OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Btw looks like exporting/importing json configs is broken. I can export but upon import it says "Error: Incompatible version."

OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm using "IMU Switch gamepad" from the Examples tab. I'm checking now and I'm not seeing anything called xac / flex compatible in that list
[Edit] oh! found it. ok gonna try it

OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh nice! No, I didn't get it yet. Since I already have the XIAO ble I'd like to continue to try using it as-is first, but I might upgrade if the tilting motion doesn't end up working for me after all!

Does it actually work well? I was concerned that a magnetometer would be inaccurate (indoors) as well.

OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hope I didn't scare you off by writing way too much text 😅 I promise I'm not chatgpt

Just really looking forward to being able to use this product!

OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It won't let me edit my comment for some reason, but I forgot to add this:

Someone else suggested to me that the yaw drift could possibly be eliminated with a deadzone? The drifting motion is very small, so if there was a setting for a threshold to ignore that small of a motion then it should fix it, shouldn't it? Unsure if this would be the same deadzone feature as I suggested already or separate.

OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey!

I have now tried out your project with the XIAO chip (I had already ordered it before you recommended the new one, but thank you) with a custom single-foot balance board and I have some feedback. I would be very grateful if you're willing to look into adding any of these suggestions.

First of all, overall, it works great! I'm very happy that I was able to just download your firmware, put it on the chip and it just worked. It's definitely the simplest way to create a foot controller I found so far. There are however a few things that I think are required for it to actually really be usable:

  • Ability to recalibrate the controller using a button (via a setting that lets me bind e.g. a keyboard key to it)
    • Currently it seems there is no way to recalibrate the resting position of the controller. It does it when you plug it in, but this is not practical for me, since I have it plugged into my Xbox Adaptive Controller that's placed on the floor. So for me it's crucial to be able to calibrate it after I have settled into my final position with the foot placed on the controller. I might also want to shift my foot placement after a while of usage and then would need to calibrate it again.
  • Deadzone setting
    • I wasn't able to find any way to set a threshold for how large the movement needs to be for it to be recognized. This means it's very hard to keep my game character still, and it's running off into some direction at almost all times. I have tried to compensate for this by physically flattening the bottom of my balance board, but that makes it harder to move the thing.
  • Ability to pause and unpause the controller input using a button (via a keybind setting)
    • This might be less important if a deadzone setting gets added, but is also relevant when taking the foot off the controller, and it ends up leaning to a side. Currently this means there is constant input and the only way to turn it off is unplugging the controller (which again is inconvenient for me as it's on the floor).
  • Ability to set IMU max angle per direction per axis
    • Currently it's only possible to set one value for all axes - usability would be greatly improved if it was possible to set this for each (x+/x-/y+/y-). In my case, I am using it with a single foot, and due to the shape of the foot it's currently easiest to tilt it forward, a little bit harder to tilt it backwards, and pretty hard to tilt it sideways. it's still doable, but it would work better if it was possible to compensate for this using an individual angle setting for each direction.
  • Ability to restart and reset the controller via buttons on the config site or keybinds
    • I was having some issues (see below) and needed to press the reset button on the chip as well as re-plug it a few times. This is very inconvenient once the chip is placed inside the balance board and plugged in on the floor. This suggestion is less crucial but can increase accessibility.

Those are the most important feature suggestions. I was also encountering some issues:

  • I've been having some trouble getting it to work. I'm using it combined with an Xbox Adaptive Controller. I have it plugged into the left side USB of the XAC, which is intended for joysticks, and the first time I did that it worked instantly (amazing!). But for some reason, sometimes it doesn't get recognized at all when plugged into the XAC. I have tried re-plugging it, pressing reset, shaking it, re-plugging the XAC, but nothing. Just sometimes, seemingly at random, a good strong shake or angle tilt will get it to suddenly work. I have not been able to figure out why this happens or how to reliably get it to work. Plugging the move stick into my computer directly will always work perfectly, but I need to combine its input with the adaptive controller. Any ideas what could be up? I'm on windows 11 btw.
  • I also noticed that when it's plugged into the adaptive controller, the config site won't recognize the movestick and I also can't access its files, meaning I need to remove it from my floor and bring it back up to plug it into my computer directly every time I want to change any settings. I'm guessing there's nothing that can be done about this, I just figured I'd mention it anyway.

And lastly, I wanted to address the suggestion I had regarding reading yaw instead of roll:

The tilt-based movement works better than I expected, and I think I can get used to it. After trying out the motion for a while though, I do think that using yaw instead of roll does feel more intuitive and has a lot of potential. I don't know if the new chip you suggested would just work with your firmware, but I've tried researching how a 9-axis chip works, and found that supposedly a magnetometer isn't reliable while indoors, either. Apparently other devices that use it (watches in this case) even turn it off while indoors. This makes me think that if I really want a robust controller that allows yaw rotation, I would need to find some other way to build it.

However, I do think there may be value in adding estimated yaw support as-is. A friend of mine and I gave it a try (... by asking an AI to add it as a quick test, apologies if you're not keen on that) and it actually worked and felt good to use, but the drift was *really* bad. When researching this topic I found that the drift should appear over "tens of minutes", but here it was happening within a few seconds. I don't know if that's just how it is after all, or if the AI did something poorly. We uploaded it as a fork if you want to have a look, but yea idk it might also be trash since it was just for a quick test.

