Was there a final answer on Q of how to use wireless x360 pad on PC?

[Guden Oden]

And before anyone hits reply just to say "it's not possible", then consider windows actually detects the pad when it's plugged in to a PC, and there's a full 4 pins in the USB plug, and even more in the connector in the pad/charge cable. The cable itself is also too thick to only carry power.

Therefore, it should be possible to use this pad as a PC controller, provided there is a suitable driver for it... Windows update doesn't want to identify it, or at least not the one time I tried.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'm not convinced that the wireless controller is using the USB connection for anything but power - in otherwords, I'm beginning to think that even when the controller is plugged in with the play and charge kit its still communicating via the wireless (in which case this would prevent its use on the PC with the play and charge).

I tried installing the software the other night on the PC and the wireless controller with play and charge lead did nothing; bought a wired controller and detected immediatly.

 

[flf]

Well, USB is a platform-independant interconnect, so I imagine that communication is being established with the controller, and that the device ID strings are being read. All that is missing is the driver, and I'm not sure how difficult it is (probably not very for the right engineer/coder) to implement a driver for it.

If MS doesn't hand out the reference for the actual communication strings (the values that the pad sends when manipulated) then it would be kind of interesting to reverse-engineer (by snooping the values somehow) the unit and code up a dll for it. This assumes a lot more expertise than I have.

Who knows? If the demand is there, perhaps they'll develop the driver for it and sell it as a pc/xbox accessory. (Weren't there controllers in the past that would work with several console platforms and the PC?)

EDIT: Wups, just noticed the "wireless" in the thread title... ignore my meanderings...

 

[kyleb]

Yeah, the wired controller they are selling as a PC accessory with drivers and in a different box, and you can always download the drivers from MS as well. The drivers aren't configurable at all though, so the default button and axis settings are what you are stuck with and that simply doesn't work for a lot of games. Hopefully they have better drivers and wireless support in the works.

 

[flf]

The drivers aren't configurable at all though, so the default button and axis settings are what you are stuck with and that simply doesn't work for a lot of games.

Okay, this has me scratching my head a bit. Why can't you assign the buttons and axes within the game's setup rather than changing the hardware to match the game's defaults?

I can't remember the last game I've played where you couldn't assign any control you wanted to a game function.

(Unless you're talking about programming the controller ala the Nostromo Speedpad n52 or something.)

 

[Guden Oden]

I'm not convinced that the wireless controller is using the USB connection for anything but power

Well, it does. Or else the new hardware wizard wouldn't have appeared when I plugged the thing into my PC...

And no, the PC doesn't react simply on there being power drawn from the USB port, or else my little USB-driven LED christmas tree would trigger the configuration wizard as well. There's definitely data wires in the charge cable as well as ground and power, I can't for my life understand why MS would choose to make the wireless pad + charge kit different from the wired controller... But that's redmond in a nutshell for ya. Making decisions nobody can make sense of.

I suppose redcloud who wrote one of the best original xbox pad drivers could make one for this unit as well if he's still actively involved in this stuff, I've not checked out his site for about ten months or so... Maybe I should. His driver totally rocks, I use it for my two glowing madcatz xbox pads when I play MAME.

 

[kyleb]

Okay, this has me scratching my head a bit. Why can't you assign the buttons and axes within the game's setup rather than changing the hardware to match the game's defaults?

I can't remember the last game I've played where you couldn't assign any control you wanted to a game function.

(Unless you're talking about programming the controller ala the Nostromo Speedpad n52 or something.)

Lots of games don't let you change various things that would be needed to make the controller work with them. An obvious example is the GTA games which all insist on using Z and RZ for the right analog, while the XBox controller uses RX and RY for the right analog and Z for the triggers. Quite a few games have that issue, and even the ones that do let you rebind the axis often won't let you bind axis to button press type functions which leaves the triggers useless. And even when you can rebind everything wherever you like such as with Halo, there is still the issue of the Z triggers being a single azis so you cant fire with both triggers at the same time as the axis only goes one way at once. So while the 360 controller a damn nice peice of hardware, the software is sorely lacking.

 

[Sis]

I'm not convinced that the wireless controller is using the USB connection for anything but power - in otherwords, I'm beginning to think that even when the controller is plugged in with the play and charge kit its still communicating via the wireless (in which case this would prevent its use on the PC with the play and charge).

I tried installing the software the other night on the PC and the wireless controller with play and charge lead did nothing; bought a wired controller and detected immediatly.

This is my understanding. It still communicates wirelessly, even when plugged in.

.Sis

 

[Guden Oden]

There's no conclusive evidence of that, especially as the pad has a full USB interface as I've already stated (numerous times now).

 

[Dave Baumann]

OK, when I said it "did nothing" I mean it saw a device but the software doesn't pick it up as a recognisable anything.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

There's no conclusive evidence of that, especially as the pad has a full USB interface as I've already stated (numerous times now).

