Bluetooth Gamepad with Nokia 770
 

Hi guys,

Has anybody tried the Freedom / ENR Bluetooth Gamepad with the 770?

Link to buy: http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/product/6990.htm

Link to somebody that modded it to use an old ps2 gamepad and fit an axim: http://www.flickr.com/photos/3432217...7594051799234/

Looking at the bumph, there are a number of buttons that may be mapped to keys:
- Arrow Keys: Up/down/Left/Right (4-way)
- Custom Keys: 6 (A, B, C, D, Left and Right)
- Start Key: 1

- and the thing supports multikeypress (when used with a nokia phone).

Seems to me that this may be a match for something like MAME or a NES emulator.

Given that it's only forty quid I may lay out for it and try it if nobody else has tried it already.

Seeing as nobody answered I guessed that nobody had any positive or negative feedback...

So I've ordered one. I'll report back according to the results I get!

I'll try the thing with Doom... hmm and maybe I'll try to port a NES emulator or similar. Wonder if a c64 emulator would be any good.

So what's the verdict? Looks interesting but I'm not sure the form factor is right for the 770... is it usable in the "folded up" state?

Would love to see something with an analog pad (or at least 8-way). I got spoiled using my old Tapwave Zodiac (now sadly lost)

Hiya,

It arrived finally! Think it must have been shipped by camel.

Anyhow, it didn't work out of the box with any of the drivers, so I took the kbdd one from here: http://fanoush.webpark.cz/maemo/ and added a version for the bgp100 (which is the model number on the back of the gamepad).

It took a couple of hours to do that coding, and I've just finished, and basically I mapped the D-pad to the Nokia D-pad, one of the right hand buttons to Enter (same as the middle of the nokia d pad), the shoulder buttons mapped to - and +, and the rest I just chose keys - B=B, C=C, D=D, Start=S.

I've tried it with dungeon master, and it makes moving around loads quicker. I could not do the "Time is of the essence" thing just with the nokia d-pad, but I reckon I could with the gamepad.

I've tried it with vectoroids, and it's great. Right now I leave the nokia on the desk in front of me and hold the gamepad "normally".

The gamepad supports holding down one button and pressing another, no problems.

So the verdict is - it's great!

In the UK, it cost me £42.95 (from mobilefun, link above).

Once I've polished up the dungeon master work and properly released it, I'll consider what to do next according to what will work well with this little device.

I reckon this would be top with mame - perfect for pacman.

Or maybe I should have a stab at porting a NES emulator.

I've looked out an old playstation 1 controller, but my software skills exceed my hardware skills, let me say, and when I read about that guy "dremmeling the playstation buttons to give them independent grounds"... well. My parents have independent grounds, but they mean lawns by that.

no way nokia 770 as a gamer device! what potenial does it have? do you think the graphics can be better than say... a nintendo DS?

Clearly the 770 is not designed to be a gaming device; the hardware buttons are just not made for it.

The 770 is a physically small computer; an experiment to discover what we do with it, and how with learn to live with the limitations and how to stretch beyond those limitations.

With respect to gaming - because the 770 is a linux PC, whatever games you can run on a 200MHz desktop PC you may have a stab at running on the 770.

Geekdoc and Tak have made good progress with getting MAME onto 770 - see the Gaming forum. Seems like the 770 MAME is restricted to the simpler games (graphics < DS)

There is an emulator for the Atari ST by fpp; graphics for Atari games... probably are equivalent to DS. Maybe. But the DS is dedicated to games; probably a good idea to have a DS if you want to play lots of games.

I'm considering thinking about porting VICE (commodore 64 emulator) - but I haven't thought of a single really really good game I'd want to play... Obviously I love paradroid, uridium etc but can't see a real reason.

I'm also considering porting UltraFCE NES - purely for the Elite port for that box.

I ported the linux version of the windows remake of Dungeon Master/Chaos Strikes back to the 770; this is a fantastic (98% in the magazines of the time) old Atari game that plays beautifully on the 770.

I would suggest that the Nokia 770 is great for casual gaming... but it is not a gaming device.

The 770 is whatever its owner wants it to be. It will be nice to see what else the cottage industry develops for it. Maybe a little case that snaps on and adds better game controllers, like was done for the Gameboy. No reason it shouldn't be tried IMO.

