Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

TaylorAlexander

Something similar that I want us USB Force Feedback wheel (and joystick) support for the RP2040. I looked pretty deeply in to this and I was unable to find any libraries which do the necessary USB magic for the chip to build devices which show up on a computer as force feedback. There’s some code for the Atmega32u4 to do it and in general there is documentation around the web for how this stuff works, but actually digging in to USB spec stuff is not really my thing.

There is an open source gamepad library for the RP2040 but they said on GitHub issues and discord that they have no plan to pursue force feedback support.

But I designed a really nice brushless motor controller for the RP2040 and I’d love to make a force feedback wheel with it! I already have a motorized wheel I built to test this and I even made it work with motorized return to center as a regular USB joystick device, I just don’t know the magic incantations to make it in to a force feedback device.

Some discussion of how to do this in a PIC context: https://forum.microchip.com/s/topic/a5C3l000000M4PDEA0/t2469...

If you have enough USB experience you might be able to do it by (a) adding the necessary configuration reports to expose HID force feedback and (b) implementing the matching endpoint. But it's quite fiddly and benefits from having a device you can copy.

The open source gamepad firmware you mention is GP2040-CE. I can guarantee you users will be happy if force feedback gets merged in. Stuff moves fast; by now, opinions on this might have changed. I'd encourage interested parties to join the Discord and discuss it.

I would love to help add force feedback support, but I cannot use Discord.

I would love it if you could help! I wonder if it would be sufficient to work on it via github issues. Here is the issue I posted, which could be re-opened. I can also post on discord for you if that is helpful. Maybe you could post your interest in that issue and then I can link to it in discord and ask them to discuss it with you on the issues page?

https://github.com/OpenStickCommunity/GP2040-CE/issues/515

ah sorry, I don't use github either https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

That’s fair. Hard to balance participating in open source community with standing up for our rights.

sacrifices must be made sometimes.

Well they even closed the github issue after some discussion, determining it was "not on our roadmap any time soon", but maybe I could ask again. https://github.com/OpenStickCommunity/GP2040-CE/issues/515

Use the atmega32u4 and it's force feedback implementation to handle the USB communication? Communicating with it over I2C or similar?

Definitely possible, but it would ruin an otherwise nice development environment. For personal use that would be fine, but I tend to try to design things as nice complete open source projects people could use and enjoy using. Plugging in to one USB port to program the RP2040 and then another to test the force feedback control is not ideal for development.

It would work though, and I do want a wheel even for myself (the surplus motor I got for it is a beast). Might be my best bet.

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