Well if you plug in the play and charge kit to PC you can still use the controller to play X360 so it definately acts wireless even when it's plugged to pc.

 

[Guden Oden]

That doesn't mean it doesn't also simultaneously transmit information across the USB interface.

 

[flf]

That doesn't mean it doesn't also simultaneously transmit information across the USB interface.

The fact that a device is detected indicates that there is, indeed, communication. However, just because handshaking of some sort occurs doesn't mean that the controller, itself, is designed to communicate controller information via USB. If I'm not mistaken, all devices that plug in via USB are supposed to at least minimally negotiate and inform the host hub of their power draw and so forth. Otherwise you could cascade several USB unpowered hubs and scads of devices on one channel and pull way more power than the USB channel has to offer.

I believe there is negotiation circuitry that allows the host connection to assign or deny power to a unit based upon available power and required power of all connected devices. Unless current drawn is being dynamically detected in real time... but I doubt this. It would be much easier to simply have a required power draw advertised by any device that connects.

CAVEAT: I'm talking out of my ass, because I don't actually know the first thing about actual USB negotation and/or power allocation. I could well be completely wrong.

(EDIT: Removed "voltage" and replaced with "current")

 

[flf]

Found here.

The bus-powered device will take all their power from the USB bus. The USB device have to report to the Host that it will be drawing an amount of electrical current from the VBus in units of 100mA load. For a low power device, the current consumption cannot exceed 100mA. For a high power device, the current consumption cannot exceed 500mA, however, before being configured, it still has to be drawing less than 100mA current. A suspend current of less than 500 uA is expected from a bus-powered device.

Looks like my guessing was pretty much correct. If charging the wireless pad requires more than 100 mA, then the power draw has to be negotiated with the host bus.

 

[Guden Oden]

Still doesn't preclude that the pad might send movement data in addition to merely doing some initial host negotiation. Considering the guts of the pad pretty much has to be the same as the wired controller it would be rather weird if it DIDN'T send this info...

 

[flf]

Still doesn't preclude that the pad might send movement data in addition to merely doing some initial host negotiation. Considering the guts of the pad pretty much has to be the same as the wired controller it would be rather weird if it DIDN'T send this info...

That would assume that the 360 (or the controller itself) has a way to arbitrate and decide whether to use USB or wireless interface for any given controller that is plugged in? I would think, for simplicity, that the USB cable would be designated for its specific purpose: charging the battery.

Implementing firmware and controller logic to arbitrate between wired or wireless use would be, well, a waste of resources. It's a wireless controller, so my money is on controller functions only being transmitted via that interface.

But if you're terribly curious you can always drop $1000 on a USB snooping box (available on the site I linked that quote from) and then pull apart the packets to see just what is encapsulated. I'd be willing to bet $20 that no pad/stick/button controller data is transmitted via USB at all.

Logically, why would you ever want USB functionality, when having the wireless pad plugged into a USB port inherently means that the controller is close enough to the wireless transciever of the base unit? Having to detect controller self-collisions (two data streams reaching the host from the same controller) is completely pointless.

I agree that "does not preclude" is valid... but in terms of common sense, to do so would mean extra design and implementation expense for no valid reason or purpose, whatsoever. (Unless they are now selling wireless controllers with the option of wired USB communication for those occasionions when your 360 happens to be enclosed in a faraday cage.)

 

[Carl B]

Still doesn't preclude that the pad might send movement data in addition to merely doing some initial host negotiation. Considering the guts of the pad pretty much has to be the same as the wired controller it would be rather weird if it DIDN'T send this info...

Guden I would actually try just using the play n charge kit with it and downloading the wired versions drivers - just to get started.

I actually bought a wired 360 controller for the express purpose of using it as a PC game pad. It was all going smoothly but FEAR refused to recognize the triggers for some reason. So, mission failed. But at the least you could try it out using the drivers MS provides.

They're at: www.windowsgaming.com

I actually doubt it will work since I think it's probably communicating wirelessly at all times as well, but worth a shot at least.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Considering the guts of the pad pretty much has to be the same as the wired controller it would be rather weird if it DIDN'T send this info...

It would also be wierd of the Premium version contained an EEPROM on the motherboard that wasn't found in the core version.

It would also be wierd if the DVD roms in the core and premium had different rom version #'s and weren't interchangeable.

But both these things have been found to be true.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Guden I would actually try just using the play n charge kit with it and downloading the wired versions drivers - just to get started.

Read my first post, already tried.

 

[Guden Oden]

Read my first post, already tried.

Probably different USB IDs that the driver doesn't recognize... That or it really doesn't send any data over USB. Which would be a huge waste I might add. It is quite illogical of MS to not allow the wireless controller to be used on PCs with the charge cable. Considering it is more expensive than the wired unit (particulary when adding the damn cable and rechargeable battery pack), they should be happy to sell these units for use on PCs too.

Anyone have any idea what the extra mystery EEPROM scooby mentioned is for? Where is it on the mobo btw?