SNES controller ghosting on Retropie/Kodi etc... An interesting find...

thestarglider

Re: Gamepads making involuntary movements in Emulation Station

Okay, so a bit of a ressurection of older threads around these parts but I did read through many posts on many forums about the ongoing issues of ghosting (random controller inputs to the Pi from controllers, especially the iBuffalo SNES controllers). And one thing that some people have brought up is the controller capacitance issue, and a few people have put capacitors inside their controllers to try to ease the issue.

I too recently had the same problem of ghosting from my SNES controller but I do not have the skills to do any soldering, I know I will bugger it up. But one thing that struck me as odd was that up until a few days ago I had never noticed any issue before. So what had changed? Why is my SNES controller ghosting on everything while using the Pi?

And then it dawned on me.

I changed the power supply.

Up until those few days ago I had been using the official Pi power supply but one thing that st niggled me was the lack of any power switch. And I recently bought a package of case, heatsinks, fan and a power supply with an on off switch on it. Result I thought. But after mulling over this controller issue for a bit I deduced thst something had fundamentally changed in the Pi to cause this issue and so at first I disconnected the fan. No change. So then I switched back to the official power supply.

The ghosting went away. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Clearly the other power supply was either giving spikes or something that was causing feedback from the controller that is determined by the Pi to be a controller d-pad input (I am not an engineer by any means so I have no idea of the technicaliities of what I'm talking about!).

It would be interesting to know if anyone else had tried an alternative power source to their Pi when they've had issues with ghosting, because in all the threads I have read, I don't remember anyone else bringing it up.

But for now I will have to stick to the power switchless mains adaptor but have a happy Pi and controller living in perfect harmony!

caver01

@thestarglider I did find that my 8bitdo bluetooth controllers were sending ghost signals occasionally to Kodi. I narrowed this down to the analog sticks. Maybe it was a narrow dead zone combined with power noise or whatever, but my solution was pretty simple: configure Kodi with SNES-type input. Sure, I had to just ignore my analog sticks, but once my buttons were mapped I still had plenty of functionality and the ghost signals stopped completely. Same power supply, same controllers--different Kodi config.

I dunno if your situation is similar, but heck, I wish someone had said something to me like this when I was pulling my hair out and apologizing to my wife when a movie skipped ahead to a spoiler!

dankcushions

@thestarglider said in SNES controller ghosting on Retropie/Kodi etc... An interesting find...:

It would be interesting to know if anyone else had tried an alternative power source to their Pi when they've had issues with ghosting, because in all the threads I have read, I don't remember anyone else bringing it up.

i kinda did :) https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8187/gamepads-making-involuntary-movements-in-emulation-station

the issue is power interference so it figures that changes to power supply or connection can influence it. however it won't fix it for everyone.