SHANWAN / PS3 CONTROLLER Pi3 RETROPIE 3.6 BLUETOOTH SETUP

dagosand

Hello!
This is my first post, and my english is not so good.
After 4 days and 4 nights of hard work spent to pair my ps3 controller shanwan clone and my raspberry pi 3 using the internal Bluetooth I filally say that I have win!!!!
I have installed a microsd card with retropie 3.8.1 and updated and upgraded to last commits of 2016-06-19.
I have followed the instructions provided by @luetzel (In this guide) with one more step to add after the Step3 and before the Step4.
In this new step it is necessary to execute this command that creates a symbolic link called "/etc/firmware":

sudo ln -s /lib/firmware/ /etc/firmware

This command is necessary because in a bluez sources there is a file called:
hciattach_bcm43xx.c
located in the src/tools folder there is a reference to a path called "/etc/firmware", but this path does not exist in retropie distros.

Before the creation of the symbolic link, after the execution of the Step4 of the guide, when I execute this command:
sudo ./sixpair
I have the same result obtained by user @pablo in this post and user @buddhastevend in this post:
pi@retropie:~/QtSixA-1.5.1/utils/bins $ sudo ./sixpair
Current Bluetooth master: aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa
Setting master bd_addr to aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa

After the creation of the symbolic link the pairing process works perfectly!
pi@retropie:~/QtSixA-1.5.1/utils/bins $ sudo ./sixpair
Current Bluetooth master: b8:27:eb:e5:2f:e1
Setting master bd_addr to b8:27:eb:e5:2f:e1

I hope this great news for me can be useful to other retropie and raspberry users.

I had the idea to create the symbolic link reading this thread.

Good night.

trevevs

@Wolfman100
hey wolfman100 !
Very interested in your efforts to get shanwan PS3 clone going on retrosmc. Im trying to do the same thing. The tutorial is showing 404 error for me HTTP ERROR 404 - PAGE NOT FOUND!. https://luetzels.raspiblog.com/?p=1870 Have I got the right link?
Is this a full guide which works on OSMC?

thanks

trevevs

@trevevs
ahh looks like the guide s back up! Still not really able to follow on my OSMC with retrosmc install.
guessing I can skip to step 4 since I got git clone https://github.com/luetzel/bluez in step 3?
I did that and get the bluez folder/files in my osmc folder.

when you got bluez-5.39, do you mean the bluez folder I just got?

./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --enable-sixaxis
seemed to do a lot of stuff ..

tried make -j3 but got:
: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

Probably something daft Im doing??

cheers

luetzel

@trevevs
Hi trevevs,
sorry that the link to my blog did not work for you! Hope that you are able to pair your PS3 clone now. My blog is on a self-hosted server, consisting of a Banana Pi. It connects via dyndns, so that it is occasionally not reachable when my IP changes.

luetzel

@dagosand
Hi Dagosand,
thank you for providing this information - indeed very helpful for fixing the pairing problems. I hope that the bluez patches will make it soon into the master branch of bluez, so that the PS3 controllers will work out-of-the-box.

dagosand

Hi @luetzel thank you very much, but with your perfect guide you made the biggest work .
Who will inform bluez guys about the "/etc/firmware" folder issue?

Wolfman100

@trevevs when you attempt to do the 'make' did you execute the command form inside the 'bins' folder,this is necessary.

Wolfman100

@dagosand well done for sticking with it and being commited.I certainly know from experience how frustrating it can be!!

The symbolic link issue is interesting,been away from the Pi for a week but will look into this tonight.

luetzel

@dagosand
I don't think it is necessary to bother the bluez guys with this issue. It just due to the fact that /firmware is at a non-standard location in contrast to other distributions. Guess that it is already possible to pass a ./configure --flag for pointing bluez to the path of the /firmware directory.

