The work in this directory is geared towards a completely custom firmware for the Steam Controller. The primary purpose is for this firmware to act as a development environment for interfacing with the peripherals available on the Steam Controller hardware. This firmware also acts as a jumping off point for using the Steam Controller hardware for other purposes (i.e. to act as a wired controller for the Nintendo Switch).
See the OpenSteamController Project for the source and additional details.
This section outlines tools, efforts, etc. that make the OpenSteamController Firmware possible.
This is an NXP provided library for easy access to LPC11U37 processor peripherals, etc. This was obtained from NXP's website under the lpcopen_v2_03_lpcxpresso_nxp_lpcxpresso_11u37h package. It also seems Valve is leveraging this library in the Steam Controller's official firmware.
The custom firwmare in this Subproject is based on the Steam Controller Reverse Engineering Subproject. See this project for details on how the firmware supported by Valve works, as well as details on the hardware.
The purpose of this project is a workspace to learn about how USB HIDs work, specifically in the context of attempting to use the LPCXpresso11U37H Evaluation board OM13074 to act as a known commercial controllers (i.e. Nintendo Switch Pro Controller).
The idea is to merge what is learned here into the OpenSteamController Project and close down this project when it no longer contains unique information.
The custom firmware for the LPC11U37 has been developed in the LPCXpresso IDE (v8.2.2 Build 650 2016-09-09). The IDE can is available from www.nxp.com. A Free Edition license that should be adequate for further development is available through NXP.
See the Loading Firmware document for details on how to backup the current firmware and load new firmware onto the controller.
Open the LPCXpresso IDE and import projects OpenSteamController and lpc_chip_11uxx_lib.
A project can be imported into LPCXpresso by selecting: File -> Import -> General -> Existing Project into Workspace -> Select root directory
Right Click on a Projet and select "Build Project" to build.
For a more in depth explanation check out the following video:
Open Steam Controller: Building the Firmware
There are two primary modes this firmware can be compiled with: DEV_BOARD_FW and SWITCH_WIRED_POWERA_FW. See OpenSteamController/inc/fw_cfg.h in order to configure which behavior the firmware is built with.
When FIRMWARE_BEHAVIOR is set to DEV_BOARD_FW the firmware that is built will turn the Steam Controller into a development board-like system. The USB interfaces acts as a serial device, which presents a command line interface for interrogating different peripherals on the Steam Controller.
If you connect the Steam Controller via USB to a PC once this firmware is loaded you should see a serial device appear (i.e. in macOS you will see something like /dev/tty.usbmodem1781, in Ubuntu you will see something like /dev/ttyACM0, in Windows you will see something like "USB Serial Device (COM3)"). Using any number of programs with serial communication capabilities (i.e. screen, TeraTerm, putty) should allow you to access the command line interface (i.e. screen /dev/tty.usbmodem1781). Once you are connected the 'help' command is a great place to start to see what you can check out on the controller.
The intention of this build configuration is to learn more about the peripherals and interfaces on the Steam Controller. This also provides a platform to monitor controller states to verify or feed data back into Reverse Engineering simulations to observe different behaviors.
See the video below for a demonstration of this firmware build:
Open Steam Controller: Development Board
When FIRMWARE_BEHAVIOR is set to SWITCH_WIRED_POWERA_FW the firmware that is built will cause the Steam Controller to behave as a wired Nintendo Switch controller. Specifically the controller is pretending to be a Wired Nintendo Switch controller by PowerA.
If you load this firmware onto a Steam Controller and then connect the controller to the Nintendo Switch via a USB cable you can use the controller with your Switch. Have fun, but note this was created for educational purposes and probably will not perform as well as an officially licensed Nintendo product.
See the video below for a demonstration of this firmware build:
Open Steam Controller: Nintendo Switch
See TODO for details.