Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I wrote a small lib to turn a USB gamepad into a Bluetooth one
I had two old USB gamepads lying around that I wanted to use, but my computer is too far from the couch, so I wrote a little ESP32-S3 firmware that turns USB gamepads into Bluetooth ones. You connect your gamepad to the ESP32-S3 with an OTG cable, power the ESP32 with either 5V somehow or a powered USB hub, and now you can pair the controller via Bluetooth to your PC!
This project is an ESP32-S3 firmware that converts USB gamepads into Bluetooth controllers. Users connect their USB gamepad to the microcontroller via an OTG cable and power it with 5V or a powered hub, then pair the… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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Hi HN! I built Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay, a tool that lets Bluetooth devices (like keyboards and mice) connect to USB-only hosts using a Raspberry Pi Zero W. Why? My friend needed a way to use his Bluetooth mouse and keyboard on a PC with Bluetooth disabled due to policy restrictions. This tool acts as a bridge, relaying Bluetooth input over USB. It also lets you use Bluetooth peripherals with older devices that only support USB input. Tech: Written in Go, optimized for Raspberry Pi Zero W. I love HN’s community and often lurk here—I’m hoping this project is useful or at least sparks…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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ESP32 RC Cars▲335This is a projected I started that blends both the fun of playing a split screen multiplayer driving game and controlling real rc cars. The cars can also be controlled via bluetooth gamepads and is meant to be easily hackable.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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GamePort adapter to connect old DB15 joysticks to USB port - necroware/gameport-adapter
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A Sega Genesis inspired wireless controller
2019 · 8bitdo.com · its alternatives →
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Bring Claude into the physical world with maker hardware
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9PB
Hi HN, I'm Erwin. I built a small free open-source utility that bridges Bluetooth LE MIDI keyboards into the new Windows MIDI Services stack so any DAW or Web MIDI app can use them as if they were wired. I bought a Roland FP-90X piano partly because it had Bluetooth MIDI. On my Windows 11 PC, pairing succeeded, but my DAW couldn't see the keyboard, and notes I sent from the PC never made the piano sing. After a regrettable number of evenings, I'd separated this into three independent bugs stacked on top of each other. The first one is the famous one: Windows only natively exposes BLE-MIDI…
May 2026 · its alternatives →
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Playbrush▲69Transform toothbrushes into gaming controllers
2015 · sunstargum.com · its alternatives →
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FluxPad▲2Turn your Android into a wireless PC gamepad
May 2026 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, I made a keyboard emulator that tracks your body pose and emits the key presses accordingly. My main motivation was to make my kids move more on rainy days. I already made a couple of mini-games using the body pose [1-3], and those were definitely fun to make and play! However, once the kids learned the tricks, they got bored. I could only produce that much content myself, and soon realized that I lack time for churning out games. Finally, I decided to tap into an endless pool of PC games, preferrably simple and less addictive ones like the Gameboy and DOS games. This project has been…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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This website uses undocumented HID commands of both DS4 and DualSense to re-center and recalibrate DualShock analog sticks.
2024 · blog.the.al · its alternatives →
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TypeScript port of the esptool. Contribute to toitware/esptool.js development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Linux driver for the Xbox One wireless dongle. Contribute to medusalix/xow development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Turn it like a knob, tap it like a mouse. A Mac power tool.
2015 · griffintechnology.com · its alternatives →
- 19M
a $5 build that lets a Bluetooth remote run your PC
Sep 2026 · qyhhhh.github.io · its alternatives →
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I've been playing around with ESP32 MCUs and displays for a while and finally got around to getting a ZX Spectrum emulator working. I then saw that you can now do full color silk screen printing on PCBs and got the thinking - the ESP32 has capacitive touch capabilities - I could make a full ZX Spectrum keyboard on a PCB along with all the electronics for running the emulator. And it actually works! There's a full video here: https://youtu.be/foP81O48WAI And you can sign up here for updates as I move towards getting it ready for a production run:…
2024 · its alternatives →
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MIDIpad▲59You gamepad is a musical instrument
Sep 2026 · midipad.stevemitchell.music · its alternatives →
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Turn a raspberry pi into a Bluetooth Midi device . Contribute to Mylab6/PiBluetoothMidSetup development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
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I recently dug my Nintendo GameCube out of storage to revisit the first Animal Crossing game. Things were mostly as I remembered, but the game's heavy reliance on a clunky on-screen keyboard quickly wore my patience thin. Unwilling to accept this subpar experience, I did what any rational person would do and ordered a rare, Japan-exclusive, keyboard/controller hybrid on eBay, then used a Raspberry Pi Pico to 1. listen for keypresses and 2. send simulated controller events to the GameCube, automating typing in Animal Crossing at a Tool-Assisted Speedrun level. Of course, this oddball…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! Last year the project I launched here got a lot of good feedback on creating speech to speech AI on the ESP32. Recently I revamped the whole stack, iterated on that feedback and made our project fully open-source—all of the client, hardware, firmware code. This Github repo turns an ESP32-S3 into a realtime AI speech companion using the OpenAI Realtime API, Arduino WebSockets, Deno Edge Functions, and a full-stack web interface. You can talk to your own custom AI character, and it responds instantly. I couldn't find a resource that helped set up a reliable, secure websocket (WSS) AI…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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