$800 Nimbus 2000 Replica Becomes Hogwarts Legacy Controller

Other than Tears of the Kingdom, Hogwarts Legacy is probably the biggest game released so far this year — both in terms of the size of the game world and in sales. Hogwarts Legacy is an open world adventure game set within thePotterverse, letting players become wizards. As you would expect, players can traverse the huge game world world by riding flying brooms. Mo's friend happened to own a Nimbus 2000 replica (which cost a whopping $800 AUD), which Mo borrowed to build a controller for flying within the Hogwarts Legacy game.

While there would be ways to make a controller like this work on any platform, Mo chose to take the sensible approach and built a PC controller. There are many microcontrollers capable of emulating a gamepad when connected to a PC via USB and Mo selected an Arduino Pro Micro with a Microchip ATmega32U4 microcontroller. The Pro Micro runs the Arduino Xinput Library created by David Madison. That library lets the microcontroller act as a Xbox 360/Xbox One controller, which will work with any PC game that allows gamepad input. Mo can send any input command from the Pro Micro, such as an X button pressor stick movement. He just needed a way to do so in response to the movement of the replica Nimbus 2000 broom.

Mo chose two sensors for this job: an LSM6DS3TR-C accelerometer from Adafruit and an HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor. The accelerometer detects the orientation and movement of the broom, while the ultrasonic sensor monitors the distance from the broom to the rider's upper body. The Pro Micro and the sensors attach to the broom with a mount made from styrofoam and popsicle sticks, which Mo constructed to avoid making even the slightest scratch on the expensive prop replica.

With the hardware in place, Mo was able to program a series of conditions that would trigger button presses on the emulated Xbox controller. Tilting the broom causes the in-game character to dive or roll. Tucking in close to the broom (monitored by the ultrasonic sensor) increases the flight speed within the game. Mounting and dismounting the broom is a little more complicated, but Mo made that work by setting conditions for both sensors that would, in practice, only occur when the user physically stepped on or off the Nimbus 2000.

The result is pretty fantastic and this broom controller seems to work well. Of course, it doesn't help with any other actions within the game. That's why Mo also designed a wand controller for casting spells.