Pipe Input

Since dolphin 4.0-8065, dolphin supports automated input using unix named pipes. This can be used to write bots, for example, or to automate tedious in-game tasks.

This features only works on unix systems for now, and needs some setup to work:

Creating the fifo
First, locate your dolphin-emu user folder (usually in ~/.dolphin-emu or ~/.config/dolphin-emu), then run:

mkfifo pipe1

Controller config
Then you can either perform the task of selecting the pipe input into the controller config dropdown and then sending the button push/release events manually into the configuration dialog (very tedious), or copy the following config section into the Config/GCPadNew.ini file in the user folder.

[GCPad1] Device = Pipe/0/pipe1 Buttons/A = `Button A` Buttons/B = `Button B` Buttons/X = `Button X` Buttons/Y = `Button Y` Buttons/Z = `Button Z` Buttons/Start = `Button START` D-Pad/Up = `Button D_UP` D-Pad/Down = `Button D_DOWN` D-Pad/Left = `Button D_LEFT` D-Pad/Right = `Button D_RIGHT` Triggers/L = `Button L` Triggers/R = `Button R` Main Stick/Up = `Axis MAIN Y -` Main Stick/Down = `Axis MAIN Y +` Main Stick/Left = `Axis MAIN X -` Main Stick/Right = `Axis MAIN X +` C-Stick/Up = `Axis C Y -` C-Stick/Down = `Axis C Y +` C-Stick/Left = `Axis C X -` C-Stick/Right = `Axis C X +`

Interacting
You can interact with the fifo using standard command-line tools such as echo.

Doing a button push: echo 'PRESS A' > ~/my-dolphin-directory/pipe1

Doing a button release: echo 'RELEASE A' > ~/my-dolphin-directory/pipe1

Moving a stick (where stick_name is C or MAIN and X and Y values between 0 and 1): echo 'SET stick_name X Y' > ~/my-dolphin-directory/pipe1