Watch a Steam Controller Skitter Itself to Its Charge Puck

Watch A Steam Controller Skitter Itself To Its Charge Puck | Hackaday

Hacks don’t have to be practical but it helps if they are educational or clever or amusing, as [Ray Foss] demonstrates with his auto-docking Steam Controller.

It’s an open-source web application that combines a camera, a Steam Controller, and some clever software for the sole purpose of saving the user from the tyranny of having to manually set the controller onto its magnetic charging puck. Instead, one can simply lay the controller down nearby and let the computer do the rest of the work.

First one fires up the web interface, ensures a webcam has a good top-down view of both the charging puck and the controller, connects wirelessly to the controller, then clicks a few points on the camera view to tell the system where things are.

After that, the system buzzes the controller’s haptic feedback motors to make it skitter across the desktop until — guided by the camera and implementing obstacle avoidance — it docks successfully with its magnetic charging puck.

It may not be super practical and may even seem a bit Rube Goldberg-esque, but it’s fun and demonstrates a few interesting things. One is moving a controller via slip-stick friction by asymmetrically pulsing the feedback motors. Another is automatically reducing the pulse frequency to make smaller movements when it gets close to the charging puck, for finer control.

The computer vision part also ignores anything in expected cable locations, removing the need to deal with them algorithmically. WebHID via the browser takes care of talking to the controller, and confirming a successful docking by watching messages to detect when charging has begun.

If this seems a bit familiar, it’s because this project was inspired by the work of [Very Lazy Pixels] which we covered previously.

10 thoughts on “Watch A Steam Controller Skitter Itself To Its Charge Puck”

LOLed at the hack :-) but need to comment because of the keyboard.

Is that a 30years old AT keyboard with the big 5pin DIN plug?

I think I had the same – may actually still be somewhere (I saved a few old KBs).

Probably not as klickaty-clackity as the old IBMs but pretty close.

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derailed by detail. exactly the first thing i noticed.

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Its very likely an IBM Model M (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard)

Which is THE klickaty-clackity old IBM keyboard :)

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hmm – then possibly my memory is blurred by seeing a bunch of pictures Model-Ms over the years because I’m sure mine wasn’t/isn’t from IBM. -> Need to look for it.

Had one where the keyboard cable had two plugs – 5pin DIN on one end and a RJ45-like but flatter with plastic clips on the sides instead of one on top on the other end.

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you did remember right, that "RJ45 like" connector is an SDL connector and that exactly what an model M uses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shielded_data_link_connector

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I had a coworker that had a USB-enabled Model M. Apparently, there is a company out there somewhere doing conversions of old new stock or recreations.

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The company is Unicomp, and they’re still making new keyboards based upon their original Model-M designs.

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Mine looks similar, I run an OG cherry keyboard.

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If you are going to make it walk across the desk, it deserves googly eyes at the least.

Amazing work tho

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The relevant videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-8S8zk4dn8 (shows manual driving)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hwq-xr2fDBU (shows automatic)

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Watch a Steam Controller Skitter Itself to Its Charge Puck

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