Teacher Needing Help / Controls not recognized

AdamTubb

Hey guys right off the bat I want to say that this site has already been a huge help to me. I am brand new to Raspberry Pie and Retro Pie and a great many of my questions has already been answered by just searching this site. But now I think I've come to a point where I just have to ask the question myself. I am a Middle School Wood Shop teacher and a few of my students and I build an arcade cabinet as a project. We used a
Longruner arcade button kit off of amazon for the controls but also had a wireless keyboard attached as well (That way I could control it from across the room if necessary), but yesterday afternoon the arcade controls stopped working all together. I have a Red and Green light on the arcade controls board and whenever I power up the Pie the Red light will come on for about 3 sec. and then that's it. Before the Red light would come on for a bit then once everything was powered up the green light would turn on and stay on. I have no idea what going on but am hoping that some of you may have more experience here than I do. I apologize if this is a bit out of order but I tried to follow the READ FIRST post as best I could, also any help is appreciated. Thanks.

My Info:
Pi Model: 3 Model B
Power Supply used: Goldso 5v 2.5a
RetroPie Version Used: v4.3
USB Devices connected: Logitech K400r wireless keyboard
Controller used: Longruner QR02 Arcade Control Kit
Error messages received: n/a

P.S. - I did already tried to remove and reset all controls by using "rm /home/pi/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg" with no real results. It still will not recognize the arcade controls.

AdamTubb

*Bump.

No ideas at all?

I just updated all the drivers I had installed with no fix.

rbaker

@adamtubb said in Teacher Needing Help / Controls not recognized:

Before the Red light would come on for a bit then once everything was powered up the green light would turn on and stay on.

The red light is the power light and the green is SD card activity. According to this, it appears you are not booting. Corrupt SD card?

rbaker

@adamtubb said in Teacher Needing Help / Controls not recognized:

Longruner arcade button kit

So is the encoder a zero delay encoder? How is it configured? What steps did you do and have you tried clearing all your input configs and starting again?

AdamTubb

Ah, I apologize for the miscommunication. The red and green lights are on the arcade control board not the raspberry pie itself.

Yes it is zero delay, and it's configured as a arcade game pad. I tried clearing all downloads I had made, but had no results yet. I'm thinking of just starting back at zero. Maybe I can narrow it down if it happens again.

Darksavior

I don't have one, but try connecting the encoder to a pc and see if it works that way to rule out the pi/sd/config problem.

AdamTubb

I connected the arcade controls to my laptop and it recognized it as a game controller. I also switched around my wireless keyboard to all 4 usb ports to ensure that all 4 were reading correctly and they are.
I feel a bit embarrassed but a student pointed out to me today that the low voltage lightning bolt is popping up and he told me that it has been coming up for about a week now. I am using a recommended 5v 2.5A power supply, but should I be running something hotter? From what I understand that is what is recommended for the pie 3 Model B.

quicksilver

@adamtubb What brand is the power supply? The problem with some power supplies is that they cannot sustain consistent power (even though their rated output would seem to indicate that it would be fine). The raspberry pi is very sensitive to even slight voltage dips. I would look into getting the official raspberry pi power supply.

Capeman

If you want a more stable control scheme than using a zero delay over USB (ive always found those things to be really unreliable), you can try a software package from Adafruit called RETROGAME.

It's a background application that converts gpio pins to keyboard strokes, it's very stable and reliable, and best part is that it requires no additional hardware.

All you need to do is set each GPIO pin to your desired keystroke and connect each button to GPIO and common ground then setup your keyboard "controller" by pressing start in emulationstation and going to controller setup.

Details here if you're interested.
https://learn.adafruit.com/retro-gaming-with-raspberry-pi/adding-controls-software