Getting live info from /dev/input

Question

I am unsure if this is the correct place for this question. I am attempting to obtain the axis position values from a joystick /dev/input/js0 on my system. If I run jstest /dev/input/js0 it will give me live feedback on all buttons and axis positions.

I am trying to feed this information into my C program to control servos. Is there a function for doing this? I have not worked much with input devices in programming so this is all new to me.

Answer 1

You can run this python code to read events.
You can also use a high level module python-evdev.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import struct

infile_path = "/dev/input/js0"
EVENT_SIZE = struct.calcsize("llHHI")
file = open(infile_path, "rb")
event = file.read(EVENT_SIZE)
while event:
    print(struct.unpack("llHHI", event))
    (tv_sec, tv_usec, type, code, value) = struct.unpack("llHHI", event)
    event = file.read(EVENT_SIZE)

Sample output:

(73324490, 8454144, 55242, 1118, 25231360)
(73324490, 42008576, 55242, 1118, 58785792)
(73324490, 75563008, 55242, 1118, 92340224)
(73324490, 109117440, 55242, 1118, 125894656)
(73324490, 142671872, 55242, 1118, 159449088)
(73324490, 176226304, 55242, 1118, 193003520)
(73324490, 209780736, 55242, 1118, 226557952)
(73324490, 243335168, 55242, 1118, 8519680)
(73324490, 25296896, 55242, 1118, 42074112)
(73324490, 58884097, 55242, 1118, 75661313)
(73324490, 92405760, 55242, 1118, 109215745)
(73324490, 125992961, 55242, 1118, 142737408)
(73324490, 159514624, 55242, 1118, 176324609)
(73327790, 84041474, 58542, 1118, 84049919)
(73328030, 84044852, 58782, 1118, 84017152)
(73331790, 33749013, 62542, 1118, 33742256)
(73331790, 33736851, 62562, 1118, 33731108)
(73331830, 33723339, 62602, 1118, 33718273)
(73332090, 33723339, 62862, 1118, 33685504)