Installation Guide (Shibari Edition)

🚨 Obsolete solution 🚨

DsHidMini (official successor) has been released, please use that instead! This article will remain online for historic reasons but use is discouraged as no more updates will follow!

What's this

Ever wanted to use those pesky outdated yet absolutely lovely game controller devices shipped with your PlayStation(R) 3 on the Windows platform without constantly tripping over wires in your living room and risking becoming a victim of gravity? Well fear no more, you've come to the right place, mate! We got just the piece of magnificent software you need and all it will cost you is a few minutes of your precious time!

Coming to you from the Austrian University of Awesome (AUA ), BthPS3 has surfaced as the result of research and development by one crazed fella; Dr. Nefarius! Known for his expertise of building software nobody knows how to even install or, for that matter, getting rid of!

Sounds exciting? Want to join the herd and risk getting your PC turned into something even greater than before? Well, what are you even waiting for, keep on reading, spirited traveler!

Uh, what do you need from me

Simple! Just latest Windows 10 and any Bluetooth USB device or integrated card (like those you commonly find in portable computers, a.k.a. Laptops) running stock (a.k.a vanilla) drivers! No SCP, no AirBender, just the defaults (well, not quite, but keep on reading 'till the bottom of the page! )

Sweet, give me! How to install

Download Setup for Windows 10

Latest BthPS3 Bluetooth Drivers

Grab and run the setup, it will tell you everything you need to know, just click through it

Now is the time to plug in your Bluetooth dongle, if you haven't already

If you have an integrated card - like on laptops - make sure it is turned ON before you continue!

If you don't, setup will be very sad and will abort mission.

So play along and ensure it's happy, will ya

Alright, that was scary, what to do next?

Fear not, we're almost at the finish line! Now comes the part that's a bit rough but together we shall succeed!

Get all the files

Download and store all the fun listed here somewhere on your battle station

Get the latest Shibari.zip from here (always pick the highest version number from the bottom for most recent release)
- This plays the "middle man" between all those drivers you'll install
Get the latest FireShock.zip from here
- This is required for USB connection and automatic pairing
Get the latest ViGEm Bus Driver from here
- This is required for presenting the devices as either Xbox 360 or DualShock 4 controllers to games

Install drivers

Extract the FireShock archive somewhere and simply execute the dpinst (or dpinst64) tool included which will install the USB driver
Run the ViGEm Bus Driver setup and simply click through it until finished

Ready for some action

You made it this far? Great! Remember that Shibari archive from earlier? Extract that somewhere and have a look into the resulting folder. Simply fire up Shibari.Dom.Server.exe in there and your connected DS3 should spawn a virtual Xbox 360 and DualShock 4 controller which your games can pick up. Keep Shibari running for everything to work properly! Check the following F.A.Q. to see how to make it run permanently. Enjoy!

F.A.Q.

Have you gone insane?

Maybe! When you stare into the kernel for too long, the kernel stares back

Is this some official Sony thing?

Well, obviously not, as clearly stated literally everywhere! It's a research project I started for fun and pushed towards becoming production-ready and thought it might be of use to my fellow gamers!

Does this thing phone home? I see some network traffic once a day...

I ship a self-updater with my drivers since pushing security/stability critical enhancements is vital for drivers. The updater checks updates.vigem.org once a day and remains silent if you're sporting the most recent version. There's a scheduled task called BthPS3Updater you can disable/delete by hand if this makes you nervous.

Not a thing anymore since v1.3.x of BthPS3.

Why don't you cover Windows versions lower than 10?

Production-signing is unfortunately fairly annoying and unnecessary complicated for drivers targeting multiple major revisions of Windows so to keep my sanity I went for Windows 10 only. ~~The code of BthPS3 is - as we speak - technically compatible from Windows 7 to 10 so it could be back-ported in the future with little efforts.~~

Starting with this commit Windows 7 support is no longer given due to the introduction of a dependency not present in older OS versions.

Why is this Shibari thingy necessary to run this clutter?

I have plans for getting completely rid of this requirement, but that requires additional drivers which I've started working on but currently don't have the drive or capacity to deal with. Maybe if support and interest from the community rises above a certain threshold I'll tackle that topic some day again!

No need, use DsHidMini instead of Shibari and FireShock!

How do I get pressure sensitive buttons in PCSX2 with this?

That is possible but out of the scope of this project. DsHidMini can do that for you!

Can I use the motion capabilities of the PS3 controllers?

That is possible but out of the scope of this project.

I want some battery charge indicator, like SCP!

That is possible but out of the scope of this project. DsHidMini can do that for you!

Can I have all SCP features like quick disconnect combo etc.?

That is possible but out of the scope of this project. DsHidMini can do that for you!

I sometimes need to power on the controller twice or more until it stays connected...

That's due to how certain connection details get stored within the Microsoft Bluetooth DDIs and when the driver attaches, there's no way around that other than just powering the controller on again!

The setup version doesn't match the driver version it installs...

That's intentional; not every tweak and fix the setup itself receives necessarily requires an update of the driver binaries. So all fine there!

I want a DualShock 4 emulated, not an Xbox 360 controller!

Open settings.json in your Shibari folder and check out the comments in the "sinks" section

Ever since I've installed this, my DS3 isn't working anymore in PSNow!

FireShock and Sonys official sixaxis driver they ship with PSNow unfortunately can't coexist on the same system, if you want "traditional" USB support back you need to uninstall FireShock:

Use DsHidMini instead to get that feature back!

Ever since I've installed this, my DS4 isn't connecting anymore at all!

This is a bit tricky at the moment; I've added a workaround to combat this where you should be able to use it like before without any troubles if you simply power it on, let it shut off after one or two seconds and then within a time span of ten seconds power it on again and it should work.

How can I keep Shibari running in the background?

Shibari can easily be installed as a Windows Service running in the background without the need to start it every time you'd like to use your devices and have an additional Window open all the time.

Fire up PowerShell as Administrator and run the Shibari.Dom.Server.exe file with install as an argument, like so:

The path to the executable file has to match the one on your machine of course 😉

Right after that start the service:

Start-Service Shibari.Dom.Server

Check that the service is running:

Get-Service Shibari.Dom.Server

Done, delightful 😃

My controller is randomly pressing buttons or axes jitter, bug!!1!

Nope, this isn't and never was a software issue. Any misbehavior in regards to reported inputs comes from the controller hardware itself, not my tools. In short: your device is damaged or reached the end of its lifespan, sorry! Time to replace! 😔

If you sport some of those lovely ~~fake~~ aftermarket devices from questionable stores from far away costing only a dime or two then you might have been screwed over and my software is not here to fix hardware manufacturers cuts, get proper genuine hardware or at least higher quality replicas

This is a community project and not affiliated with Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. in any way.

"PlayStation", "PSP", "PS2", "PS one", "DUALSHOCK" and "SIXAXIS" are registered trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.