CD-i Controller Library

Arduino Library for CD-i controllers The code is released under the GNU General Public License.

Summary

This library can be used to communicate as a controller to a CD-i player. It uses the SoftwareSerial library for serial communication.

Changelog

Installation

For installation see: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries#importing-a-zip-library or simply place the CdiController.cpp and CdiController.h files in the sketch folder.

Library Usage

Hardware Setup

In order to communicate with the CD-i player, the controller port pins “RTS” (pin 7) and “RXD” (pin 2) need to be connected to a digital input on the Arduino board.

Software Usage

In your sketch you declare a controller using CdiController Cdi(<RTS_PIN>, <PIN_RXD>, <DEVICE_MODE>);, where you pass which pins are connected to the CD-i controller port RTS and RXD pins, as well as the device type.

The library itself is initialised by calling the CdiController.Init() function (preferable in your sketch’ setup() section. Within the loop() section of your sketch you need to call the CdiController.Task() function which handles the connection and identification to the CD-i player.

Devices

The CD-i player supports different kind of input devices. Four modes are supported by the library, passing in the correct mode to the library during declaration:

• Relative Coordinate Devices – Device Mode RELATIVE: For example Mice, Trackballs
• Maneuvering Devices – Device Mode MANUEVER: For example Joysticks, Joypads
• Absolute Coordinate Devices – Device Mode ABSOLUTE: For example Graphics Tablets, Light Pens
• Absolute Screen Devices – Device Mode SCREEN: For example Touch Screens, Light Pens

Input Modes

The libary provides two functions for transmitting data to the CD-i player:

• JoyInput(x, y, button_1, button_2) For RELATIVE and MANEUVER modes. X and Y specify the relative movement since the last update, values can be between -128 and 127. Button 1 and Button 2 are boolean values indicating if these buttons are depressed or not.
• PenInput(x, y, button_1, button_2, pen_down) For ABSOLUTE and SCREEN modes. X and Y specify the absolute location of the cursor on screen, going from 0 (Outermost left, top of the screen) to 1023 (Outermost right, bottom of the screen). Button 1, Button 2 and Pen Down are boolean values indicating if these buttons are depressed or not.

For both of these functions a boolean value is returned indicating if data has actually been sent to the CD-i player.

Examples

Most of the examples make use of an USB Host Shield (https://chome.nerpa.tech/arduino_usb_host_shield_projects/) to use a controller as input, then converting this to a CD-i joystick. The following examples are included:

• AnalogStick Uses an analog stick connected to the analog inputs of the Arduino as input for a CD-i Maneuvering Device. Clicking the stick serves as button 1.
• MagicNS Uses a Switch Pro controller connected to a Magic NS adapter, connected to a USB Host Shield as input for a CD-i Maneuvering Device. Both the left stick and d-pad are mapped to movement. With the left/right triggers a speed can be selected.
• WiiUPro Uses a WiiU Pro controller connected to Bluetooth adapter, connected to a USB Host Shield as input for a CD-i Maneuvering Device. Both the left stick and d-pad are mapped to movement. With the left/right triggers a speed can be selected.
• WiiUProAbsolute Uses a WiiU Pro controller connected to Bluetooth adapter, connected to a USB Host Shield as input for a CD-i Absolute Coordinate Device. The range of the left stick is mapped to the full screen, the right stick provides a smaller offset for fine tuning.

Known Issues

A simulated controller may not function as expected in all games. For example using the Joypad examples with “The Apprentice” game, the running animation keeps restarting and also the maximum running speed is never reached. This might have something to do with a delay between packets sent to the CD-i player.

ToDo

• Add CD-i Keyboard support (once I can find proper documentation)

THANKS

This project is a work of TwBurn (The World of CD-i member) USB2CDi project.
It is still under development for better compatibility with the already working accessories and future USB devices.
His work is also available at GitHub.

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