So my friend Aly inspired me to play with the Arduino I bought a few months back. I also had a servo, and a 'sixaxis' usb playstation gamepad which I normally just use to play halo and the wonderful Processing installed, in about half an hour I had the joystick on the game controller controlling the movements of the little servo motor really well!

I'm really impressed how easy and quick it is to make something like this!

Now I'm thinking about the possibility of creating wearable robotic horse-like ears with the hope it would make communicating with horses, especially ones who aren't used to people, quicker and more effective.

Thank you to the teams behind Processing, Arduino, and the proControll library that made connecting the playstation gamepad so easy!

The Processing source code:
creativepony.com/apps/Processing/RoboEars-080311a.zip

The Arduino source code:
creativepony.com/apps/Arduino/Analog_Servo-080311a.zip

And the driver used to get the PS3 controller working as a gamepad on the host mac:
tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Ps3Controller

A similar 'filter driver' is available for windows which will probably get the 'sixaxis' controller working there too. Linux's need support built in to the kernel, and some distro's do include this but some don't, so ask your geek lords if yours does or not to find out if a PS3 controller will work this way!