Galaxy Rider is a space horse riding simulation game made possible by combining a vertical Gametrak and a GE wireless doorbell.
TECHNOLOGY:
Gametrak is a motion-sensing controller that came out in 2004. It was popular in its own right and some 300,000 units were sold after the release. What I love about this controller is the spring-less joystick and the retractable wire mechanism that makes motion-tracking possible for this controller. It’s unlike anything in the market at the time. When I opened up the Gametrak for the first time, the interior is beautifully designed, it was straight-forward, modular, and totally p-comp friendly. There is also a Gametrak version 2 controller that packs the retractable mechanism and joystick into 1 small and detachable module, but it is only available in Europe.
GE wireless doorbell is probably one of the cheapest solutions for quick and dirty wireless buttons. My game controller extraordinaire, Kaho Abe, gave me the initial insight. She uses the setup in a version of her awesome game – Hit Me!. I eventually got the pin on the doorbell PCB figured out by trial and error.
LOG:
4/23/2013 Attempted to read PS2 USB peripheral Gametrak with Processing and proCONTROLL library on both my Mac and PC and it didn’t work well. The controller shows up as a USB device and proCONTROLL is able to get the details on Joysticks and Buttons. However, the data doesn’t seem to update correctly, I also tested it in Controllermate and got the same result, the buttons, and joysticks show up fine but not reacting. This happened to me before with other USB electrics and it was mostly a JAVA serial issue due to rxtx version difference/incompatibility. Since I am going to incorporate wireless buttons, I will just hack the controller and use Arduino to handle the serial communication.
4/27/2013 Open up Gametrak and wire the pots to Arduino. I found out something more interesting during the autopsy. I realized that the PCB actually has the option to switch the serial mode to PC or XBOX. Apparently, there are different versions of this circuit board out there and luckily the one I have (REV2) has the options visible on the board. I soldered the contacts together for PC (pink circled) and now it works perfectly fine with my Processing + proCONTROLL + Unity 3D setup.
