It all started when I decided that being a desk jockey has caused me to gain weight. So I thought, "How can I lose some of this, while still spending time in the game I love to play, Puzzle Pirates?" I had heard of people playing Dance Dance Revolution as a way to lose weight. I figured I could do the same with bilge, sailing, and swordfighting.

I found a program for Linux that will re-map a joystick to X Key press events. I downloaded it, compiled it, and low and behold, I can send keypress events to YPP!
Link to Joy2key software.

Then the fun began.

I started with my Gravis Gamepad


I then proceeded to Map out the traces, and figure out what buttons went to what pins on the IC.

After a little software hacking to dump out the joystick events, and some playing around, I figured out the signaling method of the gamepad.

Next I soldered wires to the 10 buttons I was going to use to control the game.


I then took a DDR mat and made a new PCB to connect to the tracings for the buttons, Here's the the non-etched PCB


While it was etching, I sorted out the wires, and figured out which button went to what.


After the PCB was done, I soldered Diodes in, to keep multiple button presses from false triggering stuff.


Now, I put it all back in the casing, except for the Joystick board, it stayed out for now


And here's Duguro taking it for a spin, playing the swordfight puzzle.


Now, Here's what I would do differently for the next one (Cause this is just a prototype):
1. Order a DDR Pad for Playstation 2.
2. Order a Playstation 2 to USB adapter.
3. Use the same software.

Yes, All that work, and I could have bought a $11 part to do it all. But at least I had fun making it!

If someone knows a program for windows to send keyboard events from joystick events, let me know and I'll post it up here too.

Eric Kerin - Sept 15 2004
aka: Hack