Observing USB Gamepad with Arduino? I have a gamepad which I want to treat as a sensor for my Arduino board. I want Arduino to trigger a certain action based on button pushes from the gamepad. Different buttons, different actions.

The gamepad comes with a USB connector. I cut the the USB cable open, solder it with pluggable pins which are then connected to a breadboard. I supply the gamepad with 5V power from Arduino and connect the USB's Data+ to Arduino's analog input pin (A0). Please check the images below.

I thought by observing the voltage coming from the gamepad's Data+ pin, I can probably determine if a button is being pushed. However, the observable input voltage in Arduino's A0 do not produce any meaningful difference between button push and release.

My question: Is it possible to detect Gamepad's button pushes with this arrangement? If it's possible, where do you think I'm doing wrong?









simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab
As mentioned, the problem is the gamepad you have uses communicates over USB, which requires a USB Host chip to communicate with. However, USB Host shields can be found on eBay (under "arduino USB Host shield") from US$10, and they come with a USB socket, so you could use it easily with another gamepad that hadn't had the connector snipped. This also would allow use with HID devices such as mice and keyboards if you wished, so a worthwhile shield to own.