Everything you need to cover Dish.
Logos, screenshots, fact sheet, founder bio, and pre-cleared copy. Anything missing? Email press@tinkernorth.com. It's a monitored mailbox.
One-liner
Dish turns your Android phone, or a pad plugged into a Windows or Linux PC, into a sub-frame-latency wireless controller for your gaming PC over your own Wi-Fi.
Short pitch (≈ 60 words)
Dish pairs your phone, or a pad on a Windows or Linux PC, with Satellite on your gaming PC and turns it into a sub-frame-latency wireless controller over your own Wi-Fi. A DualSense keeps its motion, touchpad, lightbar, HD haptics, adaptive triggers, microphone, and speaker, all sealed with ChaCha20-Poly1305 after a 4-digit PIN. Free, open source, no analytics, no ads. Pairs straight with Sunshine, Apollo, and Wolf too.
Long pitch (≈ 300 words)
TinkerNorth's Dish is a free, open-source wireless gamepad for PC gaming. The model is split: Dish for Android lives on the phone in your pocket, and Satellite, a tiny system-tray receiver, runs on your Windows or Linux gaming PC. Pair them once with a four-digit PIN and the phone behaves like a wired Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch Pro controller to every game on the PC.
Dish was built to feel exactly like a wired pad. The hot path is three syscalls and zero allocations. Inputs ship as 12-byte XUSB reports over raw UDP, marked DSCP EF so QoS-aware routers move them ahead of bulk traffic, and arrive in single-digit milliseconds end-to-end on a normal Wi-Fi 6 LAN. Every packet is sealed with ChaCha20-Poly1305 IETF (the same AEAD as TLS 1.3, WireGuard, and SSH) and a monotonic counter blocks replay attacks.
Dish carries every input surface a modern controller has: gyro and accelerometer in the Cemuhook DSU convention, the DualSense two-finger touchpad with monotonic tracking IDs, RGB lightbar control, rumble, DualSense adaptive triggers and HD haptics, a microphone and speaker for the emulated pad, battery telemetry, and a Bluetooth HID mode that lets a phone act as a gamepad for anything that speaks the Bluetooth HID profile. Six languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, and Bosnian.
Dish ships as four clients, for Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, and Satellite runs on Windows and Linux. The 2.x releases gave the emulated controller a microphone and a speaker, let every client pair with a Sunshine, Apollo, or Wolf host directly, and carried a DualSense's HD haptics and adaptive triggers over Wi-Fi. Satellite for macOS is on the roadmap. The project is independent, single-founder, and funded by tips and memberships through GitHub Sponsors, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, and Google Play.
Fact sheet
| Product | Dish: wireless gamepad for PC gaming |
|---|---|
| Client | Dish for Android (touch overlay + Bluetooth HID passthrough, Android 7.0+ and Fire OS 7+), Dish for Windows, and Dish for Linux |
| Server | Satellite: system-tray receiver for Windows and Linux |
| Publisher | TinkerNorth |
| Founder | Emir Hasanbegovic (independent) |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Canada |
| Launch | July 2026 with Dish for Android and Satellite. 2.0 in September 2026 added Linux, controller audio, and Moonlight hosts; the 2.1 to 2.3 releases added DualSense HD haptics and Diagnostics |
| Price | Free. No paid tier and no ads. The Google Play build takes optional tips through Google Play; they unlock nothing. |
| License | GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later |
| Source code | github.com/TinkerNorth (Dish for Android, Windows and Linux and the Satellite repos are public; build provenance via SLSA Level 3) |
| Privacy posture | No analytics, no advertising ID, no account system. Every app ships opt-out crash reporting (Firebase Crashlytics on Android, Sentry on the desktop clients and Satellite), and builds outside Google Play check GitHub for new releases, which can be switched off. |
| Latency claim | Single-digit-millisecond end-to-end on a normal Wi-Fi 6 LAN, validated on the receiver web UI |
| Concurrent controllers | Up to 16 per Satellite session |
Brand assets
Logos and icons are part of the brand iconography set and are licensed for editorial use under LGPL-3.0-or-later. Don't recolour or stretch them. Don't put them on busy backgrounds.
Screenshots
The thumbnails below are placeholders. For current high-resolution screenshots, email press@tinkernorth.com with your deadline and we'll send cleared stills.
Founder bio
Emir Hasanbegovic is the maker behind Dish and the broader TinkerNorth project family. Toronto-based, with a decade-plus background in low-latency consumer applications and cross-platform native development. Dish began as a Sunshine / Moonlight side-project and became the wireless-controller-for-PC product TinkerNorth always wanted but could never find at the latency it needed.
Reach out for interviews, technical deep-dives, or background: press@tinkernorth.com.
Pre-cleared talking points
- "Free, open source, zero ads, zero analytics. No asterisks."
- "Sub-frame end-to-end latency on a normal home Wi-Fi 6 LAN, measured live in the receiver's web UI."
- "A DualSense keeps its touchpad, lightbar, HD haptics, and adaptive triggers over an encrypted UDP link."
- "Up to 16 controllers per Satellite session for couch co-op nights."
- "Built to drop into Sunshine + Moonlight setups, not compete with them."
- "Supply-chain hardened: cosign-signed checksums, SLSA Level 3 build provenance, libsodium for crypto, no homebrew primitives."
What we won't say
Things we ask press to not characterise Dish as, because they don't match what the project actually is:
- "Free-to-play." Dish is just free. Nothing is locked behind a purchase; tips are optional and unlock nothing.
- "Cloud gaming." Dish is the controller. Sunshine / Moonlight is the cloud-gaming stack. We're complementary, not competitive.
- "Encryption" without naming the AEAD. Please cite ChaCha20-Poly1305 if depth allows. It's the same AEAD as TLS 1.3 / WireGuard / SSH.
Contact
- Press & interviews: press@tinkernorth.com
- Privacy questions: privacy@tinkernorth.com
- Security disclosures: security@tinkernorth.com See
SECURITY.mdin the Satellite repo. - GitHub org: github.com/TinkerNorth