Oh, and nice work, mlvj.

gamepad howto
 

I am interested in getting the gamepad for use with the nokia 770, I have a couple of questions for you.

How hard was it to make it work? was it just a config file or what did you do?

Does the 770 fit into the gamepad or is it to big?

Now that mame is working this would be a nice addition

Hiya,

I had to write a driver for it, as described above. I modified an existing bluetooth keyboard driver to include this gamepad.

Once I'd done that, to turn it on or off is done via a menu selection.

The 770 does not fit into the gamepad; if in bed, I balance the 770 on my knees and hold the gamepad "normally". If near a table, I stick the 770 on the table and again hold the gamepad "normally".

I note that the PS3 controllers are bluetooth... who wants to buy one and send it to me so that I may write a driver for it? :)

Did you post that driver anywhere? Can I get a copy??

Thanks,

I emailed the source code back to the original developers, but they wanted it in a diff format. I have not got round to figuring out what the means *blush*

I have also been pushing the vendor for a proper technical specification - I reverse engineered what I did. No luck though.

So I do need to allocate a couple of hours to do the diff and send that off; in the meantime if you wanted a copy of the binary that I use, pm me and I'll email it to you.

Thanks for the gamepad code
 

This is working great, I wish I could use my keyboard at the same time, but its not important. I just got it in the mail today. I had it working very quickly, I appreciate the code. I still want a copy of the source if you ever fire up your other computer. I love that in mame it does not matter right left up down, they are always correct if you use the gamepad regardless of which way you display it on the 770.

Scratch that I can use the keyboard and the gamepad at the same time, if I connect keyboard and then turn on the gamepad kbbd


This is really cool, I will spend some boring time in the computer room playing moonpatrol.

Thanks again

Again nice work mlvj. Did you get the update to the developers the way they wanted it?

I will do it I promise ! full life at mo. haven't put big pc on for ages!

I hear ya. Life can be a pain in the ***, but it beats the alternative. ;)

Re: Bluetooth Gamepad with Nokia 770
 

Here is working binary and source code provided by mlvj. I would like to thank him ;) . I really enjoyed playing moon patrol. This will allow you to use a bgp100 gamepad with the nokia 770.

Have Fun!!!

Re: Bluetooth Gamepad with Nokia 770
 

Great work! Thanks!

As soon as i can scrape-together the money, i'm getting one

Have you taken the unit apart? I'm thinking of making a wooden 'case' for this that would around the 770. Basically a block of quality wood rounded on the sides routed-out to fit the 770, and routed out to fit the electronics of the bt gamepad.

Re: Bluetooth Gamepad with Nokia 770
 

If you want to integrate it you may also consider usb. XBOX (not 360) gaming controllers are usb and are quite cheap ($15?) nowadays and have linux drivers in kernel. They also contain some space inside to fit memory cards so maybe battery could fit inside if you rip out memory card slots, maybe even four AA rechargeables that make ~5V in total to power usb and controller. You could also tie/glue spare N770 cover to it to hold n770 securely.

Also usb may have faster response rate/better latency than bluetooth and buttons and controls on xbox gamepad are much better (and analog).

It will be a bit heavier though. The original MS controller is also quite big but there are smaller ones. It won't be exactly mobile but good to use in house.

I have this idea since the time I have N770 but never actually tried. Could be great to play Duke3D (runs adequately on 200Mhz Tapwave Zodiac but could be a bit better) on N770.

Re: Bluetooth Gamepad with Nokia 770
 

Anybody moved this forward?

I now have a PS3 ... has anybody figured out how to pair with n800/770 and written a driver for it?

I can have a stab if nobody else has!

Re: Bluetooth Gamepad with Nokia 770
 

Heres a short list of some of my childhood favs...

Aliens
Potty pigeon
Park Patrol
Action Biker
Questron
Winter/Summer Games
H.E.R.O.
Yie Ar Kung Fu
Transformers
Space Taxi


Oh and I think someone has already ported a C64 emu or started to. I believe I mentioned this same controller in that thread.


Edit: Nevermind, I see you strated this thread way back in 2006 now.