mark w. / Mbed 2 deprecated Nucleo_Gamepad

This is a work in progress. Trying to make a working arcade button to USB interface with the Nucleo F411RE.

Dependencies:   USBDevice mbed

This project was inspired by USB Joystick Device

The goal of this project is to build an simple interface that I will connect numerous Arcade buttons and joysticks to the Nucleo board, and the Nucleo will present itself as a USB Gamepad to Windows or Linux. The joysticks are Arcade joysticks that have four switches, up/down/left/right. It is not an analog joystick, just a set of switches. These will be connected to the Nucleo's pins configured as inputs.

The code will then continuously loop and test which buttons are closed, and transfer this data to the host via USBGamepad protocol.

Much thanks to Wim Huiskamp for his original project, documentation, and later reaching out to me to guide me to solving a last minute problem. Wim clued me into the fact that I needed a 1k5 pullup resistor between the 3v3 pin and the PA_12/D+ pin. Once I did this Windows detected the device as a Gamepad and registered it correctly! Yay!

Connecting USB cable to the board is as follows:

You will need a USB data cable (the one I used had a micro usb on one end and regular usb on the other). I cut off the micro USB end, and cut the insulation back about 30mm. This exposed four wires, Red, Black, White and Green. You will then either crimp some header connectors or solder directly to the Nucleo header pins as follows:

  • Green USB D+ to PA_12
  • White USB D- to PA_11
  • Red USB 5V to E5V (with jumper JP5 set to E5V)
  • Black USB GND to GND

As an extra debugging measure, you can connect both the ST/Link USB and the PA_12/11 USB to the Windows machine to run both at the same time, and you can see printf messages from within ST/Link.

We can verify the HID Vendor and Product IDs by looking at the Device Manager, and look for the HID Game Controller:

/media/uploads/thetazzbot/arcade_controller_hid.jpg

I used pid.codes to register my own Vendor_ID and Product_ID

If you go to the USB Game Controller control panel widget, you will see the new entry for Arcade Gamepad:

/media/uploads/thetazzbot/arcade_controller_controlpanel.jpg

And here we can see all 32 buttons:

/media/uploads/thetazzbot/arcade_controller_buttons.jpg

On the Nucleo board you may have difficulties depending on the revision. The board I am using is an STM32F411RE Revision C03, which has resistors and solder joints (bottom) to allow the use of the Crystal on the STLink board for USB purposes. After programming via STLink, remove the USB cable from the STLink, the jumper must be set to E5V to power the board from the PC's usb port. Plug the new cable into the PC.

When you're ready to install it in the arcade cabinet, or project, just remember to setup the jumper JP5 to E5V and you only need the single USB connection to the host.

Here are some useful links that I used to grasp all the little things involved in this project:

config.h@6:29a04fe27b5e, 2016-12-14 (annotated)

Committer:
thetazzbot
Date:
Wed Dec 14 15:30:55 2016 +0000
Revision:
6:29a04fe27b5e
Parent:
5:39b7e6653dae 
Changed Report descriptor to implement a 2 player, 16 buttons each controller.

Who changed what in which revision?

UserRevisionLine numberNew contents of line
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 1 #define TARGET_STM32F4XX
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 2 #define NUM_OF_BUTTONS 32
thetazzbot 5:39b7e6653dae 3 #define SYSTEM_CLOCK_HZ 96000000 // 96MHz
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 4
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 5 // Joystick button input pin assignments.
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 6 //
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 7 // You can wire up to 32 GPIO ports to buttons (equipped with
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 8 // momentary switches). Connect each switch between the desired
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 9 // GPIO port and ground (J9 pin 12 or 14). When the button is pressed,
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 10 // we'll tell the host PC that the corresponding joystick button is
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 11 // pressed. We debounce the keystrokes in software, so you can simply
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 12 // wire directly to pushbuttons with no additional external hardware.
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 13 //
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 14 // Note that we assign 24 buttons by default, even though the USB
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 15 // joystick interface can handle up to 32 buttons. VP itself only
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 16 // allows mapping of up to 24 buttons in the preferences dialog
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 17 // (although it can recognize 32 buttons internally). If you want
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 18 // more buttons, you can reassign pins that are assigned by default
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 19 // as LedWiz outputs. To reassign a pin, find the pin you wish to
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 20 // reassign in the LedWizPortMap array below, and change the pin name
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 21 // there to NC (for Not Connected). You can then change one of the
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 22 // "NC" entries below to the reallocated pin name. The limit is 32
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 23 // buttons total.
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 24 //
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 25 // (If you're using TLC5940 chips to control outputs, many of the
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 26 // GPIO pins that are mapped to LedWiz outputs in the default
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 27 // mapping can be reassigned as keys, since the TLC5940 outputs
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 28 // take over for the GPIO pins. The exceptions are the pins that
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 29 // are reassigned to control the TLC5940 chips.)
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 30 //
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 31 // Note: PTD1 (pin J2-12) should NOT be assigned as a button input,
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 32 // as this pin is physically connected on the KL25Z to the on-board
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 33 // indicator LED's blue segment.
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 34
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 35 PinName buttonMap[] = {
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 36 PA_3, // button 1
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 37 PA_2, // button 2
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 38 PA_10, // button 3
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 39 PB_3, // button 4
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 40 PB_5, // button 5
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 41 PB_4, // button 6
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 42 PB_10, // button 7
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 43 PA_8, // button 8
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 44 PA_9, // button 9
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 45 PC_7, // button 10
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 46 PB_6, // button 11
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 47 PA_7, // button 12
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 48 PA_6, // button 13
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 49 PA_5, // button 14
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 50 PB_9, // button 15
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 51 PB_8, // button 16
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 52 PC_9, // button 17
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 53 PB_4, // button 18
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 54 PB_13, // button 19
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 55 PB_14, // button 20
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 56 PB_15, // button 21
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 57 PB_1, // button 22
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 58 PB_2, // button 23
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 59 PC_5, // button 24
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 60 PC_6, // button 25
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 61 PC_8, // button 26
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 62 PH_1, // button 27
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 63 PH_0, // button 28
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 64 PC_15, // button 29
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 65 PC_14, // button 30
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 66 PC_13, // button 31
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 67 PB_7 // button 32
thetazzbot 6:29a04fe27b5e 68 };
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 69
thetazzbot 1:ad6066c16dbd 70 // STANDARD ID SETTINGS. These provide full, transparent LedWiz compatibility.
thetazzbot 5:39b7e6653dae 71 const uint16_t USB_VENDOR_ID = 0x1209;
thetazzbot 5:39b7e6653dae 72 const uint16_t USB_PRODUCT_ID = 0xACDE;
thetazzbot 4:05f4ace9508a 73 const uint16_t USB_PRODUCT_VER = 0x0001;