Bluetooth wireless controller vs wired controller

whsiung

Hello retro buddies,

Those of you that having experience with both wired and wireless controllers (especially bluetooth type), can you kindly let me know are there any noticeable differences in term of responsiveness between those two? By "responsiveness" I mean did you notice the wireless one will have slight delay, or sometime will miss a press altogether?

The reason I ask is I plan to build a bluetooth arcade controller, after successful in building my USB arcade controller. I didn't have any experience with bluetooth controller and the only PC peripheral that I own is a wireless keyboard/mouse (not bluetooth type anyway) with a special dongle. Although I didn't feel the delay in my typing, sometime I feel like the keyboard misses my key press.

So I will love to hear what you say about before I get started.
Thanks.

hijikel

@whsiung I use a wireless keyboard for both my main PC and the pi, I've noticed the cheaper keyboard on the pc misses the odd letter now and again, but the logitech on the pi never does
With controllers, I found the ps3 controller on the pi that there was no input lag, same with wireless xbox pads, no input lag
HTH,

whsiung

Many thanks.
I will give this project a go and just try it out. Appreciate your inputs.

vando

I prefer wireless (2.4GHz) controller instead of Bluetooth controller. For example, I have two keyboards: the Bluetooth Genius LuxePad A9000 and the wireless Rii i8+. The first keyboard has delays and a weak signal but the second works well and I don't need to stay in the front of the receiver. For RetroPie, I use Xbox 360 wireless joystick and the responsiveness is great.

For the second question, take a look at Wireless SNES controller with a Logitech Receiver.

Machtroid

I have traditionally used wireless Logitech F710 controllers. While I like the design, they are a bit heavy. Input is good... when it works. However the signal WILL cut out at times, even a mere 5 feet away from the reciever. Also, having to switch out AA batteries in this day and age is just silly to me. Charge or bust.

So when I upgraded to the RPi3 I also switched to Bluetooth controllers to make use of the onboard bluetooth. I tried out some knock-off brand PS3 controllers (I'll be damned if I was going to spend more on two controllers than my entire RPi project). While I love the lighter weight and the charging... man the input lag is bad. It's a 3 second delay, which makes any sort of reaction based games (platformers) unplayable. I don't know if it's the controllers I have or just the BT in general.

So... I went back to using the F710's. I'll take precise input with intermittent flakiness over the alternative. If anybody has any solid wireless controller suggestions I'm all ears.

tekn0

I don't notice any delay using Bluetooth.

Dochartaigh

Also note that you will definitely, like no ifs ands of butts NEED a wireed controller (or at least a keyboard) to re-connect your Bluetooth controller when it looses signal. Which in my experience is pretty friggin often (not like constantly, but at lease once every other day...if not several times in a day if I'm playing a lot and rebooting a lot and such).

This is why I recommend Xbox 360 wireless controllers with the USB adapter that's half the size of the Pi 3. It simply works 99.9% of the time. It's a dedicated receiver so it doens't have to deal with the limitations of Bluetooth even if it's using pretty much the same ghz band.

EDIT darn it, replied to a 2-hour-old reply who replied to an 8-month old topic...