Video: Nokia N900 Runs SNES Emulator via PS3 Sixaxis Controller

WOW this is really something

I was wondering is it possible to do the same with the iphone ?

Use the ps3 controller in the iphone ?

Reply

haha, cool, I'll try it out tomorrow!

@veggav: no way, you can't, the iPhone is a crappy piece of hardware that is extremely closed because Apple loves to control everything in their products, so you can do nothing with it, you can't even install an application if it's not pre-approved by Apple!

With the N900, you are free to do whatever you want with it! Nokia gives you even instructions on how to flash it with your own custom firmware if you want to.. and now people have already been able to install different operating systems on the N900 : Android in a dual boot! Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Debian in chroot, and Mer (custom linux distribution specific for Maemo devices) and even Mac OS X 10.3!!

IPhone doesn't come close to being able to do anything like that...

Reply

A Jailbroken iPhone could do this if someone wanted to take the time to get it working.

Reply

You can certainly install any application you want on a jailbroken iphone, yes, but you can't install a kernel-mode driver because you simply can't... you don't even have access to the kernel in order to compile a driver for it...

I know what i'm talking about, I did some reverse engineering on the iphone and let me tell you that it's not an easy task to make it do what you want!

Also, try googling for "iphone linux" and see how much work and how many *years* it has taken groups of developers to be able to get some kind of semi functioning linux system on the iphone...

The iphone is a closed system and it's a piece of crap in my opinion, and I think the only reason it has sold more than 10 units is because the world is plagued by stupid Apple fanboys that will buy anything Apple throws their way...

Reply

Here's the guide link for the curious: http://tomasz.sterna.tv/2010/02/play-games-on-nokia-n900-with-ps3-sixaxis-controller/

but i tell you it is not as easy as it looks

got a working connection between phone and ds but no working buttons

Reply

Thanks for the guide link crckmc, I have added it to the main article and +Rep!

Reply

Ah nice, he updated the guide, it's much easier now.. the thing is that you need to update the kernel in order to add mouse and joystick support in the kernel, so he used to flash the device with a new kernel, but now it seems to be .install-able (basically, you click on that green "install" arrow from the N900 and it will install everything for you, you then just have to reboot the device and it's done!).

The hard part is to pair the controller with the n900, since you can't connect it by usb in order to pair it, like you would with the PS3. But it doesn't seem to hard to do imho.

Thanks for the link, I'll try it and let you know how it went

Reply

Iphone is not a piece of crap. It can be closed but it does the "regular" tasks very well, has the best touch screen on the market. I've already saw nokia touch screen and it does suck.

if you want to develop something I think nokia is the way, if you want a very friendly user telephone, iphone is the one.
Iphone interface is just the best up to date.

But I agree, apple marketing is just ridiculous, they are calling the whole world stupid. Ipad is just a confirmation of that.
But I still enjoy my iphone, except the battery life.

Reply

hehe, let's not turn this into a iphone vs. nokia flamewar.. I've used the iphone for over 2 years (since the very beginning of the iphone). I had received it as a gift, and I had no choice but to use that because I didn't have anything better (and once you're used to a 400$ phone, the 10$ phones I could afford weren't really an option).

So I know exactly what the iphone is like and how it works, but I couldn't stand it anymore.. it doesn't do the "regular" things correctly, everything in it is crippled.. I never used safari because it was too slow and hard to use, I never used the camera because it was crappy and too simplistic.. I never used the ipod because I personally don't listen to music.. so really, the only thing I used it for is : phone, sms, and the occasional notes.

it did the job, but was really slow and not that great. When I tried to install new apps and do something else with it, I realized that everything was just crappy, and the fact that you can't run more than one app at once really made the device worthless.

I don't really agree about the user interface being the best, most user friendly.. I think they just make people think that.. with their whole marketing stuff and the world's attitude, whenever apple does something, it is tagged as "the best UI ever", without even actually trying it.
Yes, it's simple, yes, it doesn't take a long time for grandma/grandpa to know how to use it, but that doesn't make it "the best user interface", it just makes it "the best user interface for morons", and in my case, I'm no grandma/grandpa, so in my opinion, their UI sucks.

Have a look at the n900's user interface (screenshots/videos), I think it's beautiful and gorgeous and very powerful and user friendly! It does have little problems of usability though, but nothing major, I already got used to it.

p.s: I had my iPhone since october 2007 and the battery life was still holding up for about a 5 days... I never turned off the iphone during my 2 years of use... I stopped using it when I got my N900 in november, and I kept it on for a few weeks after that in case I needed to review old sms/contacts that I didn't transfer to the N900, and without using it for making calls, the charge was able to hold up for 1.5 to 2 weeks... and yes, wifi is usually on, no bluetooth, and since it's the older model, no 3G either.

