This is a personal fork of kungaa/DS5-Linux-Bridge. It carries changes suited to my own setup — most notably support for up to four DualSense controllers at once and a WS2812B LED status strip — and anyone is welcome to use it. All credit for the core firmware belongs to the original authors (see Credits & License); this fork just builds on their excellent work.
Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W that turns it into a latency-optimized USB-to-Bluetooth bridge for the Sony DualSense (DS5) controller — reproducing the wired experience (speaker, microphone, and native HD haptics) over Bluetooth. Linux / SteamOS is the priority target; Windows works too.
See the upstream User Guide for flashing, pairing, the config page, and OS-specific behavior and troubleshooting.
- Up to four DualSense / DualSense Edge controllers simultaneously on one dongle. Each pad appears to the host as its own USB gamepad. Seats are assigned in session order (lowest free slot), like a PS5.
- Grow-as-you-go enumeration — with no controllers connected the host sees no gamepad at all (no ghost "DualSense" in device lists; just the hidden wake keyboard + config channel). The first controller to connect re-enumerates the dongle (one quick USB bounce) with one gamepad, and another bounce adds an interface whenever a controller joins a seat the host hasn't seen yet this session. Disconnects never re-enumerate: a vacated seat stays visible and the next controller silently takes the lowest free one (so if player 1 drops, the next pad to connect is player 1). When the last controller leaves, the dongle bounces once back down to the no-gamepad idle face.
- Feature tiers — rumble and adaptive triggers always work on every pad. Controller audio (speaker, HD haptics, microphone) streams only while exactly one pad is connected; Bluetooth bandwidth can't carry audio for more.
- Move controllers between slots from the web page (each connected pad's row has a "move" selector). Everything that belongs to the pad follows it; the seat's identity (lightbar color, player LEDs) stays with the seat.
- Per-slot player LEDs and lightbar colors — pads show their seat number
on the white player LEDs, and each slot's color (lightbar and status LED)
is configurable in the UI. Default is blue (
#0000FF) for every slot. - Player-LED lock (toggle in the UI, on by default) — with 2+ pads connected, host writes to the player indicators are ignored so each pad keeps showing its slot number even when Steam Input glitchily clears them. With a single pad the host stays in control.
- Black lightbar writes revert to the slot color — a host writing pure black (0,0,0) would erase the seat identity; the firmware substitutes the slot's configured color instead. Tip: set Steam's controller LED brightness to 0% and Steam stops overriding slot colors entirely, while games keep full lightbar control.
- Controller shortcut — hold PS + Triangle for about a second to power off that pad (it stays paired and reconnects on the next PS press).
- Optional status LEDs driven from GP28 (build with
-DENABLE_LED_STRIP=ON), rendered via PIO at a 5% brightness cap. - Per-slot indication (colors and animation — solid, blink, pulse, or off — configurable per state in the UI): empty seat = off/black by default, connected = solid slot color, battery ≤ 40% (discharging) = yellow, battery ≤ 20% = red, blinking by default (the one state that still blinks out of the box).
- Idle — with no controller connected (and not pairing), the strip is off by default; give the state a color and an animation (e.g. pulse blue) to get a "powered and waiting" display.
- Fixed status codes (whole strip, not configurable — see the user guide): solid orange = flash mode (UF2 bootloader), solid red = firmware crashed / boot-looping.
- Configurable layout — set how many LEDs the strip has (default 8, up to 32) and click, per slot, exactly which LEDs light up. Any physical arrangement works: a line, a ring, a square, several LEDs per slot. Note: the Pico can only safely power about 8 LEDs itself; longer strips need an external 5 V supply (sharing ground, data stays on GP28).
- LED debug panel in the web UI: simulate a slot's connected/low-battery states, the pairing blink, and the idle breathing (without touching the radio or draining a pad), chase a test color down the strip, or blank it. Everything auto-reverts to live status after 60 s.
- Open
web/index.htmlin Chrome/Edge/any Chromium browser (from disk, or hosted anywhere — it is a single static file), press Connect, pick the DualSense Wireless Controller entry. The page talks to the plugged-in adapter over its own gamepad HID interface: no WiFi, no server, nothing to install. Everything below works over it, including live status. - The tunnel rides on feature reports
0x80/0x81— the command/response pair a real DualSense already has — behind a magic signature, so the USB HID descriptor stays byte-identical to real hardware. Protocol and command list:src/hid_config.h; any hidapi/Electron program can drive the same/api/*routes. - WiFi is Wake-on-LAN only: enter the network under Network on the page (saved over USB). With no network saved the adapter boots with WiFi off and BT/USB fully up. There is no web server, mDNS or captive portal in the firmware at all — nothing on your LAN can reach or configure it.
- On Linux the adapter must be accessible to your user: with Steam installed
its udev rules already cover Sony (
054c) gamepads; otherwise add a rule for that vendor ID.
