As mainly a console gamer over the years, I’ve become quite used to playing with a controller that has vibration. I feel that this is one thing the Deck is missing out on.
So I’m wondering if it’s possible to somehow connect up a small vibration motor (externally) that can be connected to the Deck, and have it recognised as a controller?
Possibly more effort than it’s worth but would be interesting to see if anyone has any ideas.
Thinking as lazily as possible, you could try to take the circuit board out of a standard Xbox knockoff, rip out any of the parts that aren’t the vibration system, and attach those to the Deck somehow. I think you should be able to mod the grips to contain the vibration motors. The circuit board could be hidden away in a little box you tape to the back of the Deck or whatever.
Then you’d need to plug that controller into the USB port of the Deck (easy) and make the OS send controller feedback to the external controller (harder).
Someone already wrote a bunch of code to do exactly the last part for the Steam Controller: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/bqmf7m/steam_controller_rumble_hack_a_way_to_get_steam/
You’d need some programming skills to send the vibration commands to the “external” controller. It definitely can be done.
If you’re playing emulated games, most emulators will let you configure inputs in their UI somewhere so you may be able to make vibration work on those without writing software.
Great info! I did wonder if something like that would be possible. Will look into this, thanks