So that's good! The N900 battery holds up for about 24hours, so it sucks.. but I charge it every night when going to bed, and so far, it never died on me (and I usually have about 10 to 15 applications running all the time, with xchat (IRC) running and connected on skype, sip, gtalk and msn accounts with the integrated IM framework)

Reply

Really, I think your experience with iphone is bad for an unknown reason.

Almost everything you said does not happen here. It's quite fast, there is an app that let you run 2 softwares at the same time, installation is just too easy. I do use the camera, the safari in my home is fast.

But i'll be traveling to europe in july, so i'll keep my eyes open for a possibility of n900 or iphone 3gs because mine is still the first one.

but for sure, for very sure, that use of ps3 controller with it is a point forward.

Reply

hehe, you have battery problems, I don't, I guess everyone gets a different experience! But anyways, maybe it's just me, maybe I set my standards high.. also, speed is relative, what you may percieve as fast, might be slow to me.. who knows...

Also, I never really meant to say that it's a crappy device, it is indeed a great device, BUT it's far far far from being enough to warrant the whole fuss and craziness going on about it.. I mean, it's nowhere near the quality needed for it to be considered a 'reference'... how come every single phone getting released these days has to be compared to the iphone? why is every phone company trying desperate to create an "iphone killer" ? Why is it that every piece of news about a phone needs its first comment to be "how about the iphone" (this thread is a perfect example!!!)

Everything becomes focused on this 'phone' made by a company that never made phones before.. but everyone is bowing to Steve Jobs for some weird, paranormal reason...

I bet there are tons of iphone killer, tons of phones that are better, faster, more intuitive than the iphone.. and yet, they'll never beat the iphone, or get anywhere near the number of sales the iphone has, for one reason : it's not signed by Apple! And that's what pisses me off...

When I say "it's a crappy phone", I really mean "it's a great device, but it's not worth the attention it gets.. if it has to be judged by the standards of how people talk about it, then it is a crappy phone".

Anyways, just giving you some feedback, I got my ps3 controller to work on my N900 and I played some super mario world with it, it was awesome! Tomorrow, I might plug it in the TV and play some SNES games from my couch, on my 46" TV all from my phone

However, I have to say, it wasn't as easy as I had hoped.. there was some hacking to do here and there, mainly because that 'one click install' file wasn't working, so it sucks

Had to download the 4 .deb files, install them with 'dpkg -i', then do 'apt-get -f install' in order to make the kernel-flash package to get installed, causing it to flash to the device the kernel image I just installed in /boot. Then it worked, but I couldn't get the keyboard/mouse emulation to work (which was needed because the SNES emulator doesn't take joystick input, only keyboard input), so I had to play a bit with HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), and I'm not sure exactly what I did to make it work, but I *think* it might have been the filenames.. it worked after I renamed "x11-sony-sixaxis.fdi" to "20-x11-sony-sixaxis.fdi" in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty... Rebooted, then it worked

Hopefully, the one click install file will soon be fixed and others will be able to get it installed and working automagically

Reply

you're my hero.. the creator of this couldn't help me with getting the translation to work thx

Reply

No problem, you're welcome!

I've contacted the original creator, telling him about my experience in order to get it fixed for everyone. If you want to share your experience, it will be helpful!

Did everything work for you aprt from the joystick-2-keyboard mapping? And did it get fixed by renaming the files like I suggested ?

Reply

I've just asked if the same could be done with my iphone because I own one. You are the one that started talking about how low the iphone is.

I think people do like iphone for a lot of reasons:

1. the fast for most of regular people is not fast enough for you.

2. it can do anything if jailbreaked.

3. it's easy to use.

4. nokia user interface is just too slow, the buttons are so rogh (i've been the owner of a n95 and sold for this iphone) I can tell the sound was better, the camera either but the rest is not even close.

And the final and killer example

have you ever took a look at nokia online store ? OVI ?
That is just a joke near appstore.

I do not agree with steve jobs marketing but I'm not a complete stupid in hardware and software, I've played a lot with linux and windows and it's almost the same difference. Windows is flexible user interface, linux is hard, like a very big guy that doesn`t know how to use their legs proprely. And this roughness is the difference for everybody from nokia to apple.

Nokia clicks on buttons, apple slides the buttons.

