Wireless PC Gamepad controller.

[wbassett]

I also posted information about this in the thread about the beta software for using a video camera as a tracking device.  Not everyone is interested in that though but may be interested in this for other uses or as an extra controller.

I found a very very nice little toy for $20 from Walmart.  It's a Philips Wireless PC Controller, SGC2910BB/27 (bit of a long product identifier) that looks like a PS2/PS3 style controller.  It has rumble force feed back, and both analog and digital modes.  Nothing really spectacular yet other than being RF wireless...  Here's why I bought it...

It allows you to emulate a keyboard and a mouse!  It has 18 programable buttons that you can assign to any keyboard key or set it to control the mouse cursor. 

Setup was extremely straight forward, first you plug in the USB RF receiver (for Windows 98 and ME you must install the software first and then plug in the RF receiver) and then insert the CD and follow the on screen instructions.

I mapped a button to the left mouse button and then made the right analog stick my mouse cursor control and fired MAME up.  The analog stick does control the cursor, and you can adjust the cursor speed within the software too, but it doesn't feel natural controlling your mouse cursor this way for a 'gun', at least not to me.  It did work within MAME though!  Well I can say when I fired up Police Trainer, although the SGC2910 sucked at controlling the cursor and felt nothing like a gun, I was able to fire shots and even as horrible as it is at trying to move the cursor to the target, I was able to hit some targets!  The mouse button emulation definitely works! 

Also the other keyboard assigned buttons are recognized within MAME, or I should clarify that and say MAME32 since that's what I'm running.  I'll test it out with some games that use analog sticks as well as games that use standard MAME mapped keyboard key inputs.  Trying to play a lightgun shooter game was worthless, but I think it will work fine for a standard stick based game.

This thing works so well I almost feel bad about what I am going to do to it, which is tear it apart!  My plans are to use it for the trigger and auxilary buttons for a 'light gun', but I think it could also work well as an analog hack for certain devices, or even as emergency 3rd and 4th player controls for people with 2 player cps and when friends are over that want to play a 4 player game.  Granted players 3 and 4 won't have that 'arcade' feel that players 1 and 2 will have with the sticks on the cp, but it is an option!

One thing I have to point out is about the button mapping.  You can save an unlimited amount of profiles and load them up for specific games.  That's something some may not like- the fact you have to load a profile.  However if you use a standard MAME button mapping and then assign those as player 3 and 4 within mame, you only have to load the profile when you first start your cab.  After that it's good to go.

I'll get some pics up and information about the setup, but for $20 this really surprised me at how easy it was to setup and how well it works with Mame as far as button mapping and recognizing them within a game.