Raspberry Pi: spinner disabled by flight stick

corminos

Setup:
Raspberry Pi 3B+
Retropie v 4.5.1
I-PAC2 - buttons and joysticks [plugged into lower-right usb]
spinner - mouse0 [plugged into upper-right usb]
trackball - mouse1 [plugged into upper-left usb]
flight stick - js0 [plugged into lower-left usb]
All inputs tested by cat /dev/inputs/mouse[0|1] or jstest js0

After a lot of research, I was finally able to get my spinner working with Arkanoid and Tempest, but only in mame4all, not in mame2003. I only mentioned the usb ports above because plugging them into different ports changed which input number was assigned to the spinner and trackball.

But when I added the flight stick, the spinner stops working in the game. I've done some testing and if I unplug the flight stick before starting the game, the spinner works. I'm thinking that when the game gets booted up, the flight stick is taking priority over the spinner for an analog input.

Is there a way to either disable the flight stick for certain games, somehow set the spinner so that it takes priority, or allow the two to work at the same time?

Thanks in advance.

IceChes1

Does this make sense? Use a USB hub to connect everything as one controller. Will that work?

IceChes1

Set up your spinner as analog right up/down, and your flight stick as analog left all directions.

IceChes1

The pi can only handle 2 sticks on 1 controller so you'll need to unconfigure your I-PAC2 and then reconfigure it without joysticks, instead using the flight stick as a joystick. I don't know what to do with your other spinner though...

corminos

@IceChes1 I just tried that and it didn't work. My spinner and trackball are still recognized as the same inputs, but if I start the game with the flight stick plugged in, the game won't recognize the spinner.

corminos

@IceChes1 Could you please explain a little further on how I would set up the spinner to be the "right up/down" and the flight stick as the "left"? Is this done in the retroarch.cfg file? If so, could you please tell me what settings I would need to set?

corminos

@IceChes1 Sorry, I should have also put in my config that the I-PAC2 is set up as a keyboard and not a joypad. Also, my apologies for the multiple replies. This is my first time using this forum and I thought that the replies would be tagged with your responses.

IceChes1

Weird. That should have worked. Try unplugging your trackball.

IceChes1

@corminos I mean that you should use a USB hub to configure everything as 1 controller.

corminos

@IceChes1 I plugged my flight stick, spinner, trackball, and I-PAC2 into the USB hub. But they are still all recognized as separate inputs when doing the tests in /dev/inputs. On your suggestion, I then unplugged the trackball from the hub and tried it, but it still wouldn't work.

I tried using the flight stick when playing tempest and that actually worked. Obviously not what I want, but this is showing that the flight stick is somehow being recognized as the main analog input.

I tried different variations of inputs plugged in:
fs, sp, tb - only flight stick recognized
sp, tb - both spinner and trackball can be used
fs, tb - only flight stick recognized
fs, sp - only flight stick recognized

With the fight stick, I have an old Thrustmaster with a Rockfire gameport to USB adapter.

IceChes1

Plug everything but your trackball into the USB hub, plug that into the Pi's USB, then it SHOULD recognize all your parts as 1 controller. Now reconfigure your controller. Make the flight stick your left analog stick and your spinner as right analog up/down. That may not work, but if it does you are good. If it doesn't then plug the spinner into the Pi's port and use it that way. Configure the ABXY on your controller as you normally would and do all that as well.

IceChes1

I don't know why that didn't work, but maybe there's such thing as a USB combiner...
There isn't. Actually maybe it's your flight stick.

corminos

@IceChes1 I'm still not clear on how to configure the right vs left. Could you please provide more details.

But funny thing I tried. I tried running Afterburner in Mame2003 because I wanted to see if the flight stick would work on that game. It didn't. But the spinner did move the plane left and right >: [

IceChes1

Are you using MAME? If so it might be the emulator just because MAME is dumb.

IceChes1

But by left and right I meant like on a Xbox or PS3 controller with the two sticks. Left stick, right stick.

corminos

@IceChes1 Yes, I am using MAME.

For the controls, I'm going with the nostalgic arcade buttons from my youth, so I'm avoiding using any type of gamepad.

I'm a couple weeks into setting this up and my head is spinning with the different versions of MAME on different operating systems on different hardware. I get halfway through an article and realize it probably doesn't apply to me....oh well, sometimes challenges can be fun.

IceChes1

Try using another emulator. FinalBurn Neo or something. I don't have much experience with arcade but MAME and MESS are both stupidly overcomplicated.

IceChes1

But what I do have experience with is controllers.

corminos

@IceChes1 I'll give that a try. Thank you.

stoney66

@corminos I use advance mame and this works in my setup. I have ipac as well along with separate usb joysticks / trackball. You should be able to just map per game what controls you want to use, for me I have a generic config file that covers 90% of games I play then a different config for games that need a trackball/spinner etc.