DS5Dongle for Waveshare RP2350B-Plus-W

Fork of awalol/DS5Dongle adapted for the Waveshare RP2350B-Plus-W — an RP2350B (QFN-80, 48 GPIO) board with the Raspberry Pi Radio Module 2 (CYW43439, Wi-Fi 4 / BT 5.2) and a USB Type-C connector.

The upstream project targets the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W (RP2350A, micro-USB). This fork keeps the firmware logic identical and only changes what's needed to run on the Waveshare board.

Everything is contained in three files:

• boards/waveshare_rp2350b_plus_w.h — custom Pico SDK board header
• CMakeLists.txt — WAVESHARE_RP2350B_PLUS_W build option
• tools/build-windows.ps1 — -Board waveshare flag

No firmware-side .cpp was touched — the existing CYW43_WL_GPIO_LED_PIN/cyw43_arch_gpio_put code keeps working because LED1 on the Waveshare silkscreen is wired to CYW43 GPIO0, just like on the Pico 2 W.

Check the Releases of this fork, or the GitHub Actions artifacts on the main branch.

You don't have to clone anything beforehand — just download tools/build-windows.ps1 and run it in PowerShell:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\build-windows.ps1 -Board waveshare

The script installs every prerequisite (CMake, Ninja, Python, Git, the ARM GNU toolchain — via winget, with portable downloads as fallback), clones this repo plus the pinned Pico SDK + TinyUSB into %USERPROFILE%\.ds5-build, builds the firmware, and drops ds5-bridge.uf2 next to the script and on your Desktop. It is safe to re-run.

Useful flags:

• -Variant debug — adds -DENABLE_SERIAL=ON -DENABLE_VERBOSE=ON (USB-CDC log)
• -Variant wake — adds -DENABLE_WAKE_HID=ON (wake-on-PS-button)
• -Clean — wipe the variant build dir first
• -Repo <url> -Ref <branch> — build a fork or a specific ref

If you already have a checkout, run tools\build-windows.ps1 -Board waveshare from the repo root — it detects and uses your local checkout.

git submodule update --init --recursive
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DPICO_SDK_PATH=<sdk> \
      -DWAVESHARE_RP2350B_PLUS_W=ON
cmake --build build --target ds5-bridge

Requires Pico SDK 2.2.0 with the TinyUSB submodule pinned at tag 0.20.0 (or newer).

1. Hold BOOTSEL on the Waveshare board and plug it in via USB-C.
2. It mounts as a USB drive named RP2350.
3. Drag ds5-bridge.uf2 onto the drive — the board reboots into the firmware.

1. Put the DualSense into pairing mode (hold Create + PS until the lightbar blinks rapidly).
2. Wait for the dongle to detect and connect.
3. Once connected, the controller appears on the host system as a regular wired DualSense.

The dongle is only visible to the OS after the controller has connected over Bluetooth. You may have to re-plug the dongle while the controller is in pairing mode if it doesn't pick up on the first try.

• 🎮 Full DualSense connectivity over Bluetooth
• 🔊 HD haptics (advanced vibration feedback)
• 🔉 Speaker passthrough
• 🪫 Low-battery LED indicator (LED1 blinks at 1 Hz when battery ≤ 10 % and not charging)

To opt out of the battery-LED feature at build time: configure with -DENABLE_BATT_LED=OFF.

Same as upstream — enable with -Variant wake. See upstream issues #60 and #61 for caveats.

You can change runtime settings via the upstream-hosted web config:

• Release: https://ds5.awalol.eu.org
• Dev: https://ds5-dev.awalol.eu.org

Like upstream, the Waveshare board is run at 320 MHz @ 1.20 V to keep up with audio encoding. If your board fails to boot, drop the frequency or nudge the voltage in CMakeLists.txt / src/main.cpp.

• ⚠️ Audio may experience slight stuttering (inherited from upstream)
• ⚠️ This fork has been validated on the author's single Waveshare board; please open an issue if your board behaves differently.

git remote add upstream https://github.com/awalol/DS5Dongle.git   # once
git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/master   # or rebase
git push

• awalol/DS5Dongle — original project
• rafaelvaloto/Pico_W-Dualsense — project inspiration
• egormanga/SAxense — Bluetooth haptics PoC
• DualSense fandom wiki — DualSense report structure
• Paliverse/DualSenseX — speaker report packet
• earlephilhower/arduino-pico variant waveshare_rp2350b_plus_w — reference for the RM2 pin mapping

Same as upstream — see LICENSE.