Gamepads making involuntary movements in Emulation Station
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Okay, so below is my attempt at fixing the phantom input (ghosting) on the iBuffalo/Buffalo SNES replica controllers. I've let RetroPie sit in the ES menu since yesterday (16 hours) and the menu selection is still where I left it. It's of course possible that it has moved away and then back to the starting position between checks, but I have checked the screen pretty frequently during these 16 hours and haven't seen any changes.
Please note: YMMV. This phantom input issue probably varies in severity between controllers. My controller was pretty severe and it now seems to be fixed, but there's still no guarantee that it will remove all phantom inputs on all controllers.
The fix consists of replacing the two 4.7µF through-hole mounted electrolytic capacitors that are visible from the PCB back side with 22µF ones. I've also added an extra 10µF electrolytic capacitor close to the microcontroller input. I've used the following caps:
Nichicon UMA1C220MDD1TP (22µF, 16V)
Nichicon UMA1C100MDD1TP (10µF, 16V)The photos below show the three caps installed on the PCB:
Please note: It's possible that other cap values or setups (for example omitting the extra cap that was added and beefing up the other one) would work. I didn't have time to go crazy with the details/testing. This is what worked for me and probably will for you as well, but feel free to experiment.
It would be great to hear back from anyone else who tries this. If the procedure looks daunting, I'd just start with adding a 22µF cap in parallel with the left one in the first photo above (the one marked C13). That way, you don't have to remove the old cap and it's possible that this is enough to fix the issue on your particular controller.
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@addison said in Gamepads making involuntary movements in Emulation Station:
Could using more than just one USB port at a time be a cause for these ghost signals?
Yes, that's certainly possible. The issue seems to be caused by the controller's inability to suppress noise on the voltage supply line. Adding more USB peripherals could affect the noise level on the supply line, therefore changing the behavior.
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@brunnis The USB adapter thingy that I use with the SDHC card has a red light indicator.
When in use, it stays red, when sending or receiving data, it begins to flash the red light off and on.
I'm guessing that this might possibly cause some instability with my Pi.
I was really happy though when it finally went three plus hours without a single improper input signal.
That had never happened before until yesterday.
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@brunnis Excellent work! Here's a tip for anyone else attempting this: Instead of desoldering the original capacitors, cut the heads off at the top of the capacitors so the existing leads remain. Trim the leads to the new capacitors and solder the new cap's leads to the existing ones poking out of the board. I suggest taking a picture of the board with the original capacitors BEFORE you start. Why? You may forget how the polarity went. Electrolytic capacitors have a positive and negative side.
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@Pussyfoot Thanks!
Please see further updates in my Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/7g2d0n/howto_fix_phantomghost_input_on_ibuffalobuffalo/
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@megafacehead said in Gamepads making involuntary movements in Emulation Station:
To get around the problem i've been using the mayflash wii u pro controller wireless dongle.Google it.Simply sync your pro controller to the dongle, then the dongle tells the pi the wii u pro controller is actually a wireless xbox 360 controller and is detected as such in es when assigning buttons and i can say with 100% certainty there is no ghost input while using this adaptor.
Thanks for the hint. I already owned the Mayflash Wii U Pro adapter, but used it only with my PC that has no bluetooth itself. I never tried it with my Raspi.
The adapter seems to have fixed the ghost inputs from my two Qumox Wii U Pro controllers. I'll have to test them for longer periods to tell for sure, but first tests look promising. -
@brunnis I just did mine tonight and am testing it out. I take back the tip I said. there's not enough leads to do my trick. Just desolder it and solder the new one in. Also the polarity is printed on the board, which is nice. Make sure you leave enough leads to bend it down after you solder it. In fact, bend it BEFORE you solder it.
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@pussyfoot Great to hear! Looking forward to hearing about your results.
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@brunnis I didn't do the 10uF capacitor. Just the two 22uF ones. I left it on overnight and Emulation Station is exactly where I left it.
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Nice! What was the average frequency of phantom presses before the mod?
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@brunnis said in Gamepads making involuntary movements in Emulation Station:
Nice! What was the average frequency of phantom presses before the mod?
It wasn't too bad. I noticed it when watching a movie through Kodi. The movie would stop all of a sudden. I didn't notice it in Emulation Station for a while. Probably since only left-right motions would be picked up.
I saw a spurious left move got triggered this morning since the menu option changed. I put in the 10uF capacitor now and I'm going to keep testing. I went into Kodi's settings and put it in the middle of the options page. That way I can tell if a move up/down/left/right was triggered.