Ransom

@trevevs said in SHANWAN / PS3 CONTROLLER Pi3 RETROPIE 3.6 BLUETOOTH SETUP:

@trevevs
ahh looks like the guide s back up! Still not really able to follow on my OSMC with retrosmc install.
guessing I can skip to step 4 since I got git clone https://github.com/luetzel/bluez in step 3?
I did that and get the bluez folder/files in my osmc folder.

when you got bluez-5.39, do you mean the bluez folder I just got?

./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --enable-sixaxis
seemed to do a lot of stuff ..

tried make -j3 but got:
: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

Probably something daft Im doing??

cheers

I'm stuck on the same spot. I skipped to step 4 after downloading the git clone, but I don't get a bluez-5.39 folder, just a "bluez" folder. Same results as @trevevs for the other parts. Configure does a few things, but make and compile say I have no targets specified.

I'm pretty new to the pi scene, so I don't know how to move through folders and files within Raspbian, so a lot of the instructions from Step 5 on are pretty lost on me. Anyone get this to work?

luetzel

Hi @Ransom
Sorry that the guide is not clear enough. Yes, you have to 'cd' into the bluez folder after cloning it from the git repo. And, ./configure, as well as make must be run while being within the bluez folder. If not sure, you can check your current working directory with 'pwd'. Thus:

cd bluez
./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --enable-sixaxis
make

should do it on your machine. Remember that 'make' or 'configure' may fail, if some header files are missing. Watch out for 'foo.h is missing' messages and install the missing dev packages using 'sudo apt-get install <name>-dev'.

I haven't had time to update the instructions with a list of all package-dependencies for compilation on a freshly installed system.

/luetzel

dagosand

@luetzel said in SHANWAN / PS3 CONTROLLER Pi3 RETROPIE 3.6 BLUETOOTH SETUP:

@dagosand
I don't think it is necessary to bother the bluez guys with this issue. It just due to the fact that /firmware is at a non-standard location in contrast to other distributions. Guess that it is already possible to pass a ./configure --flag for pointing bluez to the path of the /firmware directory.

Great!
Can you tell me how can I pass the correct flag in ./configure?

thanks

luetzel

@dagosand
I checked ./configure --help for suitable flags pointing it to the firmware directory, but it doesn't seem to be present^^ However, nothing speaks against using a symbolic link to /etc/firmware on distributions using a non standard firmware location. In some distributions, the link is automatically created by post-install scripts of the .deb or .rpm package. If you compile from source you have to do it manually.

auswear

I am really struggling getting this working.. I've think I've done all the above steps correctly as I can get one controller to pair, but I can't get 2 to pair at the same time. It's either one or the other. What am I doing wrong?

Also is there any way to stop the controller from vibrating every time I plug it into the USB to charge?

luetzel

Hi @auswear
For the second controller, try to “register” it using sixpair, but without having the first controller already paired/connected via bluetooth. Then, check with ‘sudo bluetoohctl’ whether you can see hardware addresses of both controllers. For pairing the second controller, wait until LED 1 lights up on the first, only then press the PS button on your second controller. If this doesn’t help, remove both devices using bluetoothctl and start over again with sixpair. Both must be authenticated/trusted for pairing them at the same time. You can check/follow the pairing process with dmesg and bluetoothctl.

About charging:
It is not possible to charge Shanwan controllers without rumbling while being connected to an USB port of your Raspberry Pi/Computer. Here I use an USB wall charger instead. Since the LEDs do not indicate battery level of the controller, I
use a ‘ USB charge doctor' in order to follow current/mA during charging. When mA drop below ~0.03, the battery is fully charged.

Hetoft

Hi @luetzel (and all you others)

Thanks so much for your work on this.

I am trying to configure my two genuine PS3 controllers (of course, just starting off with one) on RetroPie 4.0 (newest beta) on OSMC on a RPi3 and the onboard bluetooth.

I simply can not figure out how to get it to pair up. Even though I run the PS3 driver configuration from the RetroPie settings, whenever I disconnect it from the USB cable, it is not able to establish the bluetooth connection.

Bluetooth is enabled and able to discover my devices. I also tried with a bluetooth USB dongle; same result.

