Creating A Joystick Event?

DirectX input for joystick work is a different way. You can create an Event (EventWaitHandle for .NET API) object which is set by the joystick driver interrupt on every input event. You can write code which fires events.

Here is how: Create the input event object. Create a thread; in this thread make an infinite loop which waits for this event object. While waiting, your thread is set to the wait state and consume zero CPU time until awaken by the event wait handle. When it happens, re-read joystick status, pack the change in status (compared to the previous state) into some event argument and fire the event; then the loop will get it the the wait state again. In this way, this thread will work as a source of events. Overall, it looks like interrupt-driven behavior.

I have only C# code, so I can use Microsoft.DirectX.DirectInput. Do something like this:

using Microsoft.DirectX.DirectInput;

JoystickDevice Device;
//Find your device using FindControllers, you can use them all

Consider you have some device wrapper JoystickDevice:

class JoystickDevice {
    public void Acquire(System.Threading.WaitHandle deviceEvent) {
            Device.SetEventNotification(deviceEvent);
            Device.Acquire();
    } //Acquire
}

//this is the key: create another class, thread wrapper, create a some wait handle and pass it
//to Device.Acquire. Now this handle will be Set by hardware device, your thread only waits:
//In this thread:

while (true) {
    JoystickStateNotifierEvent.WaitOne();
    //now poll Joystick state using Device;
    //determine what changed and fire some event
} //loop

—SA