joycontrol

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~~ (removed, see #80)

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

Command line interface example

Run the script

sudo python3 run_controller_cli.py PRO_CONTROLLER

This will create a PRO_CONTROLLER instance waiting for the Switch to connect.

Open the "Change Grip/Order" menu of the Switch

The Switch only pairs with new controllers in the "Change Grip/Order" menu.

Note: If you already connected an emulated controller once, you can use the reconnect option of the script (-r "<Switch Bluetooth Mac address>"). This does not require the "Change Grip/Order" menu to be opened. You can find out a paired mac address using the "bluetoothctl" system command.

After connecting, a command line interface is opened. Note: Press <enter> if you don't see a prompt.

Call "help" to see a list of available commands.

If you call "test_buttons", the emulated controller automatically navigates to the "Test Controller Buttons" menu.

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.
...

Thanks

Special thanks to https://github.com/dekuNukem/Nintendo_Switch_Reverse_Engineering for reverse engineering of the joycon protocol
Thanks to the growing number of contributers and users

Resources

Nintendo_Switch_Reverse_Engineering

console_pairing_session

Yinzo / joycontrol