iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!
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So, running on RetroPie 3.7 on a Raspberry Pi 3, using the iBuffalo SNES pad, I get random directional inputs occur when i'm not even touching the controller. I bought a new one, in case my old one was the issue, and it's still doing it. There were reports of this happening on the old forum by a couple users, so it's not an isolated issue. Any help would be great!
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it's a pain! i'm not sure if it affects the inputs in games, but i certainly can see it happen over and over again in emulationstation. If it happens everywhere, I guess it's a hardware issue.
check out the last comment on the issue logged here for a fix that worked for me (sort of): https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/470
Interestingly, I've noticed this issue only happens when the controller is plugged directly into the pi. if i plug it in via a powered hub, it never happens. baffling!!
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It's like the two of you jinxed my Pi!! I had this problem just a minute ago. Restarted Emulation Station (ES) a few times. Gone. Then I thought that ES wasn't that keen on "hot plugging" a controller in an out. But I removed and connected the controller a few times. No probes. Tried it via powered USB HUB and directly in the Pi. Both work.
Connected an other (wireless) controller. Tested it on the command line w/:
jstest /dev/input/js1And appeared to "hang" on one of the direction buttons. Pushed the buttons a few times and it was gone. I do not think it's a problem w/ the iBuffalo per se. I know this is impossible: but the Pi and/or controllers seem to need to warm up like an old television.
Very weird indeed...
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@Meneer-Jansen I'm going to open it up and test it with my multimeter. See if I find anything off or out of spec with the chips and other components.
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Ok, so opening it up... the chip is under a black blob, so no chance of any probing there. Decided to try on windows. It happens here too. The problem is with the controller for sure. I'm doubting there's anything we can really do about it. Perhaps replace the crystal on it or the capacitors..
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I had the same issue a few months ago, I fixed the situation by pressing "clear"+" one button at time", to make sure all macros were disable and it worked for me, well you can give a try as well maybe it works for you as well
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@Lodan-Zark Could you do me a favour and double check to make sure it actually did work? Good game to test is zelda 1 on NES. The tinyest movement will change links footing from one side to the other or will turn him in a different direction. Just load the game, get to the overworld and leave the controller for 10 minutes.
I have tried the clear + each button method already and it didn't seem to make any difference.
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I just bought 2 of those iBuffalo SNES gamepads and one of them has the same issue. In emulation station it gives me ghost inputs on the directional d-pad buttons (left and right) every 2 minutes. so is there any new solution for this problem?
and do you know if this issue also affects gameplay? I made a test with zelda 1 on the nes and waited for 20 minutes without touching the controller... nothing happened. maybe its only a problem in emulation station?
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@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:
I just bought 2 of those iBuffalo SNES gamepads and one of them has the same issue. In emulation station it gives me ghost inputs on the directional d-pad buttons (left and right) every 2 minutes. so is there any new solution for this problem?
and do you know if this issue also affects gameplay? I made a test with zelda 1 on the nes and waited for 20 minutes without touching the controller... nothing happened. maybe its only a problem in emulation station?
This is very unfortunate. A lot of people buy these iBuffalo gamepads. Would be a pity if they don't function. The "Zelda 1 test" on the NES emulator might speak volumes though.
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@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:
I just bought 2 of those iBuffalo SNES gamepads and one of them has the same issue. In emulation station it gives me ghost inputs on the directional d-pad buttons (left and right) every 2 minutes. so is there any new solution for this problem?
read the second post in this thread
and do you know if this issue also affects gameplay? I made a test with zelda 1 on the nes and waited for 20 minutes without touching the controller... nothing happened. maybe its only a problem in emulation station?
i believe it shouldn't be an issue in games because (some? all?) games are clever enough to have input tolerances and will ignore single frame signals like this, but who knows. it could be fixed in emulationstation but the project is dead, so...
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Today I tested if the ghost inputs also appear during gameplay. And the answer is YES.
- Test: Tekken 3 on Retropie PSX Emulator (lr-pcsx-rearmed) - 2 ibuffalo snes style gamepads (A and B)
Tested in versus mode character selection screen. I didnt touched the controllers and just waited. After 2-3 minutes I recorgnized the first ghost input on gamepad B - it automaticly switched the selected character (from King to Heihachi). During the next 15 minutes the ghost inputs repeated several times. I even recornized some ghost inputs on the down and up d-pad button (e.g. character switch from King to GunJack). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs during the test time.
- Test: Street Fighter Alpha 2 on Retropie SNES Emulator (lr-snes9x-next)
Also tested it in the character selection screen of the versus mode. Same issue as before. Gamepad B did some automatic character switches (e.g. from Ken to Guy / from Ken to Zangief...). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs.
- Test: Tekken 3 on OpenEmu PSX Emulator (MacOSX)
Finally I tested gamepad b on my macbook with OpenEmu. Same issues as before, gamepad b is still giving me ghost inputs.
Conclusion: Its an hardware error.
I also tried the suggestions mentioned here in the forum and those on github but they didnt solved the problem. On the Raspberry Pi I also tried different USB ports, but the problems still remained on gamepad b.
My big question is now, if those ghost inputs really affect gameplay so much. Maybe those issues only appear when the gamepad isnt touched for some minutes. Did anybody recorgnized those ghost inputs while playing a game (e.g. jumping to a wrong direction in Super Mario World)?
I will do some more longplay tests in the next days to check this out.
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@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:
Today I tested if the ghost inputs also appear during gameplay. And the answer is YES.
