Building my first retropie arcade ever...am so close to finished but ran into a roadblock...both joysticks stuck either left or right x-axis?

Dyelon

So last night I spent about 6 hours building the controller board for my modded retropie arcade. This is my first time doing anything like this so there was alot of learning along the way.

Here's the deal:

-player 1 and player 2 joystick and buttons were all screwed in and wired

-every single button input registers correctly without issue

-player 1 joystick is registering as pushed to the right on the x-axis 100% of the time

-player 2 joystick is registering as pushed to the left on the x-axis 100% of the time

-I unscrewed the joysticks and tried them on the other side's USB encoder (in windows game controller config):

-no matter which joystick is plugged in to the 1st player encoder, the joystick is registering as pushed to the right. So if nothing is being touched, its to the right on x-axis. If you push joystick to the left, you get left, but no way to get center. If you pushed joystick up, its up-right. If you pushed joystick down-left, you get down-left but no way to get center-down, it just gets skipped

-no matter which joystick is plugged in to the 2nd player encoder, the joystick is registering as pushed to the left. So if nothing is being touched, its to the left on x-axis. If you push joystick to the right, you get right, but no way to get center. If you pushed joystick up, its up-left. If you pushed joystick down-right, you get down-right but no way to get center-down, it just gets skipped

-My gut tells me the problem lies in the encoders, because both joystick reproduce the same exact issue no matter which encoder they're plugged into. Whereas, one encoder is stuck left and the other is stuck right. So I order 2 new encoders off of amazon which will come tonight

I'll post imgur screenshots below, if anyone more knowledgeable/experienced than me could give their 2 cents it would be greatly appreciated. I'm soooooo close to getting my first arcade finished and I'm stuck right before the finish line here.

Thanks for reading!

https://imgur.com/gallery/iuf4yF1

JamieP

Can't see clearly from the photo but they look like normal arcade sticks. These are just microswitches with a common ground

Check with a meter that the sticks are ok (they probably are)
Check that you are connecting to digital inputs on the encoders
Check the plugs are the right way round, I have had ground on the wrong pin once.

DorkVonWaterfall

make sure all buttons and joystickwires are plugged in the same way on both encoders

grant2258

Ok im guessing these are led button please correct me if im wrong this encoder does not support led lighting.

Halvhjearne

@Dyelon

sounds to me like theres a short out somewhere, i would test the cables for continuity, to see if thats the problem or perhaps the pcb's has a short circuit?
there is also a good chance your carpet killed the pcb's.

spud11

I'm pretty sure that grant2258 is right. These encoders look more or less the same as mine. To my knowledge, they don't support led buttons. The buttons look like led buttons to me too. There are 4 connections, but only 2 should be connected to the encoder for each button.

I think the best thing to do is to remove all button connections to the encoders and only connect the 2 joysticks themselves and test that way first before reconnecting the buttons.

Dyelon

@DorkVonWaterfall
I can't see in the images well enough to know exactly where they are, but those encoders look a lot like the ones I got. My encoders had two sets of plugs for the joystick - one the 5 pin white cable you're using, and the other used 4 of those 2-pin plugs. They should be labelled as such. If you have anything in the 2-pin dedicated joystick plugs, you need to move them to another plug. That will cause interference of the signal.

^Someone posted this for me and it was the solution. I put the led connector in the left joystick input connector. Thanks for the help man