I wrote a small lib to turn a USB gamepad into a Bluetooth one
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I had two old USB gamepads lying around that I wanted to use, but my computer is too far from the couch, so I wrote a little ESP32-S3 firmware that turns USB gamepads into Bluetooth ones.You connect your gamepad to the ESP32-S3 with an OTG cable, power the ESP32 with either 5V somehow or a powered USB hub, and now you can pair the controller via Bluetooth to your PC!
HN · launched Dec 17, 2025 · 26 upvotes (top 30%) · 0 views
Niche: embedded systems and firmware utilities · 239 launches, 4 in the last 7 days ▼ -76% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Hardware & robotics
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 239 launches in embedded systems and firmware utilities →
Could you build this?
No Developing embedded firmware to parse raw USB HID host packets and translate them into a compliant Bluetooth HID device requires dedicated embedded hardware programming.
What it would actually take: The solution requires C/C++ firmware built on ESP-IDF targeting an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, operating the USB peripheral in USB Host mode to enumerate and parse varied vendor HID reports. It must remap those reports into a standard Bluetooth HID Profile (Classic or BLE HID) and manage low-latency radio transmission and power management. This necessitates deep hardware debugging skills, logic analyzer use, and embedded USB/Bluetooth stack protocol expertise.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Code quality and trustworthiness when LLM-generated without thorough review, Lack of transparency about LLM usage from the start, Author's dismissive communication style discouraging project adoption
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 310 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #89 of 311 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 36 days after the earliest competitor.
- JoyLink: Phone as Gamepad · ph · 2026-09-27 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- PC Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse · ph · 2026-10-09 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.59
- WinStadia · github · 2026-09-19 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- questpad · github · 2026-10-10 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- dualsense-bridge · github · 2026-10-19 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- MiRemoteBridge · ph · 2026-09-18 · 56 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- ClickDrift - Bluetooth Mouse & Keyboard · ph · 2026-10-19 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- WhateverPad · github · 2026-10-22 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.54
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