 It’s Not a PlayStation Game Controller – It’s a Boe-Bot® Controller!
Appeared in the 2004 Product Catalog.
Just Ask an Educator What Students Like
Our Stamps in Class™ focus is driven by educators. They always tell us that robots compete for student interests really well, but students are still attached to their video games. Here is one way to combine the best of both worlds and make a normally autonomous Boe-Bot remote controlled – complete with joystick rumble feedback for sensor detections!
The toughest part of this project is building the mechanical/electrical interface. You can solve the connector problem by buying a $10 PlayStation extension cable and carefully cutting the socket from one end of it. With a few resistors and a transistor the circuit will be complete and will protect the BASIC Stamp® microcontroller from any dangerous game controller induced electrical noise.
The Coding is Simple
The example PBASIC programs available for download use a BS2-IC. The program consists of a Main: DO...LOOP which runs the Get_PSX_Buttons routine to capture the button states and returns to a CASE-SELECT statement which manages the Boe-Bot servos for control.
Get_PSX_Buttons:
LOW PsxAtt
SHIFTOUT PsxCmd, PsxClk, LSBFIRST, [$01, $42]
SHIFTIN PsxDat, PsxClk, LSBPOST, [psxThumbL, psxThumbL, psxThumbR]
psxId = $41
HIGH PsxAtt
RETURN
 The first psxThumbL byte is thrown away and, through some aliasing, the two psxThumbL and psxThumbR variables are assigned to four bits of another variable which is used to branch to nine different driving routines.
Entire Application Available for Download
You can download a detailed article on interfacing a PlayStation game controller to a BASIC Stamp module from our Downloads/Nuts & Volts menu on our web site. The complete BASIC Stamp code and explanation are in column #101 from September 2003, named “PlayStation Redux”. You can now program Stamps according to the “PBASIC Style Guidelines from Jon Williams”. |