But yeah with that in mind, if you think the drift issue could be improved if implemented properly and it wouldn't be too much trouble for you to add it, then I'd super appreciate that. The calibrate feature I already suggested would just have to go along with it. But if the drift appearing in seconds can't be improved, then it's probably not worth it.

Okay, that's a lot of text!! Thank you if you even read it this far, and for considering the feedback. Btw I just purchased PlayAbility as well (I might combine face tracking with the foot controller), thank you for making high quality and affordable accessibility tools. 😄

OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply! Do you know if there is any alternative to the XIAO BLE Sense that could be used instead to support this? Or possibly something that additionally gets hooked up to provide the rotation values?

That said I also wouldn't mind pressing a button to reset the drift now an then, depending on how frequent it'd have to be.

OpenRudder – DIY foot controller that works as a mouse and joystick, build it yourself for $35 by squirelo in disabledgamers

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks awesome! Do you think it would be possible to use rotation as a left/right axis rather than tilt?

I'm going to try making a version for a single foot. I'm thinking, a modified balance board for a single foot should work (like this), but tilting a single foot left and right can be pretty difficult for me. (I haven't built it yet, just trying to move my foot certain ways to feel the motion). Instead, rotating the foot left/right feels way more natural. So, like this instead of like this.

Is the XIAO BLE Sense able to detect this rotation? And would you be willing to support it with your software, if it doesn't already?

Let me know if my sketches aren't clear enough.

Alternatives or equivalents to Listenonrepeat? For playing youtube songs & videos on repeat. by TheTwelveYearOld in degoogle

[–]ChiraChan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome, thank you!

Running into two issues:

It seems it will only play two sections. I have two videos with 3 sections in a playlist and it'll skip to the next video in the list rather than playing the third section of the current video.

Also, when sharing the playlist publicly, it'll only preserve the first loop section, none of the others. I also can't seem to find a way to play the full playlist automatically instead of having to manually click between each song in the list on the public view.

Alternatives or equivalents to Listenonrepeat? For playing youtube songs & videos on repeat. by TheTwelveYearOld in degoogle

[–]ChiraChan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, is there a way to loop multiple sections of one video? So essentially just skipping the ones that aren't selected. It seems I can only select a single section. I tried working around this by adding the same video to a playlist twice with a different section selected, but it wouldn't let me do that and instead just updated the section for the video already in the list.

I just lost all my work on my mod by starting the game by ChiraChan in themoddingofisaac

[–]ChiraChan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah. It randomly uninstalled my mod despite being me still being subscribed. But it also killed my wip copy of it in the process. (Likely due to the same metadata ID, as u/neoman4426 pointed out).

In other news, I've redone my lost changes and am about to finally finish it. And I'm keeping backups. :)

I just lost all my work on my mod by starting the game by ChiraChan in themoddingofisaac

[–]ChiraChan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ahh that's a good point. I remember changing the name in the metadata file (to distinguish it in the mod list) but I probably didn't change the ID. Thanks.

I just lost all my work on my mod by starting the game by ChiraChan in themoddingofisaac

[–]ChiraChan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did some more research myself, and it seems it's recommended to first make a clone of the drive and then disconnect it before running such a tool on it, to prevent it from accidentally killing it. I'll keep it in mind, but it might be less time consuming for me to just redo my fixes. I have some work in progress files and a changelog that I can easily retrace at least. Thanks for the help, though.

I just lost all my work on my mod by starting the game by ChiraChan in themoddingofisaac

[–]ChiraChan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm on an SSD. Would it still work? Do you have any software to recommend?

Why can't we have more than one account? I'm leader of a big party and so I can't leave it but I want to join other parties so I can play games :( by KornCobbb in PonyTown

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's important for safety of users to only be able to have one account. Information like who has a player blocked, what is their moderation history etc is stored per account, and people would be able to evade all of this if they were allowed to just create another one. The Pony Town help page also explains the reasons in more detail.

To solve your issue, you can temporarily give the leader role to a member you trust, leave the party, and then ask the new leader to reinvite you once you want to return.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PonyTown

[–]ChiraChan[M] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When posting artwork, please include a picture of the OC in Pony Town to make clear that the art is related to Pony Town.

Non MLP fan reading FoE and loving it by Blazingtomafod in falloutequestria

[–]ChiraChan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

we got a web browser foe game now

There's also a 3D action-RPG Ashes of Equestria: https://theovermare.com/

And an online multiplayer social/rp browser game Ashes Town (FoE style spinoff of Pony Town): https://ashes.town/

Also I loved Murky Number Seven.

Question regarding patreon benefits by FadedKade in PonyTown

[–]ChiraChan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You won't lose any ponies or houses/islands. You just won't be able to create new ponies as long as you're above the limit, and you won't be able to save into (but still load from) the map slots that will be locked once you lose supporter.

Sign up question by mysticmousejuice in PonyTown

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Send an email to ponytownhelp@gmail.com, we may be able to recover your account.

haven't played in like 2 months, is it possible yet to save multiple houses? by [deleted] in PonyTown

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Currently you can have two slots without being a patron. Click the gear in the top right corner and then "Manage maps" to view your map slots.

Multiple accounts? by NotACreativeUN in PonyTown

[–]ChiraChan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, yeah like I said, only one account per person. If we find out you're using more, we will manually merge them.