joystick & game controller hid device event to Open Sound Control daemon and associated tools
Copyright (c) Dan Wilcox 2007 - 2025
USB joysticks & game controllers are a cheap, ubiquitous source for alternate interfaces and can be easily hacked with custom switches, buttons, and analog sensors. Furthermore, physical computing platforms such as Arduino & Teensy can be configured to appear as USB HID (Human Interface Devices). joyosc provides a quick OSC event interface for such devices into your favorite creative coding environments (Pure Data, Max MSP, Processing, OpenFrameworks, etc).
The joyosc package contains the following parts:
- joyosc: device event daemon
- lsjs: joystick & game controller info tool
This group of tools allows any OSC capable program to receive joystick & game controller event data aka button presses, axis movements, etc. Specific joysticks & game controllers can be mapped by name or Globally Unique ID to specific OSC send addresses and button, axis, etc ids can be remapped or ignored.
These tools were developed for the robotcowboy project, a wearable computer music system using Pure Data in GNU/Linux, macOS, and iOS. See https://robotcowboy.com and the initial version, then named "rc-unitd" in robotcowboy: A One Man Band Musical Cyborg Master’s thesis, Chalmers University of Technology 2007.
Download a release tarball from https://docs.danomatika.com/releases/joyosc. Do not download a release zip from GitHub as the submodule files will not be included.
Otherwise, if cloning this repo, you will also need to check out the submodules using then run autogen.sh to create the configure script:
git clone https://github.com/danomatika/joyosc.git
cd joyosc
git submodule init
git submodule update
./autogen.sh
On the macOS command line, use Homebrew to install libraries, then build and install to the /usr/local prefix via:
brew install sdl2 liblo tinyxml2
./configure
make
make install
and the same goes for Ubuntu/Debian:
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev liblo-dev libtinyxml2-dev
./configure
make
sudo make install
If everything finished successfully, you're good to go.
If you're using Pure Data, check out the joyosc abstraction library in data/pd and installed into $(prefix)/share/doc/joyosc/pd/joyosc.
The following libraries are required:
- SDL2: input device events
- liblo: OSC (Open Sound Control) communication
- tinyxml2: XML file reading
Install the required development versions of the libraries using your distro's package manager.
For Debian/Ubuntu, you can use use apt-get on the command line:
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev liblo-dev libtinyxml2-dev
On macOS, they can be installed easily using Homebrew or Macports
- install the Homebrew environment
- go to the Terminal and install the libs:
brew install sdl2 liblo tinyxml2
- install the Macports binary and setup the Macports environment
- go to the Terminal and install the libs:
sudo port install libsdl2 liblo tinyxml2
If you use the default Macports install location of /opt/local, you will need to set the Macports include and lib dirs before running ./configure:
export CXXFLAGS=-I/opt/local/include && export LDFLAGS=-L/opt/local/lib
Thanks to Fede Camara Halac for the following steps.
On Windows, it is recommended to use Msys2 to install the required build system and library dependencies. Msys2 provides both 32 and 64 MinGW and command shells.
Note: Msys2 development seems to change frequently, so some of the package names below may have changed after this document was written.
Open an Msys2 shell and install the compiler chain & autotools via:
# 32 bit
pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-toolchain mingw-w64-i686-clang autotools
# 64 bit
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-clang autotools
Next install SDL2 and TinyXML2:
# 32 bit
pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-SDL2 mingw-w64-i686-liblo mingw-w64-i686-tinyxml2
# 64 bit
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2 mingw-w64-x86_64-liblo mingw-w64-x86_64-tinyxml2
If your version of Msys2 does not have a package for liblo, you can download the source from https://github.com/radarsat1/liblo/releases then build & install it manually, for example:
cd liblo-0.32
./configure --disable-debug --disable-dependency-tracking --disable-tests --disable-network-tests --disable-tools --disable-examples
make
make install
As this is an GNU autotools project, simply run the following on the command line:
./configure
make
sudo make install
Note: If you have cloned joyosc from a git repo, you may need to generate the configure script by running ./autogen.sh first and you will need autoconf, automake, and libtool installed as well.
This readme, example config files, and the pd library are also installed to your doc dir, something like $(prefix)/share/doc/joyosc.
By default, the configure script installs to /usr/local. To change this behavior, specify a new dir before building the project:
./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/dir
If using Macports on macOS, it is recommended to use the Macports default prefix of /opt/local. Similarly, new Homebrew installs (Apple Silicon) also use /opt/local. In the case of older Homebrew installs (Intel), /usr/local is used so you won't need to set the prefix. To check the Homebrew prefix, use brew --prefix.