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Okay, I just noticed an up movement. I wouldn't have detected that had I not been in kodi. I still get movements even with all the capacitors.
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@pussyfoot I noticed a similar thing now as well. I was testing the most unstable of my controllers after having applied the fix. I had actually run a 16 hour test on this one before, but I thought I’d do a 24 hour one like I’m doing on the others. Turns out it still seems to generate a phantom press on average every 8 hours or so. It’s an enormous improvement compared to before the fix (phantom presses every few minutes), but obviously a bummer that it doesn’t completely fix all controllers. It does seem to completely have fixed another one of my more stable controllers, though.
I took apart this controller again tonight and installed the missing cap at the input and also resoldered all components in the power supply path. Running a new test over the weekend. If that doesn’t completely solve the issue, I will just use the controllers anyway. A phantom press every 8 hours isn’t much of an issue.
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Good news! As I wrote in my last post, I made another attempt at fully stabilizing this controller: I populated the position marked as C41 with a 22µF cap. This position is unpopulated out of the box (which is because the manufacturer has deemed it unnecessary).
I also resoldered the SMD components in the power supply path (both 5V and 2.5V) by quickly dipping the soldering iron on each side of the components, melting the solder. This has to be done very quickly, or you risk damaging the component or desoldering it completely.
The result: I left RetroPie sitting in the ES menu on Friday afternoon and when I came back today it was still in the same place. That's 69 hours without any phantom presses! Well, I guess there's a very minute risk of it having moved and gone back to the same place, but it's significantly more likely that it just hasn't moved.
So, for anyone still having issues after applying the fix in the original post, I'd suggest first adding the 22µF cap at position C41. If that doesn't work, perform the mentioned resolder.
EDIT: I'll be back with final test results of all controllers later this week.
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@brunnis Why don't you test out the controller in the command line using jstest? As long as you ssh client don't disconnect you could clearly see if there are any movements at all.
By the way great job finding out what seems to be the root of the problem!
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@rion said in Gamepads making involuntary movements in Emulation Station:
@brunnis Why don't you test out the controller in the command line using jstest? As long as you ssh client don't disconnect you could clearly see if there are any movements at all.
Another idea: Stream the input from /dev/js0 (or whatever js device the controller is mapped to) into a file. If the file gets bigger, ghost inputs occurred.
cat /dev/js0 >ghosttest.txtedit: Alternatively, omit the
>ghosttest.txtand watch the screen for funny characters to appear. -
I just added the capacitor and left it on Kodi settings on the skin setting. If it moves any direction, I'll know.
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I haven't had a chance to look at the display, but I'm getting some output from jtest:
Event: type 2, time 397626870, number 0, value 5742
Event: type 2, time 397626880, number 0, value 0
Event: type 2, time 397758600, number 1, value -32767
Event: type 2, time 397758600, number 1, value 0
Event: type 2, time 401954150, number 0, value -5406
Event: type 2, time 401954160, number 0, value 0
Event: type 2, time 402109800, number 1, value 337
Event: type 2, time 402109810, number 1, value 0
Event: type 2, time 402480700, number 1, value 16552
Event: type 2, time 402480710, number 1, value 0
Event: type 2, time 403222120, number 1, value 337
Event: type 2, time 403222130, number 1, value 0
Event: type 2, time 403485030, number 0, value -16216
Event: type 2, time 403485030, number 0, value 0
Event: type 2, time 404585240, number 0, value -5406
Event: type 2, time 404585250, number 0, value 0
Event: type 2, time 404633300, number 1, value -16216
Event: type 2, time 404633310, number 1, value 0
Event: type 2, time 406905280, number 0, value 337
Event: type 2, time 406905290, number 0, value 0
Event: type 2, time 409262200, number 0, value -5406
Event: type 2, time 409262210, number 0, value 0
Event: type 2, time 410590300, number 1, value -32767
Event: type 2, time 410590310, number 1, value 0
Event: type 2, time 411523080, number 1, value 16552
Event: type 2, time 411523090, number 1, value 0This looks like analog, yes?
EDIT: I don't see any movement. Unless there was movement, but it ended up back in the same exact spot, I'm going to assume that so far, the controller is working.
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Don't know why I didn't use jstest before... I'm running it now. The controller I'm running on has already been connected to the Pi for 44 hours without any button presses (that I've been able to detect in the menu, at least). I'm running jstest through SSH in Cygwin, in parallel with EmulationStation, so I'll be able to observe if any phantom presses registered by jstest show up in ES.
@Pussyfoot It does look like you've received a couple of full presses (-32767), so I would expect those to have produced a visible effect...
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