- Live status card: per-slot connection state, model, battery percentage (colored at the same 40%/20% thresholds as the strip), and which features are active on each pad at the current tier.
- Sidebar navigation — categories (Controller, Paired controllers, Lights, Network) down the left, one pane at a time, so the page stays readable as features grow.
- Paired controllers: connected pads show a colored Slot N badge, unnamed pads display as "DualSense" (rename to tell them apart), the list refreshes automatically on connect/disconnect, and a Refresh button covers the rest.
/api/log— the firmware mirrors all of its diagnostics into a RAM buffer served as plain text (first KB of boot output kept forever, plus a rolling tail), so logs are readable in a browser with no UART adapter.
- Bonds now survive reflashes — BTstack's link-key flash bank is relocated off the sector the RP2350 bootrom erases on every UF2 flash (the same quirk that used to reset the config).
- Safe flash writes — all key-store flash operations run through a bounded, watchdog-fed, retrying path (and complete directly during single-core boot). The stock path could hang the main loop into a watchdog reboot whenever the audio core slept through the flash lockout — the cause of a long-standing "dongle reboots when a controller connects".
- Deferred flash flushes during connection setup — a flash erase mid-handshake stalled the feature exchange and dropped the first pairing; flushes now wait until no connection setup is in flight.
- Multi-pad teardown fixed — "Forget all" disconnects every pad (disconnects are queued through BTstack instead of racing its single HCI command buffer).
- Memory headroom — the heap runs ~17 KB clear of the Opus audio
codec's ~76 KB footprint: libopus string literals (~11 KB of never-hot
error text) stay in flash instead of joining the RAM-relocated code and
tables, and internal buffers are right-sized. Boot prints heap telemetry
(
[MEM],[Audio] heap used) into/api/logso regressions are visible.
- Dockerized build with a pinned toolchain (Pico SDK 2.2.0, a pinned TinyUSB revision, ARM GNU 14.2) — no host toolchain installation needed.
- Full wireless controller emulation — DualSense Bluetooth reports become a standard USB HID gamepad at up to 1000 Hz. Supports DualSense (DS5) and DualSense Edge (DSE), including DSE PS-app profiles.
- Wireless HD haptics — the cabled audio-based haptic feedback, recreated over Bluetooth.
- Wireless audio — speaker/headphone playback and microphone upload over standard USB Audio Class, with no Bluetooth headset-profile downgrade.
- Hybrid hardware mic mute — local mute via the physical Mute button, synced with the host sound panel.
- On-device web config + bond management — the adapter hosts its own
configuration page over USB (
web/index.htmlin Chrome/Edge). - Wake from sleep (S3 / S5) — wake the host by turning on the controller.
- Low-latency performance — Bluetooth/USB/audio hot paths run from RAM to avoid flash cache thrashing.
- USB 3.0 RF-noise watchdog — auto-retries Bluetooth connections stalled by 2.4 GHz interference from USB 3.0 ports (USB 2.0 ports recommended).
- Flash — hold BOOTSEL on the Pico 2 W, plug it into USB, and drop
the
.uf2onto the mountedRP2350volume. - Pair — put the DualSense in pairing mode (hold Share + PS until the lightbar double-blinks). To add more controllers, use Pair new controller on the config page.
- Configure (optional) — open
web/index.htmlin a Chromium browser, press Connect, to change settings, colors, the LED layout, or paired controllers.
The only requirement is a running Docker engine (Docker Desktop, OrbStack,
or plain docker). The first build creates the toolchain image; after that
builds are incremental.
./docker/build.sh pico2_wOutput lands at build/docker-pico2_w/ds5-bridge.uf2. Extra CMake options
pass straight through:
# This fork's typical build: 4 slots + LED strip on GP28
./docker/build.sh pico2_w -DENABLE_LED_STRIP=ON
# Other examples
./docker/build.sh pico2_w -DMULTI_SLOT_COUNT=2 # fewer controller slots
./docker/build.sh pico2_w -DLED_STRIP_GPIO=2 -DENABLE_LED_STRIP=ON
./docker/build.sh pico_w # Pico W (RP2040, no audio)
./docker/build.sh waveshare # Waveshare RP2350B-Plus-WUseful options:
| Option | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
MULTI_SLOT_COUNT |
4 |
Concurrent controller slots (1-4). |
ENABLE_LED_STRIP |
OFF |
WS2812B controller-status LEDs via PIO. |
LED_STRIP_GPIO |
28 |
GPIO for the strip's data line. |
ENABLE_WIFI_WOL |
ON |
On-device config web page over WiFi + Wake-on-LAN. |
ENABLE_BATT_LED |
ON |
Onboard-LED low-battery blink. |
ENABLE_VERBOSE |
OFF |
Louder UART logs. |
Every invocation configures and builds in its own build/docker-<name>
directory, and the CMake cache there remembers the -D flags — so after
the first configure, re-running the same command (or just
cmake --build build/docker-<name> inside the toolchain image) rebuilds the
same configuration incrementally. To keep a differently-flagged flavor of
the same board without clobbering its default directory, name it with
BUILD_NAME.
