@fbrier said in Bluetooth PS3 controller connected wirelessly, but no paired devices:

I am guessing what I should see, after pressing the PS3 button, is that all 4 LEDs on the front of the controller will blink, then the first one should become solid, as occurs when paired with an actual PS3 unit.

Pretty much, yes. Can you try resetting the controller ? You are connecting it with the USB cable to the Pi, right ?

Well, I gave up on this and sent the controller back to Amazon. I then took my wife to Gamestop to buy a second Wii U Pro Controller, which is, by far, the best and most reliable controller for Retropie (that I've experienced, anyway).

@zacho95 Also another thing you can try is powering off the console, pulling the power cord/power supply, press the power button on the Xbone a couple of times to drain it, and then reboot and retry.
I used to get paid to do this shit for Microsoft :)

When you connect a controller to an XBONE via wired or wireless, it saves the ID of the console in the controller's memory, so if it is not connecting to it after all of these steps, it is probably the wireless functionality on the controller that is dead (in all my years of working we have not had the wireless adapter on the console side break). I have seen a lot of those original controllers break over the years :)

Also if you have a friend with an XBONE, try to pair it to that console

@9acca9
It could be that sixad isn't running. You could try this quickly to see if it fixes the problem.

From the wiki entry:
For bluetooth pairing to persist between reboots you need to make sure sixad is executed during startup. Exit EmulationStation and and edit rc.local.

shell
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
Add sixad --start & before the line exit 0 and save (ctrl-x then y)

@soulgriever that driver should probably not be used on Ubuntu etc. You should be able to pair a ps3 controller via the desktop Bluetooth GUI etc. However there are some known issues with ps3 and sdl2 which are not resolved on x86 - we have a custom sdl2 for the RPI, but it's not yet available for x86 etc.

try this (worked for me):

worked for this configuration: RP3 model b, external bluetooth dongle, gasia fake ps3 controller (same as this post).

use ssh or get terminal access, cd /usr/sbin/
set appropiate permission to this command (one time setting): chmod 755 sixad-sixaxis
sudo reboot
have fun!