- Test: Tekken 3 on Retropie PSX Emulator (lr-pcsx-rearmed) - 2 ibuffalo snes style gamepads (A and B)
Tested in versus mode character selection screen. I didnt touched the controllers and just waited. After 2-3 minutes I recorgnized the first ghost input on gamepad B - it automaticly switched the selected character (from King to Heihachi). During the next 15 minutes the ghost inputs repeated several times. I even recornized some ghost inputs on the down and up d-pad button (e.g. character switch from King to GunJack). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs during the test time.
- Test: Street Fighter Alpha 2 on Retropie SNES Emulator (lr-snes9x-next)
Also tested it in the character selection screen of the versus mode. Same issue as before. Gamepad B did some automatic character switches (e.g. from Ken to Guy / from Ken to Zangief...). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs.
- Test: Tekken 3 on OpenEmu PSX Emulator (MacOSX)
Finally I tested gamepad b on my macbook with OpenEmu. Same issues as before, gamepad b is still giving me ghost inputs.
Conclusion: Its an hardware error.
I also tried the suggestions mentioned here in the forum and those on github but they didnt solved the problem. On the Raspberry Pi I also tried different USB ports, but the problems still remained on gamepad b.
My big question is now, if those ghost inputs really affect gameplay so much. Maybe those issues only appear when the gamepad isnt touched for some minutes. Did anybody recorgnized those ghost inputs while playing assh game (e.g. jumping to a wrong direction in Super Mario World)?
I will do some more longplay tests in the next days to check this out.
Thank you very much for testing these gamepads. Another way to test is from the (Linux) command line in RetroPie:
jstest /dev/input/js0Change the
js0intojs1for the other one. -
I have the same problem with mine. Pretty much stopped using it because it was so annoying.
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Soo after some more tests I found a strong evidence for my theory that the ghost inputs only appear when no conroller button is touched. I played several games like Street Fighter, Tekken and some Tetris and puzzle games with that controller for some hours and never recorgnized any ghost inputs during active gameplay.
Then I made another test in the emulation station menu. At first I didn't touch any buttons and after 2-3 minutes the first ghost input appeared and changed the selected emulator. After that I pushed the L, R, Y, X buttons randomly like I'm playing a game (they don't trigger any commands in the ES menu) for around 10 minutes. No ghost inputs appeared. I let the controller untouched again and the ghost inputs came back after 2-3 minutes.
Conclusion: If my theory is right, that issue shouldn't be a big thing and doesn't have a big effect on gameplay.
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@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:
Soo after some more tests I found a strong evidence for my theory that the ghost inputs only appear when no conroller button is touched. I played several games like Street Fighter, Tekken and some Tetris and puzzle games with that controller for some hours and never recorgnized any ghost inputs during active gameplay.
Then I made another test in the emulation station menu. At first I didn't touch any buttons and after 2-3 minutes the first ghost input appeared and changed the selected emulator. After that I pushed the L, R, Y, X buttons randomly like I'm playing a game (they don't trigger any commands in the ES menu) for around 10 minutes. No ghost inputs appeared. I let the controller untouched again and the ghost inputs came back after 2-3 minutes.
Conclusion: If my theory is right, that issue shouldn't be a big thing and doesn't have a big effect on gameplay.
Thank you very much for this experiment! :-)
Like I said: a lot of people use this controller. I can't play my favotite Mame games w/ regular (expensive) controllers because they register a diagonal input (even on the D-pad) to easily. They are 8-way, but you need a 4-way controller for classic games. Why? because Mario takes the ladder when I try to walk past it in Donkey Kong. This is because the "Up" button appears to be held down too when I press "Left" (i.e. it registers diagonally up to the left). Same thing goes for PAc Man making the wrong turns and getting eaten by the Ghosts.
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I just bought two of these myself. One of them is flawless. The other one, has ghost inputs which hasn't been noticeable in game and only slightly annoying in menus.
However, I knew I was terrible at Super Mario but I didn't think I was that bad. When my wife and I traded controllers, she started doing poorly as well (still better than me however). The main issue we have (because it affects gameplay) is jumping. He can jump but not high enough to clear some of the taller obstacles, rendering the owner of that controller entirely useless for most levels Imitates game over sound
Also, in games like Super Mario Cart, the accelerate key (same as jump key) is a complete dud and the race cart just sits there.
My gut wants to say it's hardware and a defective controller but the symptoms are highly inconsistent. I've used the jstest on this controller and all of the buttons register (I can confirm some ghosting in this also).
Edit: I must have enabled turbo somehow on that controller. I can't remember ever pushing the button or even knowing what the trick was to enable turbo. But, sure enough, I held Clear + Any button that was giving me issues and it worked. We rocked some Super Mario World last night!
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@JFamily Do you still have ghost inputs in menus with disabled turbo function?
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@Water-White
Not that I've noticed. But, shortly after fixing the issue, my Logitech F710's arrived and I've barely looked back. -
I was getting this issue with the iBuffalo controllers but I somehow seem to have fixed it.
I went into the emulationstation config (/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_input.cfg) and removed the controller config for the controller entirely.
I went back to onto my actual Pi after rebooting and set it up as a new contoller. Now it doesn't skip though the menus at all.
The only difference made to the config file really, is that the iBuffalo input config is now at the very bottom of the input list instead of being the first on the list.
I don't know or understand why this has made a difference but I'm not getting any ghost inputs at all. I've currently left it for over 2 hours and there's been no movement. -
@gaavoid You are the man! This fixed controller input ghosting for me as well. This is the 4th RetroPie I have setup, and the first time this issue has appeared, so I was afraid that the iBuffalo controller was bad, but this fixed the issue. Thanks!
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