How to use a phone or tablet as a CEMU GamePad

How to use a phone or tablet as a CEMU GamePad

Cemu Touchpad

I started to play Pikmin 3 on CEMU recently and wondered how to get a good experience with the game pad. Pikmin 3 heavily relies on the game pad for multitasking between your two characters. Here is how you can add touch into the mix for free.

Materials that you will need

You will need the following:

  • Android or iOS device (your phone or a tablet)
  • A cable to connect your device to the computer
  • Software to extend your PC display to your device (I use Wired XDisplay, but you can find alternatives to it here)
  • Controller
  • (Optional) A Phone stand to hold your device
  • (Optional) A Y USB cable to provide more power to your device (More on this later)
  • (Optional) Stylus that works with phones, super cheap on amazon

Steps

Start by installing the software on your device and your phone. I will be explaining the steps on how to set up and use Wired XDisplay.

iPhone/iPad: Install itunes and get the app on your appropriate device (there is a different iPhone and iPad app)

Android: Install the USB drivers for your kind of device (just follow the instructions on the windows app) and then install the android app on your device. Start the app and enable USB debugging on your device.

That’s it! Make sure to plug in your USB cable and you should be set to go! Set the quality to normal and frame rate to high. In XDisplay Low=15fps Normal=30fps High=60fps.

You may need to change the position of the display or the resolution. The Wii U game pad was only 854×480! I tested the display at 720p on my Pixel 2XL, Samsung j3, and iPhone 6. They worked very well.

Setting up CEMU

There really isn’t much that you need to set up on Cemu’s side. Set up the gamepad as keyboard input (Which allows you to use your mouse) and then hook up a controller of some kind (Xbox, PS4, Switch Pro Controller, etc) and set that up as a Wii U Pro controller or a Classic Pro controller.

This allows you to play the game on the controller and then interact with your device as a mouse input (which translates to you touching your Wii U pad with a Stylus).

Once you have the inputs hooked up, launch your game and then hit “Options -> Separate GamePad View”. This will allow you to drag and drop the now floating window onto your Device (which is just an extended monitor).

Pikman 3 Screenshots

As seen above in the screenshots I took on my Pixel 2 XL, it looks just like a normal display (other than the android buttons on the right side).

iphone 6 being used as a Cemu Touchpad

Other things to note

Note that with bigger tablets or phones, your battery may get drained over the use of the device since USB out of a computer (normally) can only provide half an amp of current, where as normal USB charging speeds are 1-2.4 amps.

The normal small crappy iPhone charger that comes with iPhones is 1 amp, where any good Android chargers are at least 2 amps. You can get around this limit with a Y Split USB cable. Hook up the two ends to your computer and plug in the other side to your phone and you now have 1 amp of charging!

I used a Samsung J3 Prime as my main device of testing and put it in airplane mode with the screen brightness to 70% and played for around an hour without it dropping a percent of battery. It all depends on your device and how much power the screen brightness of your device takes.