All applications have a full help usage printout, use -h or --help.
joyosc
Starts device daemon with the default settings.
joyosc config_file.xml
Starts device daemon using the given config file.
The config file sets the OSC connection information as well as device name or GUID (Globally Unique ID) to OSC address mappings. A custom config file will allow you to specify:
- setup info such as listening and sending ports
- OSC send addresses for specific device names or GUIDs*
- axis dead zone values for jittery thumb sticks
- button, axis, hat, & trackball re-mappings
- extended controller button & axis re-mappings for additional unmapped joystick events
- which button, axis, hat, & trackball events to ignore
- custom SDL2 game controller mapping strings for devices only detected as joysticks
- which device names and GUIDs to exclude
Look at the example_config.xml file installed to the doc folder or in the data folder of the source distribution for details.
* Note: GUIDs are not guaranteed to be different between devices of the same model and may be different between platforms. "Your mileage may vary." See the SDL GUID doc for details.
You can also specify values on the command line which override values in the config file.
The joyosc help output:
Usage: joyosc [options] [FILE...]
joystick device event to osc bridge
Options:
-h, --help print usage and exit
--version print version and exit
-l, --listening-port listening port (default: 7770)
-m, --multicast multicast listening group address (off by default)
-i, --ip ip address, hostname, or multicast group to send to
(default: 127.0.0.1)
-p, --port port to send to (default: 8880)
-e, --events print incoming events, useful for debugging
-j, --joysticks-only disable game controller support, joystick interface only
-w, --window open window, helps on some platforms if device events are
not being found, ex. MFi controllers on macOS
--window-size set window size on open (default: 240x240)
--sleep sleep time in usecs (default: 10000)
-t, --triggers report trigger buttons as axis values
-s, --sensors enable controller sensor events (accelerometer, gyro)
-r, --rate sensor rate limit in hz (default: 0)
-n, --normalize normalize axis and sensor values
--norm-axes normalize axis values
--norm-sensors normalize sensor values
--start default address start index, ie. /gc# (default: 0)
-v, --verbose verbose printing, call twice for debug printing -vv
Arguments:
FILE optional XML config file(s)
Note: Enabling event printing is useful when debugging:
% joyosc -e
...
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad axis: 0 32767
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad axis: 1 -32768
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad axis: 2 -32768
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad axis: 3 -32768
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 8 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 9 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 10 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 11 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 0 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 3 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 0 0
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 3 0
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 0 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 3 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 0 0
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 3 0
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 3 1
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 3 0
/js2 Saitek P990 Dual Analog Pad button: 0 1
A similar printout for a game controller:
% joyosc -e
...
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) button: a 1
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) button: a 0
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) button: b 1
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) button: b 0
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) button: x 1
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) button: x 0
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) axis: righty 3469
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) axis: rightx 5782
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) axis: righty 7324
/gc0 Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput) axis: leftx -3470
As of SDL 2, there are two joystick event interfaces:
- Joystick: original low level HID interface with buttons, axes, hats, & balls (aka trackballs)
- Game Controller: higher level interface that maps button, axis, etc ids to generic button & axis names
Joystick devices report all input events with a numeric button, axis, hat, & trackball id which may vary between devices.
Game Controllers map underlying joystick inputs to generic button and axis name strings if the device is detected by SDL as having a game controller mapping. If a device is not detected, you can add a custom SDL mapping string via the XML config file or an external text file. See the following for more info: SDL_GameControllerAddMapping & SDL Game Controller DB.
SDL Game Controller button names: a, b, x, y, start, back, guide, leftshoulder, lefttrigger, rightshoulder, righttrigger, leftstick, rightstick, dpup, dpdown, dpleft, dpright (dp = digital pad), touchpad
SDL Game Controller axis names: leftx, lefty, rightx, righty
Note: Game Controller names seem to follow the general Playstation DualShock layout. Devices with more than 4 axes and ~20 buttons are probably best used as Joysticks.
If you do not want to use the Game Controller interface and stick with Joysticks only, use the -j/--joysticks-only commandline option.
The SDL Game Controller mappings do not expose additional axes or buttons which fall outside of the general layout. This is true for controllers which provide button pressure values as well as on/off state, ex. the PS3 controller.
joyosc can optionally remap these extra button or axes events, for example PS3 axis 6 (button a pressure) -> axis "a":
/ps3 PS3 Controller button: a 1
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a -32768
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a -17862
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a -15549
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a -10152
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a -2956
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a 5782
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a 17861
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a 30968
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a 32767
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a 31482
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a 7838
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a -22488
/ps3 PS3 Controller button: a 0
/ps3 PS3 Controller axis: a -32768
On devices with a touchpad, such as the Playstation 4 controllers, joyosc reports touchpad down, up, and xy (motion) events.
