Sony Patents Wireless Controller Charger Kit With Additional Buttons

Early this year, Sony released the official DualShock 4 back button attachment. Aside from that, though, it would appear that Sony is not yet done with back attachments as the company’s latest patent unearthed shows that they may be working on some wireless controller charging functionality.

The patent, which was filed in late 2018, went public today and revealed that this wireless charging attachment is indeed intended for gaming controllers.

A wireless charging adapter that can snap onto a computer game controller can be inductively coupled to a charging base to wirelessly recharge a battery in the controller. The adapter also can include keys that mirror keys on the controller so that a gamer can remove the adapter with controller from the charging base, keep the adapter on the controller, and use both the controller keys and adapter keys to control a computer game.

A number of images were also provided in the patent, revealing how this charging kit may look like, including the base that it communicates with and the additional buttons.

The details found in the patent reveals that the charge is sent via wireless communication between the base and the attachment, where the attachment then charges the battery of the controller.  As for how the buttons on the attachment work, if you look at the base unit above, you may notice some familiar PlayStation buttons along with some bigger ones (1206,1212,1210). These are actually used to map those buttons found on the attachment, as they will emit a light when they have been successfully paired with the device.

To map a game controller key to one of the left or right adapter keys 12081210, a user can press the set key 1206 and then press the left or right key 12081210 sought to be mapped. The first press of the key sought to be mapped may illuminate a first one of the indicators 1212. The user can look at the illuminated indicator and corresponding icon and if the user wishes to map the corresponding game controller key to the adapter key sought to be mapped, release both the set key and the adapter key sought to be mapped. If the user wishes to map a different controller key to the adapter key sought to be mapped, he presses the adapter key sought to be mapped again, which causes another indicator 1212 to be illuminated for mapping the controller key represented by the icon 1214 associated with the indicator to the adapter key sought to be mapped according to principles above. The user can scroll through the indicators (and hence game controller keys) in this fashion by holding down the set key 1206 and toggling the adapter key sought to be mapped until the indicator representing the sought-after game controller key is illuminated, at which time the user releases the adapter keys to establish the mapping.

As with all patents, nothing is a guarantee that it will ever see a final release of some sort, though it does give us an insight as to what a company is potentially working on for the PS5 controller, the DualSense. How do you guys feel about this? Is this something you could see yourself using with the DualSense? Or perhaps you’d rather have it built right into the controller itself? Let us know your thoughts!

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JesusChristoFLagos
JesusChristoFLagos
3 years ago

I personally didn’t like the back button attachments for the DS4, muscle memory refused to let me get used to them lol

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