Ctroller 3DS

ctroller

ctroller lets you use your 3DS as an input device for your Linux system via the uinput kernel module. It consists of a client that runs on your 3DS, continously streaming the 3DS input data to a server on your PC. The server exposes a virtual device to your system, interpretes the data it receives and writes it to a event node under /dev/input/event* or similar.

Prerequisites

You will need DevkitARM and the ctrulib to build the 3DS component. Building the 3DS CIA requires bannertool and makerom to be in your $PATH. To run the server, the uinput kernel module needs to be loaded:

$ modprobe uinput

Building

Run make to build both components, or enter either of the 3DS/linux subdirectories to build them individually by running make there. You can use the debug target for development.

Installation

If you are using Arch Linux, install ctroller-git from the AUR. Or use ctroller-bin if you do not want to set up the 3DS toolchain.

1. Install the server to your system by running make install. This is equivalent to:

$ cd linux
$ make install DESTDIR="" BINDIR="/usr/bin"

You can set DESTDIR to a install to a different location, i.e. make DESTDIR="/my/fakeroot/environment" installs ctroller in /my/fakeroot/environment/usr/bin. 2. Download the latest release of the 3DS binaries. Or you can build them yourself:

$ cd 3DS
$ make release

3. Install ctroller.cia with the CIA-manager of your choice. If you want to install the 3DSX-executable: Copy ctroller.{3dsx,smdh} to /3ds/ctroller/ on your SD card. You can also directly upload the application to your 3DS using [[./3DS/upload.sh|upload.sh]] (do not blindly execute unknown scrips, I'm not responsible if this accidentally deletes your SD card or unfreezes your fridge). To do so, start a FTP server (such as ftpd) on your 3DS on port 5000, then run:

$ cd 3DS
$ make upload DSIP=<IP of your 3DS here>

This requires ftp to be installed on your system. 4. Create a directory ctroller in the root of your SD card 5. Place [[./3DS/ctroller.cfg|3DS/ctroller.cfg]] in there and replace the IP with the one of your PC. (The config file should now be at sdmc:/ctroller/ctroller.cfg)

Running

Start the server by running:

$ ./linux/ctroller

Usage:

-d --daemonize execute in background
-h --help print this help text
-p --port=<num> listen on port 'num' (defaults to 15708)
-u --uinput-device=<path> uinput character device (defaults to /dev/uinput)

Then launch the ctroller.3dsx application on your 3DS using a homebrew launcher of your choice. For development purposes, the 3DS-Makefile includes a run target that uses 3dslink to upload and run the application using the Homebrew Menu NetLoader.

Notes

This program is intended to be used in a private network. For simplicity, the server right now accepts any connection on it's port, which might pose a security risk if others can send data to it. This will be changed in future releases. For now, you probably shouldn't be using this in a public network.