Accessing HID Devices on the Web With the WebHID API: How to play the Chrome Dino Game by Jumping With a Nintendo Joy-Con Controller in One's Pocket
This work addresses the challenge of web-based hardware interaction for developers and users, though it is incremental as it builds on existing HID protocols and web technologies.
The paper tackled the problem of accessing specialized hardware like Nintendo Joy-Con controllers from the web by introducing the WebHID API, enabling developers to write JavaScript drivers for HID devices, and demonstrated this by controlling the Chrome Dino game through jumping motions detected by the Joy-Con's accelerometers.
In this demonstration, we show how special hardware like Nintendo Joy-Con controllers can be made accessible from the Web through the new WebHID API. This novel technology proposal allows developers to write Web drivers in pure JavaScript that talk to Human Interface Device (HID) devices via the HID protocol. One such example of a driver has been realized in the project Joy-Con-WebHID, which allows for fun pastimes like playing the Google Chrome browser's offline dinosaur game by jumping. This works thanks to the accelerometers built into Joy-Con controllers whose signals are read out by the driver and used to control the game character in the browser. A video of the experience is available.