As an avid rhythm game fanatic, (primarily DDR), I was very excited with the release of Rock Band 3 and its “real” instrument modes. I have been having a lot of fun, and painful practice, learning pro keys. The game is in general reasonably good, although the Wii port has its own set of problems.

However, I was frustrated at the limited portability of the peripherals between console platforms. Particularly, the Wii RB3 guitar and keyboard, despite being practically identical, would refuse to operate as anything other than a generic HID device when plugged into a PS3. I haven’t even tested with an XBox 360, but I presume the problems are similar, if not worse.

For a number of weeks I have been working on a project to create an inexpensive dongle/adapter to allow peripherals from one console to be playable on another console. Today was exciting, as I rocked out for probably the first time anywhere using my Wii guitar and keyboard on my friend’s PS3. So, first light has been achieved.

It still isn’t a great solution yet, the play is laggy and only a very limited set of peripherals are supported. Unfortunately, some of the issues are out of my hands, as the only reasonable hardware for my desired simple design consists of a binary blob only firmware which has turned out to have a large share of teething problems. With any luck, the vendor will be able to resolve these and I can get the performance up to where you would actually want to play with it.

More to come as the design progresses and bugs get worked out.