Light Gun Commando: LCD-compatible light gun support for original console hardware? @benryves
Ben Ryves writes:
I do enjoy a good light gun game. Unfortunately, when it comes to playing them on home consoles you usually need to use a CRT television for the gun controllers to work. I have a CRT or two at my disposal but I’m well aware they won’t last forever and they’re not really the most convenient devices even when they are working at their best.
Bearing this in mind I decided to try to find a way to get light guns working on LCD TVs… More recently I was made aware of other IR-based light gun solutions such as GUN4IR from Boojakascha’s YouTube video on the project. I thought I should give the Wii remote another chance!
If I was going to use Wii remotes then I’d need something that could speak Bluetooth. The ESP32 microcontroller is cheap and provides a system-on-a-chip with Bluetooth (and a corresponding software stack) that seemed somewhat easy to get into. There was a simple Bluetooth HID host demo that served as a good starting point, and once I’d got the Wii remote paired with the ESP32 and transferring HID reports I translated the C# prototype code I’d written into C and got the ESP32 talking to the simulated Guncon instead of my PC.
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