Inspiration
"Stick Drift" is an inconvenience in gaming caused by the analog joysticks in a controller not returning to their neutral position, causing unwanted movements such as a player's character "drifting" in a random direction even after the movement controls are released. I currently have a controller that experiences this and wanted to see if there was a way to counteract this problem with some extra hardware.
What it does
Drift Diagnostics is currently a tool that scans for joystick movements of a connected game controller, and allows the user to "calibrate" a neutral position and compare it to the readings of the controller
How we built it
Drift Diagnostics runs on a Raspberry Pi and a controller is plugged into it via USB. The Pi Terminal can be viewed via SSH on my laptop screen or on an external monitor.
Challenges we ran into
Initially, this project was much more ambitious. I initially planned on extracting this data and emulating controller inputs that could then be transmitted via USB or bluetooth. However, my lack of experience with python, raspberry pi, and bluetooth communication prevented me from taking this project this far. There were some other small elements I would have liked to implement as well as making UI adjustments.
Bug fixing and troubleshooting took up a large amount of my time, and I definitely ran in circles with certain issues, often having to hunt down a forum post I looked at up to ten hours ago in order to understand what I may have been missing in my code.
Accomplishments that I'm Proud of/What I learned
This was my first time working with a raspberry pi, and it was quite the learning curve. Along with needing to relearn basic python programming, I also had to learn and navigate installing drivers and software onto the device. I learned a great deal about using PuTTY and my laptop's terminal, and even updated the pi with a little assistance
What's next for Drift Diagnostics
As I mentioned, this project had a much larger initial scope. With future work and knowledge, this program and potentially later hardware could allow for better integration of older console peripherals with new gaming technology and also extend the lifetime of minorly damaged or malfunctioning controllers.
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