At some point in all of this tinkering, I managed to establish the bluetooth connection, with the controller vibrating and lighting in the 1 LED. However, I couldn't configure any of the buttons, and a jstest didn't react to any of the button presses. When I then rebooted my Pi, the connection was lost again.

I know this thread is about the Shanwan controllers, but it seems you have plenty of knowledge about the controllers, so I though it'd be worth a try to ask here anyway...

Thanks so much in advance. :)

luetzel

Hi @Hetoft,
all what I can say is that you should try to monitor the pairing process in order to identify the reason why it fails.
First of all, check the output of 'hciconfig', which should reveal something like this:

hci0:   Type: BR/EDR  Bus: USB
        BD Address: 00:1B:10:00:2A:EC  ACL MTU: 1017:8  SCO MTU: 64:1
        UP RUNNING PSCAN
        RX bytes:549 acl:0 sco:0 events:29 errors:0
        TX bytes:1564 acl:0 sco:0 commands:29 errors:0

If you don't see UP RUNNING PSCAN there is something wrong with your bluetooth device.

Next, watch what happens using 'sudo bluetoohctl' when you press the PS button:

[NEW] Controller 00:1B:10:00:2A:EC raspi5 [default]
[NEW] Device 01:B6:AD:7F:63:25 PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller
[NEW] Device 01:B6:52:85:63:25 PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller
[NEW] Device 20:73:AB:91:DD:6F Bluetooth V3.0 Keyboard
[CHG] Device 01:B6:52:85:63:25 Connected: yes

Check the connection status of your controller with info <hw address>

info 01:B6:52:85:63:25
Device 01:B6:52:85:63:25
        Name: PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller
        Alias: PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller
        Class: 0x000540
        Icon: input-keyboard
        Paired: no
        Trusted: yes
        Blocked: no
        Connected: yes
        LegacyPairing: no
        UUID: Human Interface Device... (00001124-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
        Modalias: usb:v054Cp0268d0000

Lighting of LED1 on your device indicates that it is connected and paired with your Pi. If you're not able to configure buttons, check whether your controller was registered as an input device. 'dmesg' should display something like this:

[  482.434909] input: PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller as /devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:11/0005:054C:0268.0001/input/input0
[  482.436176] sony 0005:054C:0268.0001: input,hidraw0: BLUETOOTH HID v0.00 Joystick [PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller] on 00:1b:10:00:2a:ec

If it wasn't registered as an input device, you probably have to add the 'joydev' and 'uinput' kernel modules into your /etc/modules (reboot), or load them manually with

'sudo modprobe joydev'
'sudo modprobe uinput'

Cheers,
/luetzel

Wolfman100

Hey Grandmaster @luetzel !

Guess what?!My Shanwan controller broke....due to the crapy cheap lead it came with breaking the mini USB port pins!

So I bought another controller,and got it to pair no problem first time.........BUT.......now with this one I can't configure the buttons!Emulation Station detects the Gamepad but no button presses work for configuration.I have also checked 'jstest' and it seems to see all of the controllers various buttons,axis etc but doesn't respond (show any output) when I push the buttons while in 'jstest'.The same problem @Hetoft seems to be having.

As you seem to clearly be the bonafide expert in this PS3 controller drama any help would be very very well received!

Here is my 'dmesg' output:

[77212.502099] input: PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller as /devices/platform/soc/3f201000.uart/tty/ttyAMA0/hci0/hci0:12/0005:054C:0268.0003/input/input4
[77212.508016] sony 0005:054C:0268.0003: input,hidraw2: BLUETOOTH HID v0.00 Joystick [PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller] on b8:27:eb:a1:9b:7f

According to this it seems to see it as an input device...although 'input4' it seems.Could this be part of the issue you think?

BuZz

@luetzel - please consider styling your posts (eg using code blocks etc) http://commonmark.org/help/

Wolfman100

@BuZz NIce one @BuZz .Always wondered how people did that!