powerglove linux driver.

The Mattel Powerglove is an accessory for the original NES game console. It is a virtual reality glove which can send X, Y, Z, roll, and finger data. They can sometimes be found on Ebay for a reasonable price.

In 2002 I released a Powerglove driver for Linux 2.4 based on the parallel interface below. My main objective was to make the glove usable on a modern operating system. While kernel 2.4 is no longer modern, it should be relatively painless to port the driver to recent versions of the OS.

Interface

The following schematic interfaces the Powerglove to a PC parallel port. It was originally published in Byte magazine, 1990.

Here is a timing diagram for the glove pins:

Links

The source for Linux kernel 2.4.
The Virtual Reality Construction Kit has helpful technical details about the glove.
The project was Slashdotted in 2002.