[OmniBlade]

WIRELESS
Getting it working over bluetooth is a bit tricky. This is how I got it working.

First, open your favorite text editor and copy this keymap and save it to your computer with a name like "ps3-controller.xml" or something. We'll be editing this later.

Next, in OpenELEC navigate to System > OpenELEC > Services and make sure "Enable Bluetooth" is checked.

Then navigate to System > OpenELEC > Bluetooth. If you don't see an item labeled "PLAYSTATION®3 Controller", plug in the controller over USB and hit the Home button. If the controller is connected, disconnect it and hit the Home button. The red lights on top should be blinking. Select the controller on the Bluetooth menu and hit "Trust and Connect". If it all worked, the lights should continue blinking on your controller and it should say "Connected: Yes" in the Bluetooth menu.

Now SSH into the HTPC and type this

Code:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

There should be an entry named "PLAYSTATION®3 Controller". Find the section that says U: Uniq= and copy the string that comes after it.

Now open the keymap file we created earlier. Under each joystick node we're going to create a new altname node. It will look like this

Code:

<altname>PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller (XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX)</altname>

with the number in parenthesis being the Uniq from the last step. Save the file.

Now SFTP into your HTPC and place the keymap in /storage/.xbmc/userdata/keymaps/

Reboot the HTPC.

Here's where things get a little hacky. The controller needs to be connected before OpenELEC boots for it to be usable, but you can't connect over bluetooth until OpenELEC has booted... So what I do is wait for OpenELEC to boot, hit the Home button on my controller, then try to open an N64 rom. This will crash the system, forcing OpenELEC to re-open with the controller connected. It's ugly, but it works.

Sorry if this guide was confusing. There might be an easier way, but this is the only way that worked for me.

This all seems very complicated, what version of bluez does openelec use? If its 5 then newer versions have support for sixaxis and ds3 pairing integrated in, if its 4, there are patches that enable the same where you just connect the pad to the system and it magically get paired. They are stuck using the kernel driver support which until recently didn't have rumble support or support setting the LEDs but with kernel 3.15 that is fixed.
I've created a ppa for ubuntu 14.04 that has the sixaxis patch as well as support for pairing to the WiiU pro control at https://launchpad.net/~nadia-xy/+archive/ppa for anyone wanting to use the PS3 pads with xbmcbuntu. It doesn't support fake PS3 controllers though as they tend to have different descriptors and the patch relies on the descriptor to decide if it needs to create the pairing and trust. I might be able to add that to the patch, but I don't have any fakes so would be unable to test it.

Regarding controllers not detected, garbear previously said he thought hotplugging of controllers had been fixed, but this seems not to be the case, at least on linux as I can also report only being able to use controllers that were connected before XBMC started.