RetroPie Crashes With 4 Joystick's hooked up to it

d3r3kdrumm0nd

I'm working on building a 4-player arcade cabinet but when I have 3+ Joysticks plugged in RetroPie almost always (90% of the time) crashes with the following error.

emulationstation: /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/tmp/build/emulationstation/es-core/src/InputManager.cpp:84: void InputManager::addJoystickByDeviceIndex(int): Assertaion 'joy' failed.
Aborted

I have not seen this error at all if only 2 Joysticks are plugged in.

Here are the specs of my build
RaspberryPi: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (CanaKit)
PSU: DCAR-RSP 3A5C Output: 5.1v / 3.5A
Retro Pie: v4.8
Emulation Station: v2.10.1rp

Here is a link to the Joystick Kit from Amazon.

I pulled out the SDcard to look for error logs but didn't see any. I'm pretty new to working with Raspberry Pi's so I'm not sure what else I could/should be doing to troubleshoot.

mitu

This happens when the joystick (one of them in your case) is disconnecting while being configured. Most likely there isn't enough power from the Pi's USB ports to drive all 4 joysticks.

You should get a separately powered USB hub and connect the joystick to it, then connect the hub to the PI.

d3r3kdrumm0nd

@mitu Thanks for the advice. I picked up a 7-port USB Hub with its own power supply today and started getting a different error message.

Now when I power on the Raspberry Pi I get a blue screen with an error message that Emulation Station crashed and that I should

Make sure my file/folder permissions are correct
make sure my gpu_split is set high enough and/or switch back to Carbon theme.

I just flashed the RetroPie image using Raspberry Pi Imager so I'm thinking my USB hub is not compatible maybe. The system successfully boots with 2 joysticks plugged into the Raspberry Pi but as soon I plug 1 into the hub I start getting the above error. Is there a recommended USB hub I should try?

Thanks Again!

mitu

Could be a similar problem with the 'EG Starts' ('Egstarts' ?) encoders [1], not related to the power draw, which was solved by some users with a configuration.
Try adding at the end of /boot/cmdline.txt (you'll find the file on the boot partition of the sdcard, editable from a PC also) the following stanza:

usbhid.quirks=0x0079:0x0006:0x0400

Note that the file is just one single line of options, make sure don't add a new line - just edit the file and, at the end of the other boot options, add a space followed by the options above.

[1] https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/31488/solved-repeated-disconnect-of-zero-delay-usb-encoder-dragonrise/2?_=1640282263483

d3r3kdrumm0nd

@mitu That did the trick! I have no idea what it does but everything is working wonderfully now.

Lolonois

FWIW, in short: it instructs the kernel to relax the USB protocol for devices that do not implement the USB HID spec by the letter, either because of poorly engineered/implemented firmware or the vendor did not foresee/test a specific setup (in this case connecting four devices of the same kind).

The hexadecimal numbers relate to <vendorid>:<deviceid>:<applicable quirk> (Links to kernel source code tree).

@d3r3kdrumm0nd please mark your initial post title with [solved] as a courtesy for other users who might face the same issue.