@markg possibly interfering with the wifi - maybe changing wifi channel would help.

Yes, and it solved the issue! Thanks so much - I hadn't been to that menu yet.

Woo hoo! :)

@mitu ok thank you

@buzz

Omg thank you so much. I have 2 Nes30 and 2 Nes30 Pro and the last freaking controller wouldnt match with my raspberry for several hours now.. it literally was the distance. I didnt come up with this idea, because all other 3, even the other nes30 pro, worked perfectly from far away. I put it right on the raspberry and it worked instant.
Maybe there are several version with different antenna or sthg?

Again: thanks, im a little mad about this garbage, but also happy it works now.

@cassini12 do you have the rpi near a router of other wireless equipment ?

What PSU do you use ?

please post the output of dmesg typed into a terminal via ssh (please use pastebin site)

I'm using the build in BT.
Maybe the BT "Module" on your pi is faulty. At least it doesn't sound normal that both controllers don't work correctly via BT.

@darthlink Has anyone found a resolution to this? Just got a raspberry pi3 and having the same issues with the ps4 controller. How can I get the controller to automatically pair once the pi3 is turned on?

@buzz said in Bluetooth Controller works fine in EmulationStation, but not in emulators:

@mendingo I don't exactly know - some difference in how the device reports it between the sdl input code and the retroarch udev code. Another option is to switch input to "sdl2" in retroarch config (then the mapping should be the same).

If you give me the name of your controller and your ES vs retroarch config I can put in a workaround. the 8bitdo controllers used to have an offset of 11, but it was fixed in a firmware, which suggests it may also be linked to how the device reports itself.

Sorry for resurrecting old thread, but it took me quite a lot of time to solve this issue and I would like to share this simple fix. I recently bought a bluetooth controller - a chinese cheap one - called Gen Game New S3. It is identifying as "GEN GAME" in retropie. There was the same issue as OP had - only cursor button worked in games, but no action buttons. Simple "hack" is to "switch input from udev to "sdl2" in retroarch config" as @mendingo mentioned. Once this is done and gamepad is remapped in emulation station gui, all buttons work perfectly in games as well.
Maybe this can help to people who bought similar controller.

I'm having a similar issue at the moment. I've been trying for some time to get Joust working (it's my all-time favorite video game on any platform!). I just recently figured out how to reset the game to get it to actually start up, but now I can only control it via the keyboard. My 8bitdo SNES30 controllers don't seem to register any button presses, but they work fine for all other MAME games. The behavior seems to be the same for lr-mame2003 and mame4all. Any ideas? I'm on the same hardware and software versions as the OP.

@AlphaOrionis In the middle of playing a game the bluetooth connection disconnected and I'm back to square one with the same issue I had previously.

@BuZz said in No ports section with fresh install and (still) no Bluetooth?:

@alrdtakn1 It should be fixed now in RetroPie-Setup 4.1.9

Okay cool, I'll try it out tomorrow.

And how about the Bluetooth. What can I do to test if my Bluetooth is even working? To rule out I don't have a defective RPi.
And what can I do to make it work? I do have a Bluetooth USB dongle. I could use that one (I think it is Raspberry compatible) but I prefer to use the one already available in the RPi3. And I don't know how to make the usb Bluetooth to work (I guess I should chose the USB Bluetooth somewhere instead of the build-in Bluetooth)

Curious if you ever resolved this?

It could simply be a lag issue. I doubt that the Bluetooth receiver in the Pie3 is as robust as the PS4 one. For this reason I don't use more than 2 PS3 wireless controllers at a time.

The only related issue I could find is this one, but that's more about power draw from the controllers than Bluetooth lag:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6756/solved-ps1-controllers-random-input

It worked! Thanks!

@Noxoreos, never mind on that question regarding the directory (it just looked weird to me; I've never seen a folder with a ".data" at the end). Another question, however, whenever I try and run the shell script, I get an error about not having the permission to access data in the /var/lib/bluetooth/ directory. Any idea what's going on there? and how I might fix it?