Wii Remote on PS3 Linux

Introduction

WMD is a Wii Remote driver for Linux fully written in Python. WMD utilizes the BlueZ Bluetooth stack to communicate with a Wii Remote and the uinput interface to act as an input device of Linux.

It's a really nice hack, but there are many obstacles to use WMD on PS3 Linux. WMD is probably written for x86 platforms and it (and Python itself) lacks some portability. And furthermore, the uniput driver has no consideration for the biarch environment such as powerpc userland (32bit) on ppc64 kernel (64bit). You will need to patch and rebuild them all.

Applications, Related Links

Cube Presenter: Show presentation slides on the 3D rotating cube. Used in Binary 2.0 Conference 2006
My blog entries (in Japanese)
- Hogememo: Binary 2.0 Conference 2006
- Hogememo: Wii Remote on PS3 Linux

Patches

WMD/Python fix

The ioctl constants vary in archs. Fix for powerpc.

--- WMD.py      2006-12-12 22:42:25.000000000 +0900
+++ WMD_ps3.py  2006-12-12 22:41:53.000000000 +0900
@@ -405,13 +405,13 @@


 # These are uinput control codes
-UI_DEV_CREATE  = 0x5501
-UI_DEV_DESTROY = 0x5502
+UI_DEV_CREATE  = 0x20005501
+UI_DEV_DESTROY = 0x20005502

-UI_SET_EVBIT   = 0x40045564
-UI_SET_KEYBIT  = 0x40045565
-UI_SET_RELBIT  = 0x40045566
-UI_SET_ABSBIT  = 0x40045567
+UI_SET_EVBIT   = 0x80045564
+UI_SET_KEYBIT  = 0x80045565
+UI_SET_RELBIT  = 0x80045566
+UI_SET_ABSBIT  = 0x80045567

 EV_SYN = 0x00
 EV_KEY = 0x01

PyBluez seems to have the endianness problem for bluetooth sockets. Here's a workaround for WMD.

@@ -1663,8 +1663,8 @@
   socket['receive'] = BluetoothSocket( L2CAP )
   socket['control'] = BluetoothSocket( L2CAP )

-  socket['receive'].connect( ( addr, 19 ) )
-  socket['control'].connect( ( addr, 17 ) )
+  socket['receive'].connect( ( addr, 19<<8 ) )
+  socket['control'].connect( ( addr, 17<<8 ) )

   if socket['receive'] and socket['control']:
     log(LOG_INFO, "We are now connected to Wiimote at address " + addr)

Python's fcntl.ioctl raises an exception when ioctl cmd's MSB is set, like powerpc's UI_SET_EVBIT (= 0x80045564). There seems no workaround for WMD; you need to rebuild Python with this patch.

drivers/input/misc/uinput.c fix

You need to implement some compat routines in uinput.c, as seen in evdev.c, to handle requests from the 32bit userland. Apply this patch to uinput.c and rebuild. Note, the patch is by far not complete. It leaves many structs unhandled.

Resources

WMD.py: Original WMD
WMD-PS3.py: The modified version for PS3
python_ioctl.patch
uinput_compat.patch
evtest.c: Event device tester