@Impman66 how you set up your speedlink controller? I have SL-6566-BK xeox pro analog gamepad-wireless-black, retropie detected it but when i press&hold A to set up nothing happened.. please help

@jonnykesh Thanks for your answers and tips!
I re-download the Retropie image and ApplePi-Baker, formatted the SD card and installed the image all over again. The result was the same, the controllers would not respond.
I then got my hands on another Raspberry Pi Zero W, inserted the SD card with the same image, booted up and everything works perfectly now. Both controllers and the keyboard.
So I guess you were right, that it was an issue with the Pi.
Thanks! :)

You nailed the concern on this perfectly by describing the fact the Colecovision, Intellivision and Atari 5200 (CX52) have very similar controllers. What I really wish is that the three communities would get together and do a Kickstarter or GoFundMe to develop an improved, common controller that can be used with all three systems. I don't know what other consoles used a numeric keypad as part of the controller. It's fairly unique compared to all modern controllers made in the last 35 years. I think when NES came out in 1985, those type controllers started to disappear from production. By thinking in terms of a common controller for all three systems, it seems a lot more feasible to do than just going it alone for just one system.

My idea would be to make the controller flexible to serve all three consoles. I'm an Intellivision fan, so the numeric touchscreen could be flipped upside down (software config) for Colecovision and Atari 5200 fans whose controllers had the numeric keypad on the bottom (the three buttons above the CX52 joystick would have to be combined onto the 15-button touchscreen - a compromise). The four side buttons could be near the middle of the controller (another compromise). Both ends of the controller would have ports for connection to the homebrew console or PC with different cable adapters. Configuration software would be created to program the controller to immediately act as a duplicate of one of the three console's controllers. The directional disc itself could be configurable with attachments to closely represent each console.

@wihaedud

I have this exact same issue. However the fix doesn't work for me. The bluetooth disconnects after 5 seconds as it should but then never connects back to the pie and wont until the pie is rebooted. Any ideas or anything I can check using ssh to ensure the bluetooth service has restarted?? I am a bit of Linux noob but can find my way around a putty window :)

Thank you everyone, now it's "working" but I'm not sure why. I've started again from scratch with a fresh installation, and it's working fine out of the box, as @ChuckyP said. At least is working with the padtest iso, when I push on R3 it starts running the weak motor, and with L3 the strong one. I suppose that I messed up something while trying to install/uninstall packages and stuff.

However it's not working with Final Fantasy VIII. Vibration is enabled ingame, I've tried with several bios and two different copies from the game, without success. Anyway, if it's working with the padtest then it works, and based on other comments I suppose that this feature doesn't work for all the games, but I need to test it more.

Thanks again everyone for your help!

@mitu I would you give +5 for this if I could!

Thanks old post. I was stumped for days. Tried this method and works! Thank you!

@gabgreen For more information - see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.
The L/R buttons should not function as hotkeys, if you mapped them correctly in Emulationstation (in the input configuration) as L/R, then they should work in-game. You can open the RetroArch GUI menu to check your buttons by pressing Select + X and checking the Input section.
Please see the read this first page and give more details, especially about the controller and emulator used.

EDIT: According to the manual, the L/R buttons don't function in all areas, so it could be that the buttons are working fine.

When in an action scene, the L and R buttons can be used to scroll the screen forward or backward slightly. [...] This function does NOT work in all areas.

Nevermind i figured it out. The guide dosen't it make it noob clear that after you have built your own version you still have to actually move the binary to the appropriate folder but as i said in the end i figured it out :)

@mitu - I've done some more digging. The GameStick doesn't seem to be recognized properly by the evdev system. Found some fun log messages via dmesg:

[ 15.328485] hid-generic 0005:0F0D:1011.0003: unknown main item tag 0x0 [ 15.328963] input: GameStick Controller as /devices/platform/soc/3f201000.uart/tty/ttyAMA0/hci0/hci0:11/0005:0F0D:1011.0003/input/input2 [ 15.330713] hid-generic 0005:0F0D:1011.0003: input.hidraw2: BLUETOOTH HID v7.07 Keyboard [GameStick Controller] on b8:27:eb:03:bd:7f

It appears that the "unknown main item tag" error (which, googling around, seems to be a bug), is causing the controller to be detected by evdev as a "Keyboard". Which, obviously, doesn't work so hot for controller stuff, since the various buttons don't seem to map to anything ES's controller setup recognizes as a button or axis.

I'm going to see if there's any kind of config option or something I can pass to allow this to work...

Although I use xinput mode on my gaming PC i will give it a go as I can just use my duelshock 4 on my PC so i'll give it a go and update you guys on the results.
Edit: nothing in games like dinput and unlike dinput the trigger didn't work so it looks like switch mode is the only one that works however as I said I use that for my switch so is there anything else I could try or am I stuck with switch mode.

@clyde That's right, edit 10 solved my initial query from the topic post, and edit 9 solved the second problem of poor wifi performance caused by wminput.

I think for most users who are trying to fix the latter issue, wminput -q -w would be perfectly acceptable. This way, wminput will keep searching (-w, waiting) for the Wiimote until it connects (clobbering wifi in the process). The "risk" here is that you can't find your Wiimote, or it's out of battery or something, so your Internet will go dead until you manage to get it synced. For me, when the entire network is relying on the Pi maintaining its connection, I'm better off with it timing out "just in case" the Wiimote isn't available, vs. the extra convenience of being able to connect any time after EmulationStation starts.

The biggest loss here is not being able to reconnect Wii Remotes after a disconnect, e.g. because of drained batteries, especially if it happens mid-game. Presumably you can SSH in and run attachwii again whenever you're ready to reconnect. Not terribly pretty, but for users who need their wifi up it's the best tradeoff I can see, short of changing how you handle your connections (e.g. wired internet, separate Bluetooth dongle, etc.)

There's probably a middle ground somewhere where you have a version of attachwii running in the background that periodically runs an hcitool scan and greps the result for your Wiimote, launching a wminput -q [-w] to reconnect if it finds it. Depending on how often you ran the scan it might not have the same devastating effect on your wifi, and it would otherwise be similar to running wminput -d, in terms of getting you (re)connected at arbitrary times. I'm just spitballing here though, I'm not sure how much impact hcitool scan has on wifi performance on a Pi 3 or other setups where BT/wifi interference is a major issue. For all I know, running hcitool scan constantly is just what wminput is doing behind the scenes that's causing all the problems.

EDIT: I also quickly threw together /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/Attach Wiimote.sh:

#!/bin/bash attachwii >/dev/null 2>&1

This can be run from the Ports menu in EmulationStation to sync the Wiimote without having to exit to command line to do it. It's of limited use, basically just if you forget to connect or get disconnected while you're in the EmulationStation menu. It's no help if you get disconnected mid-game, ssh is still the best option there currently.

Ok, thanks for your answer. Then I have to use my old PS3 Controller

@meleu thanks so much for making this script! I would be screwed without it! This should be added to the Retropie main builds! It's so useful!

@foldi84 are you holding the 0 zero key for 5 seconds while powering in the vision daptor to put it into intellivision fb controller mode?

i have the same problem with the same keyboard

for the current buttons, you can create bindings with udev (hwdb) but the triggers are not recognized

if somebody could help us, thanx

Update RetroPie-Setup script - it should now map escape to button x so you can quit. Although I still recommend a keyboard for RetroPie-Setup configuration.