How to transform any PC into a console: Controllers

You may know there are a lot of consoles, meaning a lot of different controllers. Here is a list of what you should do before buying a controller :

- how much money can you spend ?
- how many USB plug does your PC have ?
- are you going to play by your own or with friends ?
- how many different emulators are you going to play with ?

I will try to sum up the answers by explaning different things, and you better read them all.

First thing you should know

Your USB plugs are ordered (meaning if you have 4 USB, you always have the same USB plugs with the same order, it will not change). You are now maybe asking yourself "Erm okay but what I'm gonna do with that kind of information ?!", but it is an important fact that will be implied later.

The second important fact implying the first one, and then you will probably start seeing the problem, the second fact is that most of emulators do not like that you unplug and plug your controller(s), it could results by the fact that you could loose your controller's profiles.

Third fact, still due to some emulators, you will need to turn them on in order, I am not going to explain those things here because it is relative to emulators first and their plugins.

So if you understood, pluging and unpluging your controllers can result into a mess, loosing profiles and then you will need to redo the setup part.

Different controllers

Working with XInput drivers (!important!) :
XBOX 360 (WIRED / WIRELESS) : http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Xbox-360-Controller-Windows/dp/B004QRKWLA/

XBOX ONE (WIRED / WIRELESS) : http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-One-Wireless-Controller/dp/B00CMQTUSS/

PLAYSTATION 4 : http://www.amazon.com/DualShock-Wireless-Controller-PlayStation-Black-4/dp/B00BGA9X9W/

Other controllers

Additionnal stuff

XBOX 360 WIRELESS + Wiimote plus : http://www.amazon.com/EBL%C2%AE-Version-Charger-Rechargeable-Batteries/dp/B00EB7812C/
you better having 4 batteries per controller (2 in charge, 2 inside the controller)
DUALSHOCK 4 : http://www.amazon.com/Kinivo-BTD-400-Bluetooth-4-0-adapter/dp/B007Q45EF4/ + DS4Windows (software)
This is the only one adapter i tried who did work perfectly and trust me i managed to try lots and differents.
Wiimote : http://www.amazon.com/TOTALCONSOLE-W010-Wireless-Sensor-DolphinBar/dp/B00HZWEB74/
Some tutorial says that you should connect your Wiimotes to your Bluetooth adapter then buy a Sensor Bar for Wii, i personnaly found it better to just buy the DolphinBar instead of two products. There are 4 different mods on the DolphinBar but take a look at it by yourself : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9otlUvXhDQ

Ordered controllers

As I said above, you will maybe have to turn on your controller always by the same order, so here is an example of what I did, that's simple and also could be usefull to know what's your index (Player 1, 2, etc) before even playing a game.

Turn them on before launching anything

You will also have to turn them on before even launching an emulator or even some PC games.
Detection of available controllers In-Game is really not that good, so it's better if you could just think about turning them on before playing any game. Actually we can't do anything about that it depends on too many things but mostly Game Engines and Emulators Engines.

My profiles

emulator 1 :
emulator 2 :
emulator 3 :
emulator 4 :
emulator 5 :
emulator 6 :
...

My recommandation

Well obviously make enjoy yourself !

If you want to play on your own and have enough USB plugs for the different emulators you are going to play with and have enough money, then just play it Old-School, buy controllers with their appropriate emulators.
If you are going the same way but playing with friends then you will need to buy a USB HUB.
Something like this, USB2.0 (!NOT 3.0!), 4 USB plugs or more BUT with a Power Supply Adapter. I would prefer a 13 Plugs with AC Power Supply Adapter.

Else, if like me you don't have enough money to afford all of this, one USB plug, maximum 2 are going to be used with this way :
- 1 to 4 Wireless 360 controllers (meaning you are going to plug only one adapter)
- 1 to 4 Wiimotes plus (meaning you are going to plug only one DolphinBar, fortunately !)

Why not 4 DS4 controllers, well because of the non-removable battery and the fact that it does not long enough compare to the 360 anyway, so even if i prefer the way to shutdown the DS4 that the 360 doesn't have (automaticly turned off after 5 min)

What I did

I didn't have a lots of money to put on this project, well because I am still a student and I am not working. So I decided to try many things, wired 360 controller + wireless 360 controller + dualshock 4 + Wiimote plus. And it works very well.
So I'm using the Kinivo BT400 for my DualShock4, The DolphinBar for my 4 Wiimotes plus, and when i bought two wireless 360 controllers i found that you only need only one adapter for multiple controllers, so that's a good thing.

Other controllers I haven't tried yet

- Leapmotion, i have one but never connected on my Console-PC yet.
- Kinect, I'd prefer to finish this blog before speaking about something hard (in my opinion).
- a HOTAS, I just don't have one.
- Wheel, same as HOTAS

How to transform any PC into a console

Thursday, 28 May 2015

Controllers