PoorDS4

PoorDS4 would not have been possible without the excellent work behind Ghostcontrol by StonedModder. Its controller research and PS5 payload foundation made this project possible, this project will eventually be merged to it later on if stoned Modder agrees even though its different now. I'm only using this for testing and gathering logs from testers until its fully stable and make this implementation much cleaner. PoorDS4 also relies on the PS5 Payload SDK and the remote-syscall interface documented by kstuff-lite.

PoorDS4 lets a wireless DualShock 4 paired with a jailbroken PS5 control native PS5 games. It does not require USB, a DualSense, a second user, or a profile-selection prompt. Native DualSense controllers remain on Sony's original input path and can be used independently for local multiplayer.

This is experimental homebrew that modifies a running game's pad imports. Compatibility checks fail closed, but untested firmware and games can still crash. Save your gamesave before testing (it broke the save file of a game during very early builds testings, never happened again but there is stil the risk so this is your disclaimer to save your work).

• A jailbroken PS5 with a compatible HEN/kstuff environment and ELF loader.
• A wireless DualShock 4 paired with the PS5 and connected to a logged-in user.
• Firmware 11.60 for the currently live-tested configuration. See firmware support before testing another version.

1. Download PoorDS4rc38.elf from the latest release.
2. Connect the DS4 to the PS5 user that should control the game.
3. Send the ELF once to the console's payload loader. The game may already be running or may be launched afterward.
4. Wait for the wireless DS4 active notification, then play normally.

Only run one automatic instance. PoorDS4 follows later game launches without reinjection. It performs safe cleanup before rest mode; reinject after waking. Use PoorDS4-stop.elf before replacing a running build.

The source reader recognizes Sony DS4 v1 (054c:05c4), DS4 v2 (054c:09cc), and Sony's wireless adapter (054c:0ba0). It also accepts a controller when the PS5's scePadIsDS4Connected API positively identifies it as a DS4. Genuine Sony wireless DS4 revisions are supported; third-party clones and adapters with different identities require testing.

One DS4 is translated per PoorDS4 instance. The selected DS4 may be the first, second, or later connected controller, provided the game's pad table contains one unambiguous destination slot.

1. Enumerate the logged-in and Invite users' pad slots.
2. Identify a live DS4 through public device metadata and Sony's DS4 API.
3. Read its 120-byte ScePadData state at 120 Hz in SceRemotePlay.
4. Wait for one fully initialized native game process.
5. Validate the game's pad ABI, client table, player slot, import owners, and target mappings before changing anything.
6. Redirect only validated pad imports to a game-owned anonymous mapping and publish translated frames through a double buffer.

The game is never ptraced, stopped, or used to run a borrowed thread. No eboot or libScePad code page is patched, and no game heap, socket, or thread is created. See the architecture document for the exact safety and cleanup invariants.

Compatibility is based on proven ABI structure, not a broad 11.xx or 12.xx version assumption. Unknown layouts fail closed and produce a report instead of installing hooks. See docs/FIRMWARE_SUPPORT.md.

Install the official ps5-payload-sdk, set PS5_PAYLOAD_SDK, then build from the repository root:

make -C payload clean
make -C payload release

On the Windows PS5 development workspace used for release builds, load the environment and select its target wrapper explicitly:

. .\ps5dev-env.ps1
make -C payload CC=ps5-clang.cmd clean
make -C payload CC=ps5-clang.cmd release audit

RC38 release assets use ps5-payload-sdk v0.42:

Diagnostics are stored under /data/poords4/:

• game-pad-bridge.log and game-pad-bridge.log.1
• game-pad-bridge-supervisor.txt
• game-pad-bridge-last.txt
• game-pad-bridge-status.txt after running the status ELF
• reports/source-fw-XXXXXXXX-pid-N.txt
• reports/fw-XXXXXXXX-pid-N.txt

For a firmware or game incompatibility, copy the complete /data/poords4/ directory and include the steps that reproduced the failure. Source and game reports identify poords4_rc and report_schema. Review reports before posting them publicly because they contain runtime process addresses and controller diagnostics.

PoorDS4 is a focused wireless-DS4 derivative of Ghostcontrol. The original USB implementations and binaries are intentionally not distributed in this tree. See NOTICE.md for detailed credits and LICENSE for the GPL-3.0-or-later terms.