Homebrew App send variable data to homebrew peripheral

[hayt]

First off I want to say Thank you for such a great forum and dreamcast community.

On to my question.

Is it reasonably possible to create a accessory that can receive variable data from a homebrew application.

For example, albeit a complicated one.

Say you make a homebrew racing game, and also a peripheral that can interface with the game, like a lcd digital speedometer that updates current vehicle speed through the serial port, or even through a 'unused' controller port vmu's data transfer.

Not sure if this makes sense. But like a speedometer that is plugged into controller port 4, and the homebrew racing game can send vehicle speed data through the port to the speedometer peripheral similar to how the vmu can display various data.

If this would be possible, would it be possible to have multiple peripherals in the controller ports to access various bits of data, or even multiple peripherals per port?

Example using homebrew racing game,

controller port 1: Controller, or racing wheel
controller port 2: Speedometer display
controller port 3: Tach display
controller port 4: something else, (lol)

ok. that was kinda confusing, but hopefully someone understands what im asking. can the serial or controller ports be capable of something like this, obviously this would require specially made peripherals, and homebrew applications though.

Thank you for any input on this matter.

[BlueCrab]

There's no reason why you couldn't implement such a thing, but it would most likely be more expensive than anyone would be willing to spend on it.

Also, if you were to use the controller ports, there's no reason why you couldn't combine all of what you've suggested into one device. Each device on the controller bus is allowed to have several sub-devices (this is how, for instance the memory cards and the Dreameye camera work). Not only that, but it'd probably actually be easier to combine various "meters" into one device that simply responds to the "set condition" maple command. It'd be easier to have a racing wheel controller that had all of those meters as a sub-device (built into the controller) than it'd be to have them as individual devices (and probably cheaper to build as well). However, it would still probably be more expensive than anyone would want to do for a homebrew game.

[hayt]

Thank you for the quick response BlueCrab.

I am sure you are right, it would be far too expensive, and there would be nonexistent demand for such a thing.

Interesting nonetheless.