia application on your 3DS using a homebrew launcher of your choice.

For development purposes, the 3DS-Makefile includes a run target that uses 3dslink to upload and run the application using the Homebrew Menu NetLoader.

Creating your own keymap file

To remap the buttons in a way you want, you need to create a file with a button label on each line. The default mapping is this:

A
B
X
Y
START
SELECT
L
R
ZL
ZR

To modify it, copy the above into a file, and swap keys around. The order is very important; any key in your custom keymap will override the default one on the same line.

To use this keymap with ctroller-android, use the -k option (see above).

For example, I prefer my layout to be more like an xbox, for better compatibility with games. To do this, I swap A and B; X and Y; R and ZR; and L and ZL. Here's my keymap file:

B
A
Y
X
START
SELECT
ZL
ZR
L
R

Notes

This program is intended to be used in a private network. For simplicity, the server right now accepts any connection on it's port, which might pose a security risk if others can send data to it. This will be changed in future releases. For now, you probably shouldn't be using this in a public network.