8bitdo SF30 Pro and SN30 Pro

fuganater

I've been trying to get the SF30 Pro to work with Retropie 4.3 for 3 days now. I've tried all the FW versions, I've tried all the key combos. They connect with no issues but when I get into the game, it says "8Bitdo SF30 Pro (0/0) not configured." So none of the buttons work in any of the games.

Any suggestions?

RaRlReRxR

My 2 cents for those still trying to figure things out:

I just setuped RetroPie 4.3 in a NesPi case with a custom PCB for the Power/Reset going to GPIO pins (you can find the info in the history of this repository.
I've updated everything, including the kernel, uname -a gives:
Linux retropie 4.14.24-v7+ #1097 SMP Mon Mar 5 16:42:05 GMT 2018 armv7l GNU/Linux

With 2 x SF30 Pro updated to the latest 1.25 firmware:
I managed to connect the first one on the first try and it worked well but I was having the issue of the shoulder buttons on input configuration.
I found that you can either go back a 2nd time, go up at the end and edit those or, on the first run, you can long press them (1+ second?) and it seems to work most of the time too, go figure.

More importantly, I was unable to configure the 2nd controller until I had one of them in Android mode but the other in Switch mode so their names wouldn't conflict.
Bluetooth reconnection is set as default, but I'm not sure this affects anything compared to background.

I never had the not configured error in games though, NES / SNES at least seems to work just fine.

MagicPolly

This is just my theory on why the triggers don't work in xinput/windows mode.

According to the specifications listed on Wikipedia, xinput supports "4 axes, 10 buttons, 2 triggers and 8-direction digital pad", corresponding to a 360 controller. On the sn/sf30 pro, the buttons are taken up by A, B, X, Y, L, R, select, start, star, and home. While you would think that the triggers would just count as triggers, the specification is for analog triggers. Since the sn/f30 pro's triggers are digital, this means they would have to be counted as buttons instead.

Dinput instead specifies that a controller may have 128 buttons, which is why the triggers will register correctly in dinput mode. My guess is that the addition of the star and home buttons took up extra "slots" that were used by the triggers on previous 8bitdo controllers.

lesk

I had similar problems with my SFC30 controllers, and still have some problems.
The pairing worked, and the controls works in Emulationstation but not in game. I used the controls to navigate to config - Retroarch and from there I found under input user binds. And selected user bind 1 and rebind all the buttons there. Saved it. And it works in all games now, on all emulators. BUT, the hotkeys don't work. xD But its a step forward!

T68K

Hi,

Is there any way to get rumble function working on Steam Mac OS?

I tried MacOS and Xinput Mode.
I enabled rumble in controller settings but it's still not working.

Officialy 8bitdo says that rumble for MacOS mode is not supported but it is for Xinput mode...

Any idea how to make it work?

Keeners14

I am having a problem with my 8bitdo SN30 Pro controllers. I bought 4 since I made the retropie for a large group of teenagers that I work with. They work just fine while plugged in. I have tried playing with all of the bluetooth settings and here is what happens:

The controller may work while in the blue screen settings but disconnects when I exit back into the main menu of Retropie - like where I can select emulators - (Yes I have done the udev stuff or what ever it is called so that it connects to the pie even after a reboot)
After trying to disconnect it so that I reconnect it in hopes that it works, it glitches and even though it says it disconnected it still gives a quick vibrate and shows up under my registered devices. It also always shows up in register devices, only 3 of 4 show up, but they show up with like 10 other no-name devices.
Alternatively, following the same steps, the pi will simple say it found no devices when searching.

4 I have got it to stay connected once right up to configure input however it is not recognized and it only recognizes what ever controller is currently plugged in.

Firmware is fully updated on the controllers, but they just don't seem to want to work, please help if you have had this issue and/or know how to resolve it. I'm pulling my hair out and a dangerous pace working on this hahaha.

Thanks in advanced

xadox

Any solution to get the Triggers working in START+X mode?
With jstest-gtk they are working but not in emulation station.

lesk

@keeners14
I got mine to work after this:

I looked at several tutorials on YouTube telling me to hold start + right trigger to start them before pairing them.
But that never worked for me.

After checking the manual I saw that there were 4 different pairing modes. The first 2 options (Android and Windows in my manual) worked for me.

I used a usb keyboard to navigate to the bluetooth screen and before hitting Search devices I press and hold START for 1 second. Looked at the light and compared flickering to the manual. In this case, 1 per cycle. Then I press and hold SELECT for 3 seconds to make the light flicker. Then I pressed search for devices.

First controller paired perfectly. Second I only saw a lot of MAC addresses. Canceled and tried again until I saw the controller.
Went back to the Emulationstation and press start on the keyboard then - configure input. Press and hold A on the controller and set my buttons. Only had to do the last part for the first controller.(I had turned off the second controller after it got paired).

I also noticed. That before I did all this. My retroarch input config was a bit messed up because I had tried mapping controllers directly in the retroarch gui. If you have tried doing the same. Resetting those config first might help as well. But don't quote me on that ^^

xnickygx

I was having a lot of trouble with my SF30 pro controllers disconnecting and not reconnecting. I recently used the Android configuration and they are working well now. I was seeing there they would disconnect or freeze while playing a game or leaving the controller idle. They would not reconnect and would just search for a connection. I would find out later I had them on the Switch setting. I can confirm that using Android has been working for a couple days now and they reconnect after being idle almost immediately. The only other issue I see (and I was seeing this prior to changing to Android as well) is that sometimes there is ghost input. For example in Kodi it will randomly fast forward if I leave the controller on (I started using my phone as a remote for Kodi), I had a game exit the emulator while playing in the DS emulator. Mostly I have seen the ghosting happen in Kodi through retropie.

caver01

@xnickygx I saw similar ghosting challenges in Kodi and I fixed it by changing the controller type. My controllers are the NS30 Pro, and the issue in Kodi was that it would pickup spurious inputs from the analog sticks. We would be watching something, and out of the blue, it would skip ahead. I soon realized this was probably due to an imprecise input from the analog stick combined with whatever the dead zone configuration was.

Rather than falling down the rabbit hole of dead zone settings which may or may not have solved it, I simply changed my input from this controller away from the default gamepad and chose SNES instead. The SNES does not have analog inputs, so after mapping my D-pad and other buttons I was done. I have no actual need for the analog inputs in Kodi anyway, and the skip problems have been gone ever since.

hansolo77

Sorry for opening up and older thread. I've had an SN30Pro in storage ever since I bought it, and never actually set it up. I'm working on a new build now and felt the time was ready. Anyway, I also purchased an SF30Pro just these past few days so I could have 2, and distinguish the difference (colors) between them. Upon syncing the 2nd controller (newer) I discovered the firmware on my 1st controller needed updated. The new one vibrated once it connected, but the first one didn't. So I'm now updated with the firmware and fully synced.

The problem I'm having though is that it seems like the vibration isn't working in games that support it (mostly PSX games right now). Has anybody been able to get vibration to properly work with these controllers? Is the problem maybe because of the "input mode" I'm in? I believe I'm in Dinput mode (START+B) because that was the initial default. Should I be using Xinput (START+X) instead?