SDL Game Controller touchpad event names: down, xy, up
joyosc can report raw accelerometer or gyro (rotation) x, y, z data on supported devices when enabling sensors via the -s/--sensors option or in a config file. Some split devices have sensors on both sides such as the Nintendo Joy-Cons.
SDL Game Controller sensor event names: accel, gyro, leftaccel, leftgyro, rightaccel, rightgyro
Note: Sensors will generate lots of events when enabled.
See the Pure Data patches installed to the system doc folder or the data/pd folder of the source distribution for info on how to receive events from joyosc, although any software that can receive Open Sound Control messages will work.
joyosc streams device event information in the following OSC address format:
/joyosc/devices/DEVICE_NAME/INPUT_TYPE ID VALUE
- DEVICE_NAME is the mapped name to the device as specified in the config file, otherwise it is "gc#" or "js#" with # being the current device id
- INPUT_TYPE can be
button,axis,ball, orhatfor joysticks andbutton,axis,touchpad, orsensorfor game controllers - ID is the joystick id number or game controller name string for the control (aka joystick button 1, axis 2, etc / game controller button x, axis lefty, sensor gyro, etc); these are likely different between joystick devices but largely the same between game controllers
- VALUE is the current value of the control:
- button state: 1 or 0 for pressed & released
- axis values: -32768 to 32767 (signed 16 bit)
- triggers reported as axes use 0 to 32767 range
- touchpad: index, finger, x, y, pressure
- x & y are normalized 0 to 1 (upper left 0,0)
- pressure is normalized 0 to 1 (0 no press, 1 "full" press))
- sensor: x, y, z
- floating point values in m/s^2 (accelerometer) or radians/s (gyro)
- see the SDL docs for details
- hat: binary bitmask representing the hat buttons:
- cardinal directions: 0 center, 1 up, 2 right, 4 down, 8 left
- corner directions: 3 rightup, 6 rightdown, 9 leftup, 12 leftdown
- see the SDL docs
- (track)ball: relative x & y movement in pixels (I think, SDL docs don't go into details)
Example joystick messages:
/joyosc/devices/js2/button 2 1
/joyosc/devices/js2/button 2 0
/joyosc/devices/js2/axis 0 32767
Example game controller messages:
/joyosc/devices/gc0/button lefttrigger 1
/joyosc/devices/gc0/button lefttrigger 0
/joyosc/devices/gc0/axis righty 32767
joyosc also sends status notification messages:
/joyosc/notifications/startup
/joyosc/notifications/ready
/joyosc/notifications/open TYPE INDEX DEV
/joyosc/notifications/close TYPE INDEX DEV
/joyosc/notifications/shutdown
TYPE is either "joystick" or "controller"
INDEX is the assigned index based on order of connection, indices are reused when available
DEV is the device address name, ie. gc0, js1, etc
In response to a query control message (see below), joyosc will send connected device info messages:
/joyosc/query/count numDevs
/joysoc/query/device controller INDEX DEV buttons axes touchpads sensors rumble led
/joyosc/query/device joystick INDEX DEV buttons axes balls hats rumble
Device count: number of currently connected and active devices
Device controller query info:
- buttons, axes, touchpads: int, number of each type of input
- sensors: int, number of sensors (available and enabled)
- rumble: bool, 1 if rumble available
- led: bool, 1 if controller has a color LED
Device joystick query info:
- buttons, axes, balls, hats, touchpads: int, number of each type of input
- rumble: bool, 1 if rumble available
For example, the output from querying the count and a single connected PS4 controller:
/joyosc/query/count 1
/joyosc/query/device controller 0 ps4 16 6 1 0 1 1
The PS4 controller has 16 buttons, 6 axes, 1 touchpad, a color LED, can rumble.
joyosc also listens for OSC control messages on a specified listening port (default: 7770).
The current messages are:
/joyosc/quit
/joyosc/devices/DEV/color devAddr r g b
/joyosc/devices/DEV/rumble devAddr strength duration
/joyosc/devices/DEV/normalize devAddr enable
/joyosc/devices/DEV/axes/triggers devAddr enable
/joyosc/devices/DEV/axes/normalize devAddr enable
/joyosc/devices/DEV/sensors devAddr enable
/joyosc/devices/DEV/sensors/normalize devAddr enable
/joyosc/devices/DEV/sensors/rate devAddr hz
/joyosc/query/count
/joyosc/query
/joyosc/query INDEX
/joyosc/query DEV
INDEX is the assigned index based on order of connection, indices are reused when available
DEV is the device address name, ie. gc0, js1, etc
Exit joyosc externally via /joyosc/quit.
