NVidia Shield Controller Driver

A Work In Progress Linux driver for the NVidia SHIELD Controller over WLAN.

The SHIELD Controller uses ozproto (Ethertype 0x892E), exposing an USB HID (the controller) and 3 USB audio devices (headphone audio sink, headphone audio source if it has a microphone and controller internal audio source (microphone).

Prerequisites

Requires a WLAN card that can operate in P2P-GO mode.

# iw list
...
        Supported interface modes:
        ...
                 * P2P-GO
        ...
...

Building the driver

Apply the patch set in driver to your kernel sources (currently only tested with a 4.4 kernel) and make sure the following configuration options are set.

CONFIG_USB_HID=y
CONFIG_STAGING=y
CONFIG_USB_WPAN_HCD=m
CONFIG_SND_USB_AUDIO=y (Optional, for audio support)

You probably also want

CONFIG_INPUT_JOYDEV=y
CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV=y

Usage

The SHIELD Controller uses WPS Push Button method for pairing, with the PC setting itself as the autonomous Group Owner. Pairing the controller using wpa_supplicant works as follows.

Ensure that you have

update_config=1

set in wpa_supplicant.conf. While this is not required, it allows for skipping WPS pairing the next time the controller is conntected.

# wpa_cli -i wlp3s0 p2p_group_add persistent
# wpa_cli -i p2p-wlp3s0-0
> wps_pbc

Now hold the Nvidia button on the controller until it flashes. When the button stops flashing, pairing was successful.

You can now load the driver with

# modprobe ozwpan g_net_dev=p2p-wlp3s0-0

After a few seconds, the controller should be available.

# lsusb
...
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0955:7210 NVidia Corp.
...

# lsusb -t
...
/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ozwpan/8p, 12M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 1, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 2, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 3, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M
...

Note that these instructions assume that wireless interface created is called p2p-wlp3s0-0.

Reconnecting the Controller

Find the network that was created for the controller

# wpa_cli -i wlp3s0 list_networks
network id / ssid / bssid / flags
...
8       DIRECT-0E       a0:a8:cd:0f:64:ce       [DISABLED][P2P-PERSISTENT]
...

Note that the network id and bssid will probably be different for you, the the ssid will always start with DIRECT-.

# wpa_cli -i wlp3s0 p2p_group_add persistent=<network-id>
# modprobe ozwpan g_net_dev=p2p-wlp3s0-0

Replace <network-id> the the network id obtained from wpa_cli -i wlp3s0 list_networks.

Now touch the NVidia button on the controller. It should be connected after a couple of seconds.

Choppy audio

If audio is choppy, try the following PulseAudio configuration.

In /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

default-sample-rate = 32000
default-fragments = 5
default-fragment-size-msec = 2

In /etc/pulse/default.pa

load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

Wireshark dissector

wireshark-dissector contains an ozproto wireshark dissector based on https://github.com/chunkeey/ozwpan/blob/master/wireshark/0001-OZWPAN-add-initial-OZWPAN-support.patch

devmapal / nvidia-shield-controller-driver

readme