Stoked: Star Wars Yoke!

[james.milroy]

@wstanek What files are in your /dev/input folder? Thats where the installed input devices are. If any are using joystick API then you'll have entries like js0, js1 etc. If any are using evdev-joystick then there will be event0, event 1 and so on. There is a sub-folder called /by-id and in there the devices will be described by the name reported by USB, for example usb-Alan-1_Flight_Yoke_Adapter. Let me know what you find in that folder please.

[wstanek]

@james-milroy

Here are those directories:

[james.milroy]

@wstanek Some good information to be had there. It looks like your yoke adapter is identified as js2 and event5. The Vendor id is: abee and the Product id is: 1002.

Can you try the following command for me:

/usr/bin/evdev-joystick --s /dev/input/event5

This should give the current calibration on your yoke adapter. Like I said before, the amount of dead zone is shown as 'flatness' and has a numerical value and a percentage. Mine was 255 (6.23%). Typing

/usr/bin/evdev-joystick --e /dev/input/event5 --d 0

should set the dead zone to 0 (0%). Once we establish that, you should test it in Star Wars. We'll still need to create a UDEV rule to set the dead zone to zero every boot regardless of what id the controller takes on.

[wstanek]

@james-milroy

I need to update. I don't see evdev-joystick, but i did see evtest, ran it and got results shown below.

I do see evdev-joystick on one of my other cabinets, which is a much more recent install, so let me update my Star Wars and try those commands.

I would love to cross this bug off my list!!!

[james.milroy]

@wstanek Cool, looks like we're getting somewhere. There is a dead zone on the adapter as you well know, we should be able to eliminate it as I did with mine. Just for reference, I'm running retropie 4.6 on my cabinet and Star wars on advmame 3.9. evdev-joystick was already on the system. Hopefully when you update, it'll be there too.

[wstanek]

@james-milroy AYE! she works!

I never did get evdev-joystick to appear after updates and installs, but I copied it from my other machine and she fired.

So then next is to get it into a persistent rule? I rebooted and it still says 0, but I think I added that rule when I was following along with your initial thread with mitu.

So thank you, that deadzone issue has been on my list of troubles for years. I even replaced the RAM USB with the ThisOldGame USB thinking that would solve it. Now I'm going to be playing and seeing how my scores are affected.

Again beautiful work on your cabinet. Let me know what games you get running on it. I never could get Roadblasters to work.

Looking forward to your next build! I just finished number 7, Pole Position. My RPi arcade is now complete!

Regards, Warren

[james.milroy]

@wstanek That's great to hear, glad you got it sorted. On my build the deadzone was definitely a bug-bear. I had to eliminate it or I would have had to drop in a PC since there is more control available in windows mame. I'm glad it worked out on the Pi cause of the simplicity of it all. As for other games, there's nothing on there at the moment. I'll be dropping in Empire and Jedi. After that, I don't know, undecided as of yet.

Have I understood you right and you have a rule in place to zero the deadzone on every boot?

[wstanek]

@james-milroy Yes I had written that rule as described but of course it didn't work without evdev-joystick in place. I think it must be working now because I did a reboot and no dead zone!

I might need to apply this to my Pole Position cab, where I interfaced a gas pedal (pot) to a teensy. I wrote some code for the teensy to act as a mouse, mapping the analog range to mouse moves. It works but I'm wondering if there is a better way...

What a joy it is to drill into the Pi with some code and actually have it work.

By the way you had said that you wanted to enable SSH. I have all my cabs on static IPs with network names. I might be able to help you out with some of that if I can re-trace my steps. Its nice to have bookmarks to get right into the rom folder if I want to load a new game.

Oh and I also recently got it to load a rom on boot. I had tried before but must have had a syntax error (again). Sounds like you'll definitely want to boot right into Star Wars, I'm sure you've already got that.

cheers!
ws

[james.milroy]

@wstanek I'd like to know how you got it to boot into a rom, that would be a nice touch. As for a next build, I have a Tron joystick and spinner, so a low profile bartop or wall mounted Tron is on the cards. Just finished making up a wiring loom for my mate's cab. I have his Pi, Picade and coin door here. I'll clone my SD and he'll be good to go. Can't actually go round to his to set it all up because we're still on a lockdown of sorts here in Scotland. I'll drop off the stuff at his and he'll have to do the dirty work himself using my pictures as reference.

[wstanek]

@james-milroy

edited:
/opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh

with:
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS arcade ~/Retropie/roms/arcade/starwars.zip
wait $1
emulationstation --no-splash #auto