joycontrol-gui

Emulate Nintendo Switch Controllers over Bluetooth.

Tested on Ubuntu 19.10, and with Raspberry Pi 3B+ and 4B Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)

Features

Emulation of JOYCON_R, JOYCON_L and PRO_CONTROLLER. Able to send:

• button commands
• stick state
• nfc data (WIP)

Installation

• Install dependencies

Ubuntu: Install the dbus-python and libhidapi-hidraw0 packages

sudo apt install python3-dbus libhidapi-hidraw0

Arch Linux Derivatives: Install the hidapi and bluez-utils-compat(AUR) packages

• Clone the repository and install the joycontrol package to get missing dependencies (Note: Controller script needs super user rights, so python packages must be installed as root). In the joycontrol folder run:

sudo pip3 install .

• Consider to disable the bluez "input" plugin, see #8

GUI usage

first run the joycontrol_gui.py file with sudo:

sudo python3 joycontrol.gui.py

and navigate to Change Grip/Order on your switch and wait for the program to connect

once connected the program will print out the bluetooth mac address (not available from the system settings) of the switch in the terminal, copy it and go to the config.py file and set the switchMac variable to your switch's mac address:

switchMac = "AA:AA:AA:AA:AA"
# replace AA:AA:AA:AA:AA with your mac address

after configuring this you dont need to use sudo anymore and the program will automatically connect to your switch upon execution

config.py is also where you change the keybindings of the program. examples of how to change it keybinding can be found in the file itself

Issues

• Some bluetooth adapters seem to cause disconnects for reasons unknown, try to use an usb adapter instead
• Incompatibility with Bluetooth "input" plugin requires a bluetooth restart, see #8
• It seems like the Switch is slower processing incoming messages while in the "Change Grip/Order" menu. This causes flooding of packets and makes pairing somewhat inconsistent. Not sure yet what exactly a real controller does to prevent that. A workaround is to use the reconnect option after a controller was paired once, so that opening of the "Change Grip/Order" menu is not required.
• ...

Resources

Nintendo_Switch_Reverse_Engineering

console_pairing_session