About the next release (0.24)

I released version 0.23 in June, and haven’t released anything from that time. But this doesn’t mean I’m not developing GIMX anymore!
Some of you may have see that the source code is hosted on googlecode, and if you go to the googlecode project page, you will see some interesting information about the project.

Have a look at the project activity, and you will see that I’m still developing GIMX actively.

To see the list of pending issues/enhancements, have a look at this list.

To see the list of fixed issues/enhancements since the release 0.23, have a look at this filtered list.

The next version (0.24) is almost ready to be built/released, but as I develop GIMX in Linux, I still have to check that everything works fine in Windows. There is also a last issue that I want to fix in Windows, which is issue 113 (Multiple mice and keyboard support). I don’t really have as much time as I previously had, but hopefully the next release will be out in a week or two.

Stay tuned!

Blogger to self-hosted WordPress

I decided to move the blog from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress.

There are several reasons for that:
– I’m now paying for a web hosting service for the gimx forum
– Blogger is not as customizable as a self-hosted WordPress
– freedom 🙂

I got some issues to solve to make the existing urls redirect to the new blog. Some of these are:
– not possible to have a clean 301 redirect from Blogger
– not possible to redirect static pages with the ‘Blogger to WordPress Redirection’ plugin

After testing a few tricks I hacked a javascript code to generate custom redirects. It’s based on the meta refresh, I know it’s not very clean, but I can’t (or I don’t know how to) do better. A good point of that method is, I can redirect the tutorial blog urls to the appropriate forum threads.

My custom javascript redirection:

[spoiler]

<script type='text/javascript'>

var new_root_domain = 'https://blog.gimx.fr';

var features = /\/p\/features.html/g;
var tutorials= /\/p\/tutorials-tutoriels.html/g;
var videos= /\/p\/videos.html/g;
var faq= /\/p\/faq.html/g;
var contribute= /\/p\/contribute.html/g;
var todo= /\/p\/todo-list.html/g;
var en= /new-english-tutorial.html/g;
var fr= /nouveau-tutoriel-en-francais.html/g;
var de= /neues-deutsches-tutorial.html/g;

if (features.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9";
}
else if (tutorials.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewforum.php?f=4";
}
else if (videos.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewforum.php?f=10";
}
else if (faq.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7";
}
else if (contribute.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8";
}
else if (todo.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14";
}
else if (en.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5";
}
else if (fr.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10";
}
else if (de.test(location.href))
{
    redirect_link = "https://gimx.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13";
}
else
    redirect_link = new_root_domain + "?b2w=" + location.href;

document.write("<meta content='0;URL=" + redirect_link + "' http-equiv='refresh'/>");
</script>
[/spoiler]

And my custom redirect page content:

[spoiler]

<div id='outer-wrapper'></div>
<div>
<p><strong>This content has moved!</strong></p>
<p>You should be automatically redirected. If not, visit<br/>
<a href='https://blog.gimx.fr'>
<strong>https://blog.gimx.fr</strong></a>
<br/> and update your bookmarks.</p>
</div>
<!-- end outer-wrapper -->
[/spoiler]

I know the old “label links” don’t work, I will try to fix that latter. If you see anything else broken, just leave a comment!

Recommended bluetooth dongle

I finally found a compatible, low price, worldwide available bluetooth dongle. The brand name is “Pluscom”, it’s quite unknown, and the model name is “BT-20”. The chip inside this dongle is a CSR Bluecore4-rom, and what’s even more surprising is that it’s written “CSR BC4” on the product package.

 

This dongle is available on ebay: link. The price is good and the seller is in the UK, which should provide a faster delivery than China to people living in the EU or the US. No longer available 🙁

The shape of this dongle is exactly the same than my Peabird PEAB-BT-SM04C-100M (CSR Bluecore4-rom). It’s not a very common shape for bluetooth dongles, so that I think it’s highly possible that these dongles come from the same factory.

Project forum

A user nicknamed “DjDean” proposed me to launch a forum that will help to organize the information about the sixaxis emulator, and I thought it was time to do that.

Hopefully this will make the support easier than with a blog, and this will help to start a community around the sixaxis emulator.

I chose the domain name “gimx.fr”. GIMX stands for “Game Input MultipleXer”. I’m intentionally not mentioning the ps3 as I also may target the XBox360 some day…

Most of the information is already moved to this new forum. The layout/design is not definitive.

Forum link: http://gimx.fr/forum/

Stats over a year

I started blogging about this project in February 2010. Following chart from google analytics shows the fluctuation of visitors.

There were a few peaks:

  • 2 news on hackaday in April/May 2010
  • in September 2010, due to the psgroove, many people looking for avr usb dev boards
  • in December 2010, a thread started on gtrp.de about using macros for GT5/B-spec
  • in Mars 2011, the Kinect-PS3 was released
  • in May 2011, news on many websites (hackaday, korben, dashhacks, ps3hax, logic-sunrise, psx-scene, psgroove…)