Gamepad DragonRise configuration in Retropie

spyrou

Dear all,
Thank you to the retropie community:

I have a raspberry pi 4
I have a generic Gamepad DragonRise

0079:0006 DragonRise Inc. PC TWIN SHOCK Gamepad

I cannot get it to work on my Linux distros (Arch , Ubuntu Fedora, Manjaro)
But it works out of the box with retropie! :-)

Question:
I would like to know how ? As I would like to be able to use it on a Linux machine for my little boy.

Many thanks in advance, for tips , suggestion, etc.

mitu

There's nothing special in RetroPie for this controller, we rely only on the OS (Linux) to handle the detection and setup.
The only driver included out-of-the-box in RetroPie is the xpad driver, for Xbox wired controllers. Your controller is not supported by xpad, so it's handled entirely by the built-in Linux drivers.

Look in the Arch Wiki for methods to test (jstest, jstest-gtk) your gamepad and see if it's recognized. Maybe it's not a software problem, but a bad USB port ?

spyrou

Hi @mitu ,
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Yes I know this Arch wiki page. Been through it many (and many) times over.
this remains a mystery for me:

it works OOTB in Retropie (on a rPi4)
it is not detected by default in RecalBox (on a rPi4)
when connected on my laptops, I always get the same behavior:
- lsusb finds the gamepad,
- but nothing would show up in /dev/input/js*
- both dmesg and journalctl tell something like:

usb 3-4: new low-speed USB device number 15 using xhci_hcd
usb 3-4: New USB device found, idVendor=0079, idProduct=0006, bcdDevice= 1.01
usb 3-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 3-4: Product: Generic USB Joystick
usb 3-4: Manufacturer: NoName
input: NoName Generic USB Joystick as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb3/3-4/3-4:1.0/0003:0079:0006.000E/input/input33
dragonrise 0003:0079:0006.000E: input,hidraw5: USB HID v1.01 Gamepad [NoName Generic USB Joystick] on usb-0000:00:14.0-4/input0
dragonrise 0003:0079:0006.000E: no output reports found
dragonrise 0003:0079:0006.000E: force feedback init failed

As everything relies on the joystick being in /dev/input/js* I cannot do anything: no test, no config, etc.

Note: My gut feeling tells me this is linked to kernel modules either usbhid or hid_dr: but I don't know what to do apart from listing the modules , or forcing them to be loaded or unloaded, before the gamepad is plug.
(this is where my knowledge stops)

mitu

@spyrou said in Gamepad DragonRise configuration in Retropie:

dragonrise 0003:0079:0006.000E: input,hidraw5: USB HID v1.01 Gamepad [NoName Generic USB Joystick] on usb-0000:00:14.0-4/input0
dragonrise 0003:0079:0006.000E: no output reports found
dragonrise 0003:0079:0006.000E: force feedback init failed

These look like messages from hid_dr, which fails to initialize the gamepad. What's the dmesg output from RetroPie, where it works ?

spyrou

@mitu said in Gamepad DragonRise configuration in Retropie:

What's the dmesg output from RetroPie, where it works ?

Only the regular output , but without the last 2 lines which seem like errors. i.e.:
dmesg

usb 1-1.1: new low-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=0079, idProduct=0006, bcdDevice= 1.01
usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-1.1: Product: Generic USB Joystick
usb 1-1.1: Manufacturer: NoName
input: NoName Generic USB Joystick as /devices/platform/scb/fd500000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.1/1-1.1:1.0/0003:0079:0006.0005/input/input5
dragonrise 0003:0079:0006.0005: input,hidraw3: USB HID v1.01 Gamepad [NoName Generic USB Joystick] on usb-0000:01:00.0-1.1/input0

mitu

Can you try blacklisting the hid_dr module and see if using the device as a regular HID gampepad works ?

rainkid

I'm not the original poster, but I'm experiencing the exact same issue. If I blacklist hid_dr, I get this in syslog:

usb 1-2.4: new low-speed USB device number 10 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-2.4: New USB device found, idVendor=0079, idProduct=0006, bcdDevice= 1.01
usb 1-2.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-2.4: Product: Generic USB Joystick
usb 1-2.4: Manufacturer: NoName

However, no joystick input device is created. evtest also does not list the device. It shows up as connected via lsusb.

Any tips on how I can get this to work?

spyrou

Hi @rainkid ,
Seems like we bought the same hardware...
As suggested above, I have blacklisted the hid_dr module. which prevented me from seeing the error messages in the dmesg output. But still no luck with my Linux machine. However, everything works fine with Raspberry Pi on Retropie (Rasbian).

So my future move will be to get in touch with the Raspbian or the Debian community to understand a bit more.