This project enables a computer to send controller inputs to your Switch via an AVR microcontroller (arduino, teensy, etc).
I'm building on top of two other projects:
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progmem/Switch-Fightstick: reverse-engineered the Pokken Pro Pad, allowing us to use microcontrollers to send commands to the Switch. This enables automation! After all, who has time to play video games in this year and economy?
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ebith/Switch-Fightstick: wrote an interface to send commands from the computer to the Switch using serial communication. This makes automation even easier, as there is no need to recompile and flash the AVR for every new macro. Instead, logic can be updated directly on the computer and executed on the fly, without unplugging the AVR from the Switch.
Previously I had modified ebith/Switch-Fightstick to allow multiple button presses simultaneously, where the PC maintained the full button state, while the AVR simply "forwarded" it to the Switch (jair-pereira/SwitchPC_Controller).
There are other interesting repositories for automation such as Zelda Snowball-thrower and Splatoon 2 post printer.
I used this project mainly to automate shiny hunting in Pokemon Sword/Shield, combined with a separate project that used a capture card and opencv to read the game screen.
At this point, I thought this project needed no further development. However, that changed with the re-release of Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen to the Nintendo Switch, as RNG manipulation in these games requires input precision of millisecond. This is not feasible when the PC is responsible for timing.
This project exists to address this limitation by moving timing control to the AVR, while keeping the command logic on the PC.
PC ─serial─> AVR ─usb─> SWITCH
- PC (Python): Defines the automation logic, sends button presses and their execution timing
- AVR: Receives the button presses and updates its state according to the provided timing
- 1x Teensy (at90usb1286) or Arduino (atmega32u4)
- 1x USB to Serial Adapter
- 1x USB Micro-B Cable
- 2x Male-Female Breadboard Wires
I am using a Teensy++ 2.0 which runs at 16 MHz. Any other AVR that operates at the same frequency is compatible (Arduino Nano). AVRs that runs on higher frequency may need small adjustment in code (likely Timer1 prescaler only).
- Python and the pyserial library
- A software to run containers (Colima, Docker, others)
- Alternatively, AVR-GCC
Build the docker image:
docker build -t gccavr .Mount the current directory into the container and compile the code:
docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/work gccavr maketodo
- Implement a timer
- Implement a circular queue for incoming rx packets
- Implement a circular queue for decoded rx frames
- Remove serial packet parsing away from the ISR
- Bytes for the serial packets instead of strings
- AVR should receive commands in the form [TARGET][VALUE][TIME_MS]
- e.g.: press BTN X at 100ms mark
- Adjust python model to communicate with the AVR
- Add usage exampless
- Making Embedded Systems by Elecia White. My main guide for embedded systems concepts and design.
- AVR Microcontroller Manual for AVR-specific details, especially Timer1 implementation.
Parts of the code include comments of my studying notes.
- This repository is under GLP-3.0.
- Switch-Fightstick is under MIT License.
- LUFA is under a modified MIT License.