The configurations maintained in this repo:
| Directory | What it's for | Reproduce with |
|---|---|---|
build/docker-pico2_w |
The daily-driver build: Pico 2 W, 4 controller slots, WS2812B strip on GP28. This is the UF2 to grab for the multi-controller dongle. | ./docker/build.sh pico2_w -DENABLE_LED_STRIP=ON |
build/docker-ms1 |
Single-controller flavor of the same board (ms1 = multi-slot 1): upstream-like one-pad behavior, no LED strip. For A/B-testing regressions against single-slot behavior. |
BUILD_NAME=ms1 ./docker/build.sh pico2_w -DMULTI_SLOT_COUNT=1 |
build/docker-pico_w |
Pico W (RP2040) board target — no audio. | ./docker/build.sh pico_w |
build/docker-waveshare |
Waveshare RP2350B-Plus-W board target. | ./docker/build.sh waveshare |
The flashable image is always <directory>/ds5-bridge.uf2.
The standard Pico SDK CMake flow also works if you have the toolchain set up
(make sure the SDK's TinyUSB checkout matches the revision pinned in
docker/Dockerfile):
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
makeBuild Release; Debug (-O0) causes audio crackling.
| Board | Configure with | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W (RP2350) | (default) | Full feature set. |
| Waveshare RP2350B-Plus-W | -DWAVESHARE_RP2350B_PLUS_W_BUILD=ON |
USB-C, 16 MB flash, RM2 wireless. |
| Raspberry Pi Pico W (RP2040) | -DPICO_W_BUILD=ON |
Legacy RP2040; no audio (gamepad + haptics only). |
There is no USB serial port — USB-CDC was removed because it shares the USB stack with the audio isochronous endpoints and perturbs the very timing you need to measure. Diagnostic output goes to UART0 instead:
- Pico GP0 (pin 1) = UART TX, connect to your USB-serial adapter's RX
- Pico GND (pin 3) to adapter GND
- Settings: 115200 baud, 8N1, no flow control (3.3 V logic — do not feed 5 V into GP0)
openscad/ contains a printable bracket (pico_25_bracket.scad, with a ready-to-slice STL) that mounts the Pico inside a PC case using a standard 2.5" drive (SFF-8201) bottom mounting pattern — designed around a Fractal panel, but the footprint fits any 2.5" bay:
- The plate screws to the inside of the case's inner sheet via M3×4×5 heat-set inserts; the Pico sits on standoffs on the outward face and pokes through the panel opening, its PCB top landing flush with the panel's outer relief surface.
- The Pico screws down with M2 screws into M2×4×3.2 heat-set inserts in the standoff tips.
- The I-shaped side cutouts leave the sides open so the LED-strip wires and DuPont connectors tuck behind the bracket.
- Sheet thickness, relief depth, insert bores, and the Pico's position are
all parameters at the top of the
.scadfile — print flat face down (standoffs and insert holes up).
Known limitation: the bracket doesn't yet leave clearance for a thick micro-USB cable — the current design assumes a slim plug. A future revision needs to accommodate bulkier cable housings.
From breadboard prototype to a dongle mounted in the PC case.
 Early breadboard prototype driving two DualSense controllers at once, with the WS2812B strip showing slot status. |
 Soldering leads onto a short WS2812B strip segment. |
 The finished strip harness — 5 V, ground, and GP28 data, heat-shrunk to jumper connectors. |
 Close-up of the solder joints before the final heat-shrink pass. |
 OpenSCAD render of the case-mount bracket. |
 The printed bracket with the brass heat-set inserts installed. |
 Pico 2 W and the strip assembled onto the bracket. |
 First power-on of the assembled unit — slot LEDs lit in the default blue. |
 Mounted to the case's 2.5" drive pattern, wired to an internal USB port. |
 The Pico 2 W poking through the panel opening, flush with the outer surface. |
This fork stands on two projects' shoulders:
- DS5-Linux-Bridge by kungaa — the direct upstream: the Linux-first fork that added the on-device web config, bond management, the Decky Loader companion plugin, and extensive Linux tuning. If this firmware is useful to you, consider supporting kungaa on Ko-fi.
- DS5Dongle by awalol — the original project that made all of this possible: the DualSense bridge core, HD haptics over Bluetooth, and the low-latency architecture.
This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE. Portions of the source originate from awalol's MIT-licensed work; the original MIT notice is preserved in LICENSE-MIT as that license requires.