@erik-m Ok, I pushed a fix a minute ago. Something changed with the system execution. I updated it accordingly.

@antomost I can only second @mitu 's advice.

Sorry for this delayed reply.

What does the ControlBlock installation do, if you you run the ControlBlock installation directly from the command line via

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2/master/install.sh | sudo bash

(see https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2#quick-installation)

Do you observe the same behavior?
Can you post the link to the OS image that you are using, so that I can try to replicate the error?

Hi, interesting project idea!
In case of simulating a controller towards a console it depends on the protocol and submission speeds.
Generally, you can control the GPIO pins of the ControlPins via the SPI interface of the Raspberry. As long as SPI is fast enough for your use case, things should work.
Hope that helps!

@mitu Hey, that did the trick, thank you very much, sir !!!!

I've waited a week and aeverything just works fine again...

@petitssuisses Sorry if this reply is too late.
I would go for a new gamepad type to keep the existing in its current state as fallback. You could start with a copy of the MAMEGamepad.cpp file.

I had tried all 3 methods on my pi 3. I used the manual cmake steps, I had tried the wget install.sh method, and I had also tried the GUI option in the retroarch "optional package" menu. I ran into no errors during any method, but nothing worked. Nothing was responsive in jstest. When performing the GUI option pi 2.5, it worked. (I didn't try other 2 methods on the pi 2.5 as my first attempt worked).

I think its my pi. I bought it a few years ago and this was my first time trying to use the GPIO headers. I downloaded a pigpiod GPIO test script and it identified some of my pins as bad. I think I'll grab a pi 4.0 in the near future.

I made a video going over my gamepad design if anyone is curious.

@Sabaro my problem.... I set the cable wrong
1 2 3 4. 4321.

I did a similar project not too long a go. E.g. built RetroPie into Atari 2600 case. Anyways - yes, key presses that ControlBlock sends when using MAME layout are hardcoded into it's driver:

URL: https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2/blob/master/src/controlblock/gamepads/MAMEGamepad.cpp#L41-L141

To change e.g. switch 'z' to send something else than z, say a, you would modify lines below and replace KEY_Z with KEY_A. And recompile and re-install the driver (instructions here https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2).

URL: https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2/blob/master/src/controlblock/gamepads/MAMEGamepad.cpp#L68-L70 to

Available KEY_* events (that you could replace KEY_Z above) are found from here: https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2/blob/master/src/controlblock/uinput/UInputEventCodes.h

I hope this helps you forward. I did a slight re-write for the driver myself as I wanted all the Atari 2600 switches to provide their original functionality. Which isn't straightforward since official ControlBlock driver doesn't support switch where both on and off indicate certain state (e.g. on -> colorTV, off B&W). I suppose I could clean up my code a bit and put it up to github sometime.

I am so glad to hear that :-)

Hello everyone, in the end I will use Recalbox with two USB interfaces.
For me it is much easier.

Thank you all for the help, best regards.

Glad to hear!

@SuperPitendo Thank you so much for all the info and effort. Much appreciated!

The power switch on the ControlBlock lead to a small voltage-drop at the switching component (as does every electronically component). From other projects I know that especially additional USB devices can be problematic. I guess that when you disconnect, one or both USB devices (SSD, converter) the under voltage disappears. Alternatively, you could get an active USB hub that powers the additional USB devices and keep the connection between the RPi and the USB devices.

@paulmalko I am having a very similar problem. When you say you "re-imaged the SD card". What did you reimage it with? RetroPi, Raspbian, ...??? Any help would be appreciated.

@petrockblog It appears that I can get the service running by commenting out the line "[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0" and then starting the service. This also allows the service to run on boot.

So, why does this line need to be commented out? I'm confused why this would work for everyone else and not my setup (even though I started from a completely fresh RetroPi 4.5).

Glad to hear that you are making progress!

It should always be possible to use the ControlBlock together with any USB controller. You would just need to run the input configuration for each device on EmulationStation. All controller types should be recognised and working afterwards.

Regarding your question about the need for an additional keyboard: What you would need to do is to configure the emulators such that you have full control with your arcade / gamepad controls only. That should be possible.

Hope that helps!