r/spinalmuscularatrophy

For quite a while now, because of SMA I haven't been able to play games with a normal controller, so I decided to make an app that turns my phone into a virtual Xbox controller for PC games. I'm honestly a bit ashamed that it's taken me so long to get the motivation required to turn this into something that can be easily shared amongst people. Especially for the people in this community. In its' current form, it's a little bit rough around the edges. It's not on the store, the User Interface isn't particularly beautiful, and there's one or two unfinished features, as well as some more things that I want to add. BUT it's still incredibly usable, useful, and now at a point where all of the bullcrap I had to set up manually is now automated for anyone who comes across it.

This is something that I'm so, so very passionate about. Accessibility. So, as a warning, this is a VERY VERY long post! But it's all written to make installation and use as easy as can be. I'm only one person running this all for free (which will never change!) so I want to make sure that I make this guide as extensive as possible to minimize the amount of people having issues. That way I can make sure I have the time to help EVERYONE who needs it :)

The later part of this post is VERY detailed instructions, but first I want to explain what it can do, so you can decide whether or not it might help you. In this app you can create profiles filled with buttons, sticks, and/or a touchpad, as well as a button named Re-center that I'll explain more about later in the post. Each button and stick can press any keyboard, mouse, or video game controller button in a variety of ways. If it gives you a better idea of how robust it can be, I made this to accommodate me specifically, and I only use one finger at all times.

Payloads are what gets sent to the receiver. Inside the editing mode, when editing a button or stick, there's a text field named Payloads. This is how you designate which button is which. This can be set to a keyboard, mouse, or Xbox controller button. It can also be set to multiple! You just separate each action with a comma. So, if for example, you want a button press to activate the letter W, the left mouse button, and the Xbox controller button A, you would type "W,LEFT_MOUSE_DOWN,x360A". You can also add a wait command if you don't want all three to happen simultaneously. So for example, let's say you want to do the exact same thing, but you want it to wait for a full second in between each action, you would do "W,WAIT_1000,LEFT_MOUSE_DOWN,WAIT_1000,x360A". There's currently a small bug where this doesn't work reliably every single time, but I'm aware of it and working on it!

When you go to edit a button, there's a checkbox named Hold Toggle and a space where you can input numbers. This feature will hold the button down for you, after you hold it for the amount of time you specified with those numbers in milliseconds. You can set it to a really low number like 50 so you just have to tap it for a quick second for it to hold itself down until you tap it again.

Now for my absolute favorite part of this. The Sticks. You set the Payload to L or R, depending on whether you want it to be the left stick, or the right. The first checkbox is Auto-center. If this is UNCHECKED, then the stick will continue to stay wherever you left it. Practically, in games, this means your character will continue to walk forward without you touching anything at all. If it's CHECKED, the stick returns to the default position when you let go.

The second checkbox in the options for the sticks is WASD mode. This is for the games that either don't support controllers, or are just finicky. So instead of sending Xbox controller joystick coordinates when you move it, it'll press whatever buttons you specify.

The third checkbox is called Stick +. This along with "Boost Thresholds" are my favorite part of my favorite part. Stick + as well as Boost Thresholds are the entire reason why I'm able to run and jump with one finger, which makes the entire platforming genre possible for me. This makes it so that in addition to sending your joystick coordinates, it also sends buttons at the same time. Depending on where and how far you move the stick, is what the Boost Thresholds handle, and those can be set to whatever value you'd like. So, to better illustrate this, and to give a solid example, I've attached a picture. In the imgur album, it's titled Stick + Example 1 and Stick + Example 2. Also in said screenshots, the W A S D is actually greyed out. There's supposed to be nothing in there.

The example I gave works like this. When I press the stick forward 0 to 49% of the way, it acts normally. When I press the stick 50 to 95% of the way forward (Boost Threshold), it presses the left stick which activates sprint. Anything beyond 95% (Super Boost Threshold) and it'll press the A button, which is typically jump. As you can probably tell, I'm very, very proud of this idea, and I've gotten a LOT of use out of it. There's a very small visual bug here. When choosing WASD or Stick + for the first time, it doesn't automatically show up. All you have to do is press the OK button under Delete, and then go back to editing the same stick by holding your finger on it while in edit mode.

The last button type is the Re-center button. This is an orange circle that you can use when you choose to have sticks that have Auto Center turned OFF. This button will immediately snap the stick back to the default position.

Finally we have the Touchpad. Very self explanatory and has a sensitivity slider, as well as a few modes. For general browsing, I recommend the third option. The first two are made for different types of games. The first will hold left click whenever you touch it. The second will hold it after a second or two. And the third one acts the way you expect it to, but also holds itself down if you double tap it and hold for a sec. I do need to add the ability to right click, however you can actually add this yourself. After making the touchpad, just make a regular button and set the payload to "MOUSE_RIGHT_DOWN,MOUSE_RIGHT_UP". You can also scroll while using the touchpad. Make a button with the payload "SCROLL_MODE_TOGGLE". When you tap it, the touchpad turns into scroll mode. Press it again to get back to the regular mouse mode.

Just a few housekeeping notes and then we'll move on to the installation instructions. This can indeed support a second person simultaneously so that you can play with each other on games that support local co-op!...I think. I haven't been able to test that yet. In the upper left corner there's a few sliders. These aren't working properly yet, so please ignore them. Except for the Turbo slider. Feel free to use it if you'd like! You just edit that number in the box and hit save, and turn it on. That will set how fast the buttons are repeated. If you turn on the Swipe slider and turn it back off, the app will freeze. I know that the connect and edit button are too close to each other and I'll fix that too. I just don't want to keep delaying this when it might help someone.

I'm the only person who has ever used this app, and although I've used it for a few hundred hours, I'm sure you guys will find bugs somewhere that I've never seen. Please feel free to let me know anything you find and I'll do my best to fix it asap!

This is an open sourced project, meaning I don't care about anybody "stealing" it or whatever, so all of the written code is completely visible. So if you understandably get spooked or anything of the sort, you can feed the link to AI or a technologically inclined subreddit/friend and they can tell you all the code is safe. It's a completely free app and will forever stay that way when I get it on the store. I expect to have it up about two weeks from now!

Okay, so! First you want to go here. https://github.com/Colonelwheel/Simplecontroller There's a bunch of files here. 80% of them are the raw code for the app. If you want to download everything, you can. Hit the arrow pointing down on the green button that says Code. Hit Download as Zip. You pretty much only want to do this if you're creating the app from scratch though

If you only want the files you need, you'll only need 2 :) here's the app itself https://github.com/Colonelwheel/Simplecontroller/blob/master/SimpleController%20App.apk that's what you install on your Android device. With this link, you probably want to go to it on your Android device itself instead of having to send it over from your computer.

And here's the PC Receiver so your pc understands what the app is sending to it https://github.com/Colonelwheel/Simplecontroller/blob/master/SimpleControllerSetup.exe

The download button is on the far right next to the edit pencil. The second link installs python and vigem. Vigem basically tricks your computer into thinking you have a real controller. One thing to note is that it may prevent regular controllers from working properly, but you can always uninstall it later if you need that function back.

After everything is installed, you'll just need to restart your computer. Now I made it so that when you run the receiver, the receiver will provide you with your ip address. Just run the receiver and it'll give you a line saying INFO - Suggested Android app IP: Xxx.xxx.x.xxx

When you open up the app on your phone/Android device and hit connect in the upper-right corner, it'll ask you for that ip address. From there, you should be good to go! Just make sure the Simple Controller Receiver is running on your pc when you use it and that your tablet and PC are on the same network.

Now when you want to add buttons, you hit edit in the upper right and use the + button at the bottom. Choose the kind of button you want, and then you hold your finger on the button to edit what it does and how big it is.

Here's what that looks like https://imgur.com/a/gKr9wze at the bottom "X360B" means the button will send the Xbox B button in this example. Just replace it with whatever you want. If you want a regular keyboard key, just type it there. If you want to press an Xbox controller button you just type "x360" followed by A, B, X, Y, RB, etc. The only kind of button that breaks this naming convention is the Left Trigger, and Right Trigger. Instead of what you'd expect (X360LT and X360RT) the correct Payloads are LT:x.x and RT:x.x. This is so you can set how far the trigger is pulled. LT:0.1 is the minimum, LT:0.5 means the trigger is pulled half way, and LT:1.0 is fully pressed. With triggers you can also add P for Pulse to hold the triggers down for a specific amount of time. For example "RT:1.0P0.5" which would be fully press right trigger for a half of a second.

With this you'll be able to control your keyboard, mouse, and game controller. I recommend using unified remote for the mouse and keyboard though as I focused all my effort on the Xbox controller features. Fair warning, I've only tried it on my phone, but it should work on a tablet too! One last thing to note is that this MIGHT have windows freak out and warn you. That's because I'm not a verified developer. Not really sure what to do about it but I promise it's safe.

Here's the album of screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/simple-controller-app-MbGxUYt

Here's a list of all of the valid payloads!

Xbox Controller:

X360A X360B X360X X360Y

X360LB X360RB

X360START X360BACK

X360UP X360DOWN X360LEFT X360RIGHT

X360LS X360RS

Trigger Pressure:

LT:1.0 RT:1.0 LT:0.5 RT:0.5 LT:0.0 RT:0.0

Trigger Pressure + Pulse:

LT:1.0P0.3 RT:1.0P0.3 LT:1.0P0.6 RT:1.0P0.6

Mouse:

MOUSE_LEFT_DOWN MOUSE_LEFT_UP

MOUSE_RIGHT_DOWN MOUSE_RIGHT_UP

MOUSE_MIDDLE_DOWN MOUSE_MIDDLE_UP

SCROLL_MODE_TOGGLE

Keyboard:

Everything. Type CTRL for CTRL, etc. A-Z, 0-9, etc

Happily accepting any and all feedback, bug reports, aesthetic suggestions, feature requests, etc! Especially if there's a lot of you, please be a bit patient with me.

If you have any questions that aren't covered by me or the README on that github link, just let me know :)