Arduino Game Controller

A custom Arduino controller paired with a Unity game collection. An analog joystick, push buttons, a potentiometer, and an MPU6050 provide conventional controls and motion input; Unity reads the controller over a serial connection and maps it to several playable demos.

Demo

Menu

Gameplay

TETRIS.mp4

3DHUMAN.mp4

CAR.mp4

Features

• A Unity menu that launches four controller-driven experiences: Tetris, an obstacle runner, a racing game, and a 3D character scene.
• Joystick input for movement and camera control.
• MPU6050 accelerometer/gyroscope input, filtered with a Kalman filter, for tilt steering and orientation.
• Dedicated buttons for selection, exit, rotation, hard drop, jumping, and zooming.
• A potentiometer that controls in-game audio volume.
• A text-based serial protocol that lets each Unity scene select the input mode it needs.

System overview

joystick / buttons / potentiometer / MPU6050
                     |
                  Arduino
                     |
             USB serial @ 115200
                     |
                  Unity game

The Arduino sketch accepts a one-character mode command from Unity and returns one line per input event:

Mode	Intended scene	Example messages
M	Menu/Tetris-style controls	Movement: x y, Clockwise: 1, Space: 1, Volume: value
R	Racing	Angle:x y z, Exit:1
H	Character navigation	Movement: x y, CameraMovement: x y, ZoomIn: 1
C	Combined movement and tilt	movement/camera messages plus Angle:x y z

Unity reads these messages on a background thread and applies them to rigid bodies, cameras, UI, and scene transitions.

Repository structure

gameController/gameController.ino   Arduino firmware and serial protocol
Assets/menu/                        Game-selection UI and scene scripts
Assets/tetris/                      Tetris implementation and controller mapping
Assets/cubeRun/                     Obstacle-runner gameplay
Assets/car/                         Tilt-controlled racing demo
Assets/3Dhuman/                     Character and camera demo
Assets/SerialComm/                  Unity serial communication helpers
Assets/PathCreator/                 Path tooling used by the racing scene

Hardware

The sketch is written around the following parts and pin assignments:

Component	Arduino connection
MPU6050	I2C (Wire)
Joystick X/Y	A0 / A1
Potentiometer	A2
Action buttons	digital pins 9–13
Additional button	digital pin 7 with pull-up

The firmware depends on I2Cdev, MPU6050, and Kalman Arduino libraries.

Setup

1. Wire the controller according to the pin table and install the required Arduino libraries.
2. Open gameController/gameController.ino, select the correct board and serial port, then upload it.
3. Open the Unity project containing this Assets directory.
4. In each serial-enabled component, change the Inspector's port field from the original COM4 setting to the controller's current port.
5. Keep the baud rate at 115200 to match the firmware, then open the menu scene and press Play.

Notes

• This repository is an educational project snapshot and contains the Unity Assets tree rather than a fully self-contained Unity project with ProjectSettings and Packages.
• Several art packages and the Path Creator/SerialComm helpers are third-party assets. Their original licensing terms still apply.
• Serial port names are machine-specific, and only one scene/component should own the port at a time.