Atari Modern & Retro Controllers

Metal Ghost

Hello all! Been a while since I've had the opportunity to work on my Pi, but happy to be starting to tinker once again!

Just a really basic question to start: has anyone successfully been able to pair a new Atari Modern or Retro controller (the ones that released with the new VCS) to Pi 4?

I'm sure that it will be pretty obvious that I've tried and failed :) But before I get into a lot of questions, I just wanted to see if anyone else has gotten them to work.

To be more specific, when I go through the pairing process I either don't see either controller in the Bluetooth list of pairing options, or else by the time I get through the process on the Pi, the controller has auto shutoff before successful pairing completes!

I think I was able to finally get the Classic Controller paired after about 10 attempts, but then couldn't get it through the Controller input mapping exercise.

It's been about a month since I've tried so I need to go back in and try again. But just before wasting my time, I wanted to ping it to see if I'm wasting my time.

ClassicGMR

@metal-ghost I don't own any of these controllers but would definitely be interested in this as well. :) The 2600-daptor is great but wireless would be better!

Metal Ghost

@classicgmr yea, tried again the other day….no dice though. Hopeful that someone will try to pair one or both of these new Atari controllers to a Pi at some point and provide feedback. I have to imagine that someone on this forum has likely tried (??).

saccublenda

@classicgmr I bought a 2600-daptor (the 2600 D9 in particular) and I can tell that it works with RetroPie.
I tried the classic VCS controller and it works both with Stella and lr-stella.
I've also tried the Vic 20 paddles, and they work in Stella, although you have to install evdev-joystick and a set of rules for the analog controllers. However the Vic 20 paddles do not work in in VICE, since it looks like these kind of retro controllers are not supported yet.

Linser22

@metal-ghost

Hey I got it to work. When pairing via Bluetooth I don’t wake up the VCS Classic controller until about 30 seconds or so after the searching for Bluetooth with the pi. That way the VCS controller does not turn off before it finishes.

Once I set it up in emulation station I launch a game and the controls get mapped all wrong for some reason so I go into RetroArch under settings->input->port 1 (or something like that I’m not at my pi right now) I’ll reconfigure the controls and save controller profile.

Now it works except the paddle. Unfortunately it’s using a different scheme (I believe it starts at 0 and wraps all the way to 1 when it resets to zero, I’ve seen people explain it better on Reddit). It works great on stella on my windows. But I haven’t figured it out on Retropie. I’ll keep looking and trying things to get the paddle to work.