This is a userspace application that reads the PPM audio stream produced by many RC controllers, and produces a virtual joystick using the uinput system.

This was forked from amckee/ppmadapter that provided a Python 3 compatible version of PPM Adapter. However, it seemed not to work with my controller, so I modified it to use the PPM to TX logic (but still being userspace not requiring a user-compiled kernel module) at nexx512/txppm/ppm.c.

This application requires two libraries, pyaudio and python-evdev. They are declared in the setup.cfg file, so will be installed if you pip install, but you can also install them using your system package manager, looking for packages similar in name to:

python-pyaudio python-evdev

You need user access to /dev/uinput. To create a udev rule giving access to users in the "input" group, put in /etc/udev/rules.d/99-uinput.rules

KERNEL=="uinput", GROUP:="input", MODE:="0660"

Then make sure the uinput driver is loaded on boot, creating /etc/modules-load.d/uinput.conf (note: if you don't want to reboot, load with sudo modprobe uinput).

uinput

Then reload the udev rules with (and make sure you're in the "input" group, if not, add yourself and logout/login or reboot):

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger
sudo usermod -a -G input your_username

To select which microphone input you wish to use, list them with:

python3 -m ppmadapter inputs

Start PPM Adapter specifying one of the inputs (e.g. hw:0, hw:1,7, or default):

python3 -m ppmadapter -i default run

Also see options --plot and/or --debug for debugging and --average and --buffer for adjusting smoothness and latency. After running, dmesg should show the input has been created:

input: ppmadapter as /devices/virtual/input/inputXX

Tested controllers: Spektrum DX6i, RadioLink AT9S

A few options for checking the joystick inputs are reasonable: jstest-gtk or crrcsim. For a simulator, I've tried using crrcsim (either as audio input directly or with the input from PPM Adapter), neXt, and FlightGear.

For neXt, you can create a config file ~/neXt/controllerconfigs.txt something like the following and then configure/calibrate the channels within the simulator:

03000000010000000100000001000000,ppmadapter,platform:Linux,leftx:a4,lefty:a1,rightx:a2,righty:a3

(Alternatively generate your own config using controllermap)

GPL v3