This is a peripheral add-on for Kodi that enables input from the X-Arcade Tankstick. I found Xarcade2Jstick to be a helpful reference. Thank you Xarcade2Jstick author!
The wiki article is: HOW-TO:X-Arcade Tankstick in Kodi.
In general the /dev/input/event* devices can only be opened by root. This is to prevent keystroke logging security attacks.
To give non-root users read access to the X-Arcade Tankstick, place 80-xarcade.rules in /etc/udev/rules.d/.