Sexy Jihad

In what wins the award for cool hack of the day someone has made a controller interface for the PSP:

The target of this project is creating a low-cost interface that allows multiple Gamepads to be connected to the PSP’s infrared port.
As it is in a pretty early (but working) stage, the interface only works with 2 Master System Gamepads.

Plans for the Future are:

* Support for Sega Genesis Gamepads and C64 joysticks
* Support for 4 Gamepads
* Making it more portable

On this page I’ll provide the full Schematics and source codes for this project so everyone can build one himself.
I’m also considering making the interface available for purchase as soon as it is fully developed.
The interface consists of an Atmel ATMega8 microcontroller, an IR diode and some resistors.
Basically the microcontroller handles any changes of the Button states of the Gamepads and sends them immediatly to the PSP.
A basic protocol was developed which can handle a 16 Buttons each for a maximum of 4 Gamepads.

The first step to be done for this Project was to send data to the PSP with the IR diode.
Data transmission over infrared is very similar to transmission over the serial port.
Each frame has a start- and a stop-bit, and the standard baud rate of the PSP is set to 9200.
The difference to the standard serial protocol is that bits are determined as short pulses, and the byte to send has to be inverted.

While some could (rightly so) argue that this is useless seeing that the PSP is a mobile gaming platform, it’s a cool hack nontheless for those emulator games.

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