I GOT IT WORKING!!!

Good Grief.....in the end I used the PS3 driver and what made ti work was, just after registering the device a window pops up saying you can now unplug your cable.

At this point, I unplugged and paired the controller and THEN with the keyboard moved back to the main menu to configure it.

Trying to pair the device at ANY other point during the process and it doesnt like it.

Have rebooted and the device still conect and works so it seems stable :D

Cheers for the help.

@SuperFromND said in PS3 Emulator?:

but it would be a bit weird including an emulator for a last-gen system

I thought the PS4 was last-gen ?

well, it definitely will be on 12th Nov 2020

@ExarKunIv

You certainly came with great news of possible hope

Interesting , very interesting by your observation

Yes I would love for you to try to help and I'm pleasantly surprised you have a move , most people I have spoke with do not have a move controller with camera , so this is excellent !!!

Well when you find your move and test out everything thing for your self , I will be here waiting and hopeing you could help me

Thanks a bunch for possibility of HOPE

@mitu thanks a lot. yes , this is the very 1st first thing I did initially and while the config is definitely saved I launched a game (quazatron) and it simply doesnt work. (the d-pad right pauses the game and i think the X button or the Y resumes. another game like dan dare works with the dpad just fine, admittedly havent tried a load of games as trying to keep it simple and understand how/why its working on one and not another. i've launched retroach while the game is loading attempting to configure it per game but the config doesnt display properly (i think this might have to do with running retropie under buster and rpi4?). any other ideas when you have the time would be much appreciated.

@sirhenrythe5th yeah it sucks but atleast ive got a borrowed ps3 and took advantage of ps3 end of year sale and got my friend usf4 for 3 bucks and borderlands 2 for 4 bucks meanwhile pcb arrives for the arcadestick :D

I have the same awful controller. It tries to detect the device that it's connected to and select mode based on that. If the system is running Windows it will switch to Xbox mode.

I'm still not sure how exactly to switch mode, but last I got I working by holding select+analog. But I also found this on a sellers website:
"press the "home" button for 7 seconds, you can freely switch the mode."

Linux actually seams able to use the gamepad in all 3 modes (it also has an Android mode), but the device sometimes won't fully register before switching the mode a couple of times.

@Jshhh Try using a RetroPie image and see if that works. If it does, the problem may be the kernel/firmware version in OSMC.

@leitmotiv You can use the same topic, it's up to you if you want to use another forum or not - you might try the AdvanceMAME forums.

@marcel151 There is a regression in the latest Linux stable kernel regarding bluetooth connections - you'll either have to wait for an update or downgrade your OS packages (kernel+firmwarre) as shown here.

Just tried a few with the (re-)modified configs/all/retroarch.cfg :

Atari 800 now uses the analog stick only - with whatever assignment (digital or analog) N64 seems to do the right thing now: only the analog sticks work In PSX only the dpad works

So all in all, quite a weird combination which doesn't seem to make too much sense.

@mitu said in (PS3) Controller configurations across different emulators:

Actually, not all is lost (well, not so dramatically). While it may not be an option for the emulator, you can trick it by re-modelling your controller - Xboxdrv. It does require more setup work though.

Will see. For now I guess I will stay with the analog stick working as dpad option. Either way, only one emulator does it wrong then (N64) besides PSX which seems to do it wrong all the time, while then at least I have the choice of using one or the other control with all remaining emulators.

By the way, after switching off this analog=dpad mapping, In Vice still both controls worked, which makes full sense because in Vice's configuration screen you can define the dpad and analog controls separately - in a working manner ;-)

EDIT: The challenge for the PSX emulations is probably the fact that the analog version of the PS controller was released "belated" in 1997, a long while after the PSX was released (by that time only with a digital controller).
There weren't too many game titles also which actually supported the analog controller feature, and those who did obviously did that with regional limitations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_Analog_Controller

All in all a relatively complicated topic, which might explain in a way why analog support works quite well in the N64 emulations (where an analog controller was provided natively) and not so well in the PSX ones. There for the most part, it seems to depend on the game itself and even its country code, if Dual Analog Controller or even Dual Shock Controller support actually works. The latter one does for me in a few games, e.g. Driver II, but then again the real analog stick support I couldn't get to work, neither for this nor any other PSX game.

@edmaul69 I recently bought a controller with the same label, but this it is not pairing at all.
When I connect it, it does not vibrates at all, and only the first light flashes. Thats odd.
Any idea of how to pair and register this controller?

I have two shanwan clones and they work fine with the driver.
I also tried to pair this new one with original drivers, and all of the package but with no luck (actually I bougth 2 controllers and have the same behavior).

Inside the es_input I notice:
Playstation(R)3 controoler (an original ps3 controller)
SHANWAN PS3 GamePad (for the shanwan clone)
PS3 Controller (for this one)

Any ideas?

@mitu Thank you, I will definitely look into this and test it out this weekend.

I apologize for not replying sooner, I have not been getting site notifications for some odd reason.

@sanbadgerdude Take a look at https://github.com/anqixu/sixad_rumble or http://wiki.ros.org/ps3joy. Your topic has nothing to do with RetroPie, maybe it's better to start with the links above and see if it helps you.

@billyh Try it first. I have two PS3 controllers (original) and RPi3 and it works good for me. Played for like 2 hours straight with my brother without any issues.

There is other issue with PS3 controller though - if I let it idle for a few minutes, the daemon (service) responsible for connecting with the controller hangs and I canßt get it back to working condition (I may be able through command line or SSH, haven't tried though). From what I read this issue gets resolved by using USB BT dongle...

@dceric
Turn off your wifi and you will get Bt working fine with both controllers

@help-me-please can your pocket juice supply a regulated 5V at 2.5A? That worries me.