Wondering if anyone has experimented with using controllers (PS/xbox/other) to do anything other than gaming ?
Operating parts of multi million dollar navy ships, according to articles. Not joking
Also submarines, when heading down to see the Titanic
Because they’re designed for controlling and people are familiar with them/can learn easily
Also helps standardize when taking bids from multiple companies
I wonder how many spares they keep around
They use it to control a submarine
The Steam Deck and Steam controller have touchpads which make them totally usable as a mouse for normal PC usage like web browsing
Hell, not optimal by any means but I even had a serviceable for light usage setup using analog sticks and a mapping program before Steam Input came out. Much better with the trackpads
Disneyland uses Steam Decks to remote control droids in Star Wars land.
ukraine was doing the same but to kill russians lol
In college I was on the robotics team. We used several different controllers to drive various robots. I made a little tank steering robot that was remote controlled from a PC with an Xbox 360 controller. I later rebuilt it to use a Raspberry Pi and added a pan/tilt mount for the camera controlled from the controller’s D-pad. We also used a Wiimote to control our competition robot, using the accelerometer for steering which was pretty cool. This was in like 2010 when motion controls were still a relatively new and cool thing.
They are the OG electric vibrators for people who can’t buy vibrators.
A vibrator was one of the very first patented electrical devices. 1880. It predates the first patent for the first electric iron by a decade.
I didn’t know this!
They can be quite useful in hobbyist robotics
Actually yes.
I worked on a crew building pole barns in Colorado. For anyone unaware you basically dig a bunch of holes, set wooden columns in them and pour concrete around them, then hang the rest of the structure off those columns.
We had a dude that swore by the xbox 360 controller. We tried to get him to use a framing hammer to drive his nails but he would only use that 360 controller.
We also did a lot of acid. If you see a weird barn in Colorado, look for the microsoft logo pressed into the wood next to the siding nails.
So he literally, physically hammered the xbox controller into the nail?
He hammered the nails into the boards
In Ghostbusters 2 they rigged up a Nintendo joystick to drive the statue of liberty through the streets of NYC. Does that count?
I am working on getting my XBox controller to work with a Raspberry Pi/Astroberry setup to control my telescope.
Some guys I used to know used them to make music, as some sort of midi controller.
Hacksmith on youtube uses playstation controllers for remote operation of their giant mechs.
For FRC robotics competitions, we use Xbox controllers to control the robot
All a controller is is just some buttons on a wire in a portable form factor.
If you want to use it for Excel, you can.
I used one on a Raspberry Pi to drive a self build remote car wirelessly.
We had a subcontractor drive a wired camera mounted drone through the sewers with it. Some use LIDAR or SONAR instead of just cameras. Game controllers are pretty common for these.
