AirBender

Windows Bluetooth Host Driver for Sony DualShock Controllers

This was a research project and testbed for getting familiar with the UMDF and an attempt of porting over the Bluetooth host stack from the C#-implementation used in ScpToolkit to a native C Windows user-mode driver. It has been discontinued in favour of better solutions. The code will stay up for anyone to use as either an inspiration or a negative example 😜

Summary

AirBender consists of a custom Windows Bluetooth Stack containing a user-mode driver and a user-mode dispatch service handling wireless communication with Sony DualShock 3 and 4 controllers. It allows 3rd party developers to handle controller inputs and ouputs via a simple plug-in system.

Architecture

Since the Sony DualShock 3 utilizes a butchered non-standard Bluetooth protocol incompatible with standard HID profiles a custom Bluetooth stack is required to establish a connection on the Windows platform. The AirBender user-mode driver implements a compatible Bluetooth stack and also acts as a bus emulator allowing for multiple devices to connect and transmit. It's designed to work with most USB Bluetooth host devices obeying at least Core Version 2.1 + EDR standards.

The actual input and output reports flow between the driver and a user-mode service running in the background. This service handles detection of "AirBender Dongle Devices", reacts to child device arrival/removal and forwards input/output data to or from a plugin sub-system where arbitrary code can process it. In the default implementation, input data is exposed to the system via ViGEm.

Supported systems

The driver is built for and tested with Windows 8.1 up to Windows 10 (x86 and amd64).

Sources

• https://cloud.nefarius.at/s/BKMWItpNLHKC5zA
• https://nadavrub.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/simulate-hid-device-with-windows-desktop/
• https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0/wiki/PS3-Information#Bluetooth
• https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff536572%28v=vs.85%29.aspx?f=255
• http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/DualShock_3
• http://eleccelerator.com/wiki/index.php?title=DualShock_3