Questions About Awesome Controls

Okay, so the deal is that I have software on my PSP that turns it into a gaming controller, and my team thinks that it’s a pretty good idea to try to use that as the controller for the robot. Can anyone tell me if this is illegal, I went over everything and i don’t think that it is.
Also, if anyone else has had a similar idea, could you help me out? I’m a beginner programmer.

Its legal but very difficult to do. Many people have tried but it just comlpicates the programing. But if you decide to try it, give me an update on how well it works. If you have any more questions just ask.

This would be a serious undertaking, and probably not something that is achievable in time for the 2010 competition season. However, it would be pretty fantastic to see in 2011 - go for it!

Does the PSP have any wireless functionality? WiFi / Bluetooth / etc? If so, that is a non-starter, as they are very sensitive to a potential “driver in the stands” hazard.

You would need to communicate with it only with USB or the PSoC board this year, I don’t know the rules for next year.

If you don’t want this to be competition legal, there are all sorts of possibilities. We were driving robots around using the Nintendo DS back in 2007, and it was a lot of fun.

Good luck!

The PSP has a USB port and a toggle switch to hard-disable wireless communication. So you… could?

The PSP is also notable for having a pretty bad control system, namely, a joystick that attracts the same colorful language as the pre-2009 kit joysticks. It would be “cool” but much easier and better for your robot / team to implement a PS2-clone controller (Logitech USB gamepad, etc).

well how my PSP controller is is i connect the PSP to the driver station via USB while running homebrew software on my And i can go to the control panel on the driver station or on any windows computer and check which buttons are working and everything. So it does actually have Wifi but not bluetooth. it has some adhoc or whatever where it only connects to other psps. but i already have software to make it into a working gaming controller. i’ve already used it to play some PC games. so it totally works. i’m just wondering about how exactly i can program the buttons to do stuff like make this button do this action. there are 12 buttons 1-12 buttons, the directional buttons are the x and y axis and the analog stick has eight possible angles.

I was inquiring on something this and it is legal so long as you connect via usb.
You can use the window psp usb driver that adds the psp as a controller. The driver station will pick up on it just like any other windows joystick. You should be able to open the camera view on the screen using the http viewer, but not sure if the psp will be compatible with the viewer. This should be pretty easy. I’ll try it out and let you know how it goes.

Likewise, you absolutely positively MUST turn off the wireless connectivity of the PSP.