Trackpoint / pointing stick as a real joystick

[rubinhood]

Hey guys. I'm new on the forums and may have a utility to share but only if there's sufficient interest.

There's a neat little joystick utility + driver package out there called Parallel Port Joystick. It's not actively developed any more. It lets you install a virtual joystick driven by various devices such as mouse, keyboard, and gadgets attached to your ports. It has a nice programming interface that lets you send arbitrary data to the joystick driver.

I'm no C programmer but using the sample program provided by the developer of this great utility, I managed to turn the Trackpoint stick into a device that Windows (2000 and later) sees as a real joystick. It shows up in Control Panel / Game controllers as such. You need to toggle between the joystick and mouse modes. It worked on one other non-thinkpad laptop that also has a pointing stick.

Post a note if you could use this utility. The setup is cumbersome and I wouldn't be able to actively support or develop the tool but maybe someone else can.

[yak]

Sure, post it and let us try it out.

I know the Parallel Port Joystick driver. I remember writing a small program in Python redirecting the APS accelerometer data to the driver. That was back when I had a T41. With that I could simulate a joystick by tilting the laptop. Coincidently I also haven't published it anywhere.

So, make a good example and publish your work.


BTW, does the PPJoy work on Vista/7?

[yak]

Just tried installing it on Windows 7 32bit. I got the "unsigned driver" warning twice during installation but it works. I just downloaded some joystick test program and my accelerometer script works on my T60.

[thinkpadrobert]

Hey wow! That sounds really awesome both of you! rubinhood - can I please try your trackpoint mod, and yak, can I please try your accelerometer mod?

I'm using an x61 tablet.

[rubinhood]

Hey guys. Here's the "TPJoy" package:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/s9tu9bq8d15kcy9/TPJoy1.0.zip
(Updated hosting page)

It sucks that I can't attach files to my post in this forum...

I included a README file, please start with that. Install Parallel Port Joystick first, add a Virtual Joystick, and follow the steps in the README. Everything else necessary to use the utility and play with the sources is also included. Good luck. There are no warranties of any kind. If you enhance this utility in any meaningful way, please share your work here and leave the README file intact.

(I never received any topic reply notifications, I wonder why that is...)

Update: if you're concerned about the files in the archive, all you need are the sources (the .c and the .h file) and you can download the rest (Parallel Port Joystick, MingW) from their homepages and compile TPJoy yourself.

[thinkpadrobert]

Thanks so much Rubinhood! I tried it out and got it working in windows 7. It looks as if you've captured the mouse pointer and done math to get the behaviour right. I haven't tried it with any games but I did test with the windows calibration tool and found that if the trackpoint wasn't pushed hard to the sides the pointer was jumping around a fair bit. Calibration definitely helped though.

Would it help if I asked the board admins to enable attachments for this thread?

[rubinhood]

Thanks for the good feedback!

Would it help if I asked the board admins to enable attachments for this thread?

If you did that I could attach the package to a post in this topic.

[thinkpadrobert]

It's probably easier to post it on rapidshare.

You might be interested to know that ppjoy now includes a mouse to joystick program that works pretty well with the trackpoint.

Since yak didn't post his accelerometer mod, I've started working on one in C#. I'm reading the accelerometer data successfully, but I'm struggling to pass the data into into ppjoy, so any help would be great. Perhaps I could have a look at your source code?

[thinkpadrobert]

Well, I've made a program that'll send accelerometer data into ppjoy!!! I went back to the ppjoy IOCTLsample, read the code from the SDL accelerometer at http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/ma ... tpaps.html, and managed to put the pieces together despite knowing not very much about windows programming. Thank god the sample code was out there! If you're interested, let me know. Now I can steer cars in racing games by tilting my thinkpad! Awesome!

[Radioguy]

Thanks so much. It works great on Win7 32-bit.

[rubinhood]

You might be interested to know that ppjoy now includes a mouse to joystick program that works pretty well with the trackpoint.

PPJoy always had that. The problem is, that Mouse to Joystick component doesn't autocenter the joystick. So it doesn't feel like a joystick at all. For example, if you position the trackpoint to the extreme top left, then release it, it won't go back to the center when you use the standard PPJoy component. That was the reason to develop the TPJoy utility.

Did I miss something...?

BTW great job integrating PPJoy with the accelerometer!

[maaslo]

Can you please reupload the TPjoy utility and the accelerometer extension.

[rubinhood]

Here ya go:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/s9tu9bq8d ... Joy1.0.zip