I complained about that part too, and 8bitdo doesn’t seem receptive…
I mentioned it to them and they were very helpful… They specifically sent me a beta firmware for the reciever that allows me to toggle between Switch mode and Xinput mode by holding Select+Y or Select+X respectively.
I’ll see if I can find the file …
Not sure I understand this point. Which resistor would you replace with a diode?
Sorry, I think I was talking nonesense (doing this in my head and just woke up 😅).
Not sure it’ll work with just a P-FET actually. You’ll likely need to control the PFET with a NFET, otherwise you still end up with too high a voltage on your control pin when the FET is off due to the gate pullup (unless you can use a fet with a very high Vgs Threshold and then drive it push/pull from the micro, but this isn’t really best practice).
The above comment about diodes was to protect the microcontroller pin, but you end up not being able to control the FET doing it that way.
I think either your existing Option 3 or PFET upstream of the divider, switched via an N-FET is the way to go.
Could you do similar to diagram 2, but instead of an N-FET use a P-FET between the battery and first resistor in the potential divider?
Add a gate pull up resistor to source to ensure the FET is off by default, have the micro pull the gate down to take a measurement. You’ll probably need to add another resistor on the control pin to 0V to limit the voltage there also, but those two can be much much higher values to really limit current. Or use a zener/TVS diode instead of second resistor to clamp the voltage instead of dividing (more robust).
Switch it with an NFET
The micro will see 0V or divided/clamped battery voltage on the measurement pin.
I have the Bluetooth + 2.4G one with hall effect sensors and paddles (with the 2.4G/Bluetooth switch on the back and included 2.4G receiver in the dock).
I didn’t realise the dedicated 2.4G one received Bluetooth later, but the firmware was for the 2.4G receiver, not the controller, which I’d assume to be the same one regardless? That said, it’d only allow you to use “Switch Pro Mode” and “Xinput Mode” when connected via 2.4G to the receiver. Bluetooth mode behaviour will be unchanged… But given the choice I’m not sure why anyone on PC would use Bluetooth instead of the 2.4G anyway, unless they’re not using the dock with that particular computer…
All that aside though, my initial comment was to indicate 8bitdo were actually quite helpful when I reached out to them, in contrast to the person I was replying to… To answer OPs actual questions:
Bluetooth mode outputs as a Switch Pro controller by default, so a lot of games on PC won’t recognise it unless you use Steam Input or some other translation layer to convert to Xinput. There are numerous applications to do it, but Steam is probably easiest and most accessible. To set the paddles etc You can download the Ultimate Software on your Phone or the PC to set the back paddles and tweak settings.
I’d recommend playing around with some first person shooters using the Gyro. Steam specifically has a Flick Stick-like mode that is a really fun way of using the Gyro in FPS games like DOOM. You angle the stick to the direction you want to face, and then use gyro to aim up/down and make fine corrections. E.g. to snap turn 180degrees, just flick the right analogue stick down. Works brilliantly when you (eventually) get the hang of it, it’s so much faster.