This may be related:

Years ago, I wrote a separate app daemon which grabs hid joystick events and streams them over OSC into pd. This approach works very well, even on low resource machines or when you want to separate audio & control machines. For my upcoming show, I'm using an RPi + Bluetooth to stream physically hacked PS3 controller-based input devices into PdParty running on an iPad.

See https://github.com/danomatika/rc-unitd I use it on Linux & OSX. Probably works on Win but haven't tried it.

On Jan 18, 2014, at 12:36 PM, pd-list-request@iem.at wrote:

From: Py Fave <pyfave@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PD] pd gui: partial interface freeze
Date: January 18, 2014 at 12:36:08 PM EST
To: ub@xdv.org
Cc: PDlist <pd-list@iem.at>


usb/hid did this if i remember correctly.

i solved it by usind a different build or another object:
[joystick] but it was on windows

i guess this is a known bug because [hid]  is so useful 
perhaps someone has a better knowing of this .?
or a workaround .

--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika