On today’s edition of “really, really cool but ultimately not that useful” is a hack by Evan Kale to turn a PlayStation 2 controller into a wireless gamepad.

First, let’s talk about the “really, really cool” part of the story before we speak about the massive shortfalls of this project.

What Kale did here was gut an old PS2 controller by cutting off the cord, ditching the rumble motors and adding in an Arduino Uno chip, an on/off switch, battery and battery controller, and a Bluetooth module.

The part of the project we like the most is the fact that an Arduino Uno was used in place of a smaller maker board. In fact Kale mentions this at the start of the video, pointing out that, at first glance, the much smaller Arduino Nano would have been a better fit.

But, when you remove the chip from the Uno, it’s actually smaller than the Nano, making it a better fit in the tight working space. Throw in the fact that the Uno’s chip runs on a lower voltage, and it all makes sense.

Now, on to that “not so useful” part. The controllers from both the PS3 and PS4 run off of regular Bluetooth and can be configured (with some software such as MotionJoy or SCP Driver) to work on PCs and other devices.

All you need, aside from the free software, is some device that has Bluetooth access. Hell, even if you have a PC that doesn’t, you can get it to work over USB.

Even some PC games are shipping with PS4 controller native support and you won’t need to buy an expensive Xbox One/360 adapter. That being said, because Xbox controllers are part of the Windows hardware family, you’re almost always get the best support going that route.

Regardless, “because I can” has always been one of the best reasons to hack things together, and we’re eyeing some old controllers around the office that we’d love to get working on modern systems.