skylander-portal-controller
My kids love Skylanders, but the save data (your levels, gold and Imaginators) lives ON the figure and keeping a PS3 working is even more difficult. So the portal runs in an emulator (RPCS3) and the kids drive it from a phone over the house Wi-Fi: pick a profile (PIN-gated, anti-sibling), pick a game, tap figures onto the emulated portal. The figure files are per-profile copies on the PC, somewhere a vacuum can't end them.
It boots from Steam Big Picture and puts a QR code on the TV. Phones scan in and SHARE one portal — either kid can touch any slot (co-op, free-for-all), a colour dot per slot showing whose figure is whose.
Higher-level pitch + the demo videos: . The source-of-truth docs are in the repo: SPEC.md (the long-form spec + every decision's Q&A), PLAN.md (the execution checklist) and CLAUDE.md (the compact working reference). Research writeups under docs/research/.
Latest version + the full changelog: the Releases page (that's what it's FOR).
How it fits together
flowchart LR
phone["phone / iPadLeptos SPA (WASM)"] -- "REST + WebSocketover LAN Wi-Fi" --> server
subgraph pc["the PC — one binary"]
server["Axum server+ eframe launcher (the TV face)"]
server -- "AF_UNIX IPC(drives g_skyportal direct)" --> rpcs3["patched RPCS3(--no-gui)"]
end
rpcs3 -- renders the game --> tv["TV / HTPC display"]
One binary on the PC does two jobs: an Axum web server (serves the phone SPA + the command API) and the eframe launcher window (the QR + status on the TV). It drives a PATCHED RPCS3 over a local AF_UNIX socket — g_skyportal control direct, instead of a robot clicking through RPCS3's menus on screen (instant, and it can't fumble a button that moved). The phone stays a dumb client: REST to send a command, a WebSocket to get state back.
Install (end users)
You bring your own RPCS3 () and your own firmware + .sky figure dumps. This ships NO game or firmware content (that's piracy — dump your own).
- Install:
winget install ChristopherHotchkiss.SkylanderPortalController. winget is a trusted authority, so you skip the SmartScreen "unknown publisher" scare and it upgrades cleanly. (Or grab the MSI or portable zip off the Releases page — same binary; the MSI installs to Program Files, the zip unpacks anywhere.)
- Point it at your RPCS3. First launch asks for your RPCS3 path + firmware-pack root and remembers them (
%APPDATA%\skylander-portal-controller\). It reads firmware + games from your install but drives the portal through its OWN bundled patched RPCS3 — stock RPCS3 doesn't support the level of control we need, which is why the patched build ships alongside.
- You can also choose here to support a desktop install and control the portal with your desktop only.
- (Optional) Add it to Steam (Add a Non-Steam Game) so it launches in Big Picture.
- (Optional) Steam artwork. Non-Steam games show a blank library card. The install drops a first-pass artwork set next to the app in
steam/; apply it with Steam → right-click → Manage → Set Custom Artwork. Steam won't do it for you, so it's a one-time manual step.
Windows x86_64 is the shipping target (the patched-RPCS3 IPC driver). The macOS build is source only for the moment, a signed build is planned.
Running in dev
You need a Rust toolchain (with the wasm32-unknown-unknown target) and trunk. A real portal needs Windows + a real RPCS3; macOS runs the mock driver (set SKYLANDER_PORTAL_DRIVER=mock in .env.dev — full bringup in docs/dev/macos-bringup.md).
- Copy
.env.dev.example to .env.dev, fill in the RPCS3 + firmware-pack paths.
- Build the phone SPA:
cd phone && trunk build.
- From the repo root:
cargo run. A windowed launcher comes up with a QR + URL — scan it from a phone on the same LAN, tap a slot, tap a figure, watch it load into the emulated portal.
SKYLANDER_PORTAL_DRIVER=mock in .env.dev swaps in the in-memory mock (no RPCS3) while you iterate on UI.
One cargo gotcha
Cargo.toml sets default-members = ["crates/server"], so a bare cargo run / test / build at the repo root touches ONLY the server crate. That's what lets step 3 work without a --bin flag (the workspace also holds a one-shot wiki-scrape tool that would otherwise make cargo run ambiguous). The consequence that bit me: a bare cargo test skips everything but the server — use cargo test --workspace (or -p ) to actually exercise the indexer / sky-parser / etc. CI runs --workspace on every push, so regressions still get caught, just not by your local cargo test.
Layout
crates/core/ — shared domain types + the wire protocol.crates/indexer/ — walks the firmware pack into a figure list.crates/rpcs3-control/ — the PortalDriver trait + its impls (IPC for the patched RPCS3, UIA fallback for stock, mock for dev).crates/server/ — the binary (Axum + eframe + the driver worker).phone/ — the Leptos CSR SPA (builds to WASM via trunk).tools/ — one-shot helpers (firmware inventory, UIA probes, the play-through recorder).docs/ — research writeups + aesthetic reference.
Tests
cargo test --workspace # unit + integration
SKYLANDER_PACK_ROOT=… cargo test -p skylander-indexer --test real_pack -- --ignored
RPCS3_SKY_TEST_PATH=… cargo test -p skylander-rpcs3-control --test live -- --ignored
The --ignored ones need a real firmware pack or an interactive RPCS3, so they stay off by default.
License
GPL-2.0-only (see LICENSE). The repo vendors RPCS3 (vendor/rpcs3) and carries a patch series against it (rpcs3-patches/); RPCS3 is GPLv2, so the patches and the combined work are GPL-2.0 too.
Skylanders characters, images and trademarks are Activision's. This ships no game or firmware content — you supply your own RPCS3 install and firmware backups.