For game controllers with an LED such as PS4 and PS5 controllers, the color can be set over OSC. The color value range is 0-255.
For example, to set the color of the device at OSC address "gc0" to cyan:
/joyosc/devices/gc0/color 0 255 255
To turn the LED off, set "black": 0 0 0. This message is ignored for joysticks and controllers without an LED.
For devices which support haptic "rumble" aka have vibration motors, rumble events can be started over OSC. The rumble strength is a normalized percentage 0-1 and the duration is in ms from 0-5000 (5 seconds).
To rumble device at OSC address "gc0" at 75% for 500 ms (a half second):
/joyosc/devices/gc0/rumble 0.75 500
To stop current rumble event, set strength and duration to 0 0. This message is ignored for unsupported devices.
Axis and sensor settings can be configured over OSC:
- axis normalization
- triggers as axes
- enable/disable sensors
- sensor normalization
- sensor rate in hz
For example, to normalize both axes and sensors:
/joyosc/devices/gc0/normalize 1
To enable sensors and set the rate to 60 hz:
/joyosc/devices/gc0/sensors 1
/joyosc/devices/gc0/sensors/rate 60
The currently active devices can be queried over OSC.
To get active device count:
/joyosc/query/count
To query all active devices:
/joyosc/query
To query a single device by address, ie. "gc0", or index:
/joyosc/query devAddr
/joyosc/query devID
The lsjs tool lists the names of currently plugged in joysticks & game controllers, which you can then use to create your device mappings.
Example output:
% lsjs
0 Controller: "Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput)" 6d0400000000000018c2000000000000
You can also print detailed info using the -d or --details flags.
% lsjs -d
0 Controller: "Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput)" 6d0400000000000018c2000000000000
num axes: 4
num buttons: 12
Here is the same device as a joystick when disabling the game controller interface:
% lsjs -dj
0 Joystick: "Logitech RumblePad 2 USB" 6d0400000000000018c2000000000000
num axes: 4
num buttons: 12
num balls: 0
num hats: 1
If you want to customize an SDL game controller mapping, you can print the default mapping string for a plugged in device:
% lsjs -m
0 Controller: "Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput)" 6d0400000000000018c2000000000000
6d0400000000000018c2000000000000,Logitech F510 Gamepad (DInput),a:b1,b:b2,back:b8,dpdown:h0.4,dpleft:h0.8,dpright:h0.2,dpup:h0.1,leftshoulder:b4,leftstick:b10,lefttrigger:b6,leftx:a0,lefty:a1,rightshoulder:b5,rightstick:b11,righttrigger:b7,rightx:a2,righty:a3,start:b9,x:b0,y:b3,
The lsjs help output:
Usage: lsjs [options]
print the available joysticks & game controllers
Options:
-h, --help print usage and exit
--version print version and exit
-d, --details print device details (buttons, axes, GUIDs, etc)
-m, --mappings print game controller mappings
-j, --joysticks-only disable game controller support, joystick interface only
-w, --window open window, helps on some platforms if devices are not
being found, ex. MFi controllers on macOS
A small library of Pure Data abstractions is provided in the data/pd folder for OSC message parsing when using the Pd 0.46+ oscparse object. This library set is also installed to share/doc/joyosc/pd/joyosc.
Newer versions of macOS 14.5+ map the Home or "logo" button to automatically open the Launchpad app selector. This behavior can be disabled in Systems Settings:
Game Controllers -> Controller Shortcuts -> uncheck Press Home button to open Launchpad
As of spring 2024, game controllers designed to work with iOS, ie. Apple "MFi-certified", are supported by SDL2 on newer versions of macOS circa 10.15+, however they are often not detected if connected before starting joyosc. In order for controllers to be recognized, open joyosc or lsjs with an optional window using the -w/--window flag in order the OS to deliver events:
joyosc --window
This requirement may change in the future.
As joyosc & lsjs use SDL, they will not work over a SSH connection and you'll get the following error:
Error: could not init SDL: Unable to open a console terminal
Run them from a real terminal on the machine.
This is an GNU autotools project. When working with the git repo directly, the configure script must be generated using autoconf:
./autogen.sh
You can enable a debug build using:
./configure --enable-debug
After making changes, run make distcheck to make sure the distributable package can be built successfully.
To ensure a full clean when making changes to configure.ac, etc run:
./autoclean.sh
For debugging, configure with --enable-debug and (re) build. Run in gdb or lldb to pinpoint crashes. For example:
lldb -- ./src/joyosc/joyosc -ev data/example_config.xml
...
process launch
Note: joyosc was originally named "rc-unitd" (the robotcowboy unit daemon) in versions prior to 0.4.0