And about the use of a ps3 controller, i've googled it a little bit and you can already use iphone as a blu-ray remote controller for ps3 so it's just somebody take a little bit of time and develope this and we can have exacly the same.

By the way, have you already saw the external battery slash controller that is upcoming for iphone ?
This is a video of a guy playing a ps1 emulator on iphone 3gs with external controller.




It's a little bit big controller but, well, again, it rocks!

Reply

Yeah, sorry about that, although I hate trolls and flamewars, it looks like I'm one of them without realizing it. Thanks for enlightening me about my own defaults
I just got tired about the systematic 'iphone' question and I guess I was in a bad mood that day. Sorry again for trolling...

oh sure, the iphone is great for most people, and yes, it's a great device, like I said, my personal phone was an iphone for 2 years 'cause there wasn't anything better out there at the time..

But about jailbreaking, I'm not sure that many people do jailbreak or even know that it's possible (talking about the average joe).
About the Nokia interface, I'm not sure, I've never had a symbian device before, I actually always had crappy motorola phones (the ones you get for free with a contract), so I wouldn't know.. The Nokia interface was nice, back in 1995 with that old very popular phone, but I've never used a Nokia smartphone.

But the N900 is not symbian, it's a Linux device with a completely new and different user interface, and I like it. Everyone says that it's completely different from all other nokia devices in terms of user interface.. but it's the first non-symbian Nokia phone, so it's bound to have some flaws, but it's still a pretty good device in my opinion...

The iphone appstore is also full of 'fart' apps, so I didn't bother that much with the appstore either anyways (sometimes too much choice is equal to no choice at all).. the N900's store is still new, but it does have a lot of awesome apps, it just needs time to mature!

The interesting part of it is that since it's a full Linux system, then *any* application you run on your desktop computer, you can run it on the N900, even openoffice for example. So it's powerful in that sense, but it still needs apps to get compiled for it, a good chunk of nice apps are popping up lately!

But yeah, I checked the store a few times, but when it started getting more than a few hundred apps, I got tired of browsing apps and stopped checking the N900 store too.

It probably also depends on *when* you last tried linux, and if it was kde/gnome/enlightenment.. with linux, you get a lot of choice and a lot of power.. but anyways, *personally*, I just use a terminal and type everything, I almost never use UI applications.. I've never actually browsed my files with a UI for the last 6 years, so I'm also a bit on the other extreme...

Try out the latest version of the Ubuntu live cd (if interested and if you didn't already), you'll see that it has matured a lot... it doesn't have huge legs anymore

The video really looks cool! the controller isn't that big in my opinion, it's a bit ugly though, but it's perfect for transforming the iphone into a real portable gaming console! Thanks for the link

Reply

yeah everything apart from the key emulation worked fine and after i renamed, rebooted everything worked like it should. Do you know if it is possible to create a different mapping for controller 2?

Reply

@ kakarotoks
Yes, you seem to be in a better mood now

I think that you are on the very other side, using therminal all the time, well.. I couldn't do it.

The resume would be that both devices are great and iphone marketing is a very low act, but this is the capitalism talking.

Reply

crckns: cool, Actually, as I contacted the original author, and explained the issues I've had, he seemed to have fixed it in the latest packages he's set up.

About controller 2, I'm really not sure. the mapping is done via a HAL policies file which currently matches on the blutooth device name ("PLAYSTATION(R) 3 Controller", I don't know if it's possible to tell it to match a second controller, or maybe you match it in a different way.

Try typing something like "hal-find-by-capability --capability input.joystick | xargs hal-device" in a terminal (I'm not exactly sure on the syntax), it should list you the joystick devices you have with their capabilities, maybe you'll find something else that the product name to match, then modify the hal policies to suit your needs!

veggav: hehe, actually, I wasn't in a better mood at all, I was just tired and depressed so I went into 'nice guy' mode

The iphone marketing is bad, but I don't mind that, it's capitalism like you said, what I do mind is how brainwashed people are... The biggest marketing Apple has I think is their loyal fanboys! But yes, like you said, the summary is that both devices are great!

Thanks for an interesting exchange of ideas

EDIT veggav, this is just for you, someone just sent me this (attached), and I thought it was hilarious, have a look and have a laugh

Reply

This is really nice.. It's even nicer that you could hook the phone to you tv and then play with the ps3 joystick!

It's a shame that this isn't possible with the iphone (there are a few good/nice games available for the iphone)..

Reply

LOL this is hilarious. I agree with this, the ipad is just another apple joke.

Reply