While this may not be quite as awesome as that NES controller concept for the iPhone we showed you last week, it’s still pretty amazing. Paul Rickards, a blogger behind biosrhythm, has hacked a NES controller to work with iCade games on his iPad using a Camera Connection Kit.
Rickards reports that his hack was actually the result of an accident. He had already built a homebrew Commodore 64 keyboard that works with the iPad via USB, and while playing around in iMAME on his device, he accidentally struck a key.
iMAME said that it was “enabling iCade mode,” he reports, so decided to investigate what that meant and discovered that the iPad would accept game controls from a device connected via USB. He then set about hacking an old NES gamepad.
Rickards manufactured another USB keyboard using Arduino, but instead of using a keyboard matrix, he used the NES gamepad. He used Lego blocks to create a case for the wires and glued in two ports; one of which connects to the iPad’s Camera Connection Kit, and the other to his NES controller.
And hey presto, Rickards is now living the dream and playing iCade games with a NES controller. He’s yet to publish the code for his hack, but we’re hoping that someone decides to make these things into an salable iPad accessory. I don’t know about you, but I’d certainly snap one up.
[via Touch Arcade]
