reading usb game console directly with usb pic

[cagacug]

Hi People,

In different project I am trying to read the joystick data from a series of usb gamepad, nothing to do with PC. In datasheets and also in forum there always a PC in the senario, so in this project I gues no descriptors and enumarations (I assume that I can list the report data of the gamepad!)

Can you give any roadmap for this project? Since all the examples I found concetrade on connecting with PC. Any examples of connecting the gamepad only to the PIC? and also do you think a usb hub is enough to read more than one gamepad with the pic??

Thanks,

[SherpaDoug]

I looked into connecting a USB mouse to a PIC a few years ago and i concluded that using a PIC as a USB host was not practical. Maybe some of the newer PICs might be able to do it but it won't be easy.
_________________
The search for better is endless. Instead simply find very good and get the job done.

[Ttelmah]

The 'easiest' way to do this, would be to use an external chip, which has host abilities. The FTDI Vinculum, is a 'classic', for this kind of thing.
Basically PICs are all 'slave' devices.

Best Wishes

[cagacug]

Thank you for your comments.

But if the device is definite, I mean for just one device ( I think there are some programs that you can learn all the tables as they sneak the comm between the device and the PC ) do yo think it is still non efective?

I tried to find some commands like "read data" but could not find any? Maybe this would be a big problem.

[Guest]

Seriously, I'm afraid it just isn't going to work.
Part of the 'design' of USB, in order to keep the peripherals relatively simple, makes the requirements on the host, quite complex. Even if you are dealing with a very simple subset of USB, and negotiating with a single known slave device, the host has to trigger quite a complex sequence, to ensure that the slave is initialised, and responding correctly. To do this without hardware support, would be a b*&tard...

Best Wishes