8bitdo bluetooth controllers connection problems

lmjiang1

@BuZz thanks it is version 1.00 the controller was just released last week. Hopefully they can address these issues in future updates.

lmjiang1

@herb_fargus thanks I appreciate your help! I feel a bit better knowing that it's not just me.

BuZz

@lmjiang1 in the meantime you can try and workaround it by seeing if pairing in another mode works better, or going to retropie menu and forcing connect mode. This is a hack, but it can workaround these issues. Boot mode will try and manually connect to all registered controllers on boot. Background mode tries every 10 seconds to connect. These workarounds shouldn't be needed but may help for now.

BuZz

Sorry. I just read you tried background and boot modes. Unfortunately in that case I'm out of ideas apart from trying other power on modes before you register the pad.

BuZz

Are you on Raspbian Jessie or Stretch? What does cat /etc/issue say running from cmdline?

lmjiang1

@BuZz I'm on Stretch. The command returns "Raspian GNU/Linux 9 \n \1"

One other thing I've noticed when exiting the Bluetooth Configuration menu is the following error message

"Unit sixad.service could not be found"

Not sure if this is relevant.

herb_fargus

@lmjiang1 if you have PS3 controllers or have installed the PS3 driver it has known incompatibilities with the default Bluetooth stack and will need to be uninstalled in order to work properly. Not sure if that's the case here but it's worth noting.

lmjiang1

@herb_fargus thank you, good to know.

lmjiang1

Hi folks I wanted to give an update. I had a little bit of success with the following:

I went to
/etc/udev/rules.d

and opened up the three files that were in it

99-bluetooth.rules
99-com.rules
99-input.rules

the first, "99-bluetooth.rules" is the udev rule that was created by the Bluetooth Configuration menu.

SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="Pro Controller", MODE="0666", ENV{ID_INPUT_JOYSTICK}="1"

The MODE value here is "0666". However, when I opened up the other two files "99-com.rules" and "99-input.rules", I saw that they had MODE values of "0660". On a hunch I changed the values so that all three files had MODE="0666". And it worked - kind of.

After making these changes and going through the setup process for a new controller, I was able to pair even after rebooting the pi or shutting down and turning it back on later. However, I was only able to pair:

AFTER the pi had completely booted up and had arrived on the WELCOME no game pads detected screen
Only on the second pairing attempt. The first attempt to pair would always fail.

This worked for me about 10 times before the controller went back to not pairing at all. I'm wondering maybe if there are files besides the three that I mentioned that need to be altered in order to get this working consistently. If anyone has any ideas I'd really appreciate it!

notthesame

@lmjiang1 hello i had this same issue with xu4 retroarena, m30 after reboot i get no pair, m30 would pair but couldnt do anything in game or ES, i updated m30, no luck.
Xu4 has only 3 ports i had a hdd connected, wifi usb, bt dongle all my usb connects gone so i thought maybe i need to connect to 3.0 usb, i bought 2 bt and same issue happen.
I then added a multi usb but it would do the same thing, i had some try m30 with thoses 20 dollar usb bt by with like super mario block design and i thought i need one of thoses, same thing happen, no pairing all what i have type above.

So i gave it about 2 months and asked again and tried again, once i had turned on the xu4 after months it paired right up like nothing had happened, so i played.
I had help and we tired to pair with switch mode and android but no luck i was fed up dude.

The guys at retroarena dont know what it is, i been waiting for about 1 month in a half but i havent bothered anymore.

But the m30 works fine with all other machines, just might be the xu4 cos someone else tired and did the same thing, might be your pi2 is the samething.
Works fine on my pi3b+ i used thme and pair just fine.

So my solution at the end since i got xu4 for saturn and just more power i put it away and ordered a pi4 and works super awesome!
I installed yabause on desktop and played dracula x.

Im sorry that it acts the way it does and i hope someone can help.