Control Block no longer working

fastfalcon94

I have rev 2.1 of the Control block that I purchased several years ago. Once upon a time I had it working on a Raspberry pi2 with a very crude arcade setup mounted to a a piece of plywood (2 joysticks, 16 buttons). It was just a trial run. It sat like that for years and I no longer have the pi 2.

I've since built a nice arcade box and I am trying to get it working on a pi 3b. This morning I started from scratch. Re-imaged my microsd and installed retropie. I hooked up the Controlblock. I went through the instructions on github with the ControlBlock with the v2 install.

The service is running. I have USB power going to the control block and not the pi. Without a keyboard or usb gamepad plugged in, I can see js1 and js2 in dev\input. When I run jstest and press any of the buttons or move the joysticks; nothing changes. Nothing is responsive.

In raspi-config I've turned on SPI and I2C.

Is there something I'm missing? Any kind of extra troubleshooting I could do? Could my control block have gone bad?

I also tried it without the ribbon cable and plugged in directly on top of the pi.

This is my control file.

{
"controlblocks" : [
{
"enabled" : true, // Enables (=true) or disables (=false) the ControlBlock
"address" : { // The address information of the first ControlBlock
"SJ1" : 0, // The hardware address solder-jumper SJ1. Options: 0, 1
"SJ2" : 0 // The hardware address solder-jumper SJ2, Options: 0, 1
},
"gamepadtype" : "arcade", // Sets the gamepad type. Options: "arcade", "mame", "snes", "nes", "genesis", "none"
"onlyOneGamepad" : false, // If true, registers only one gamepad instead of two
"powerswitchOn" : false // Enables (=true) the power switch functionality. Options: true, false
},
{
"enabled" : false, // Enables (=true) or disables (=false) the second ControlBlock
"address" : { // The address information of the second ControlBlock
"SJ1" : 1, // The hardware address solder-jumper SJ1. Options: 0, 1
"SJ2" : 0 // The hardware address solder-jumper SJ2, Options: 0, 1
},
"gamepadtype" : "arcade", // Sets the gamepad type. Options: "arcade", "mame", "snes", "nes", "genesis", "none"
"onlyOneGamepad" : false // If true, registers only one gamepad instead of two
}
]
}

fastfalcon94

Update:

So I found my old 2.5 Raspberry Pi. I re-imaged it, didn't install any games, and this time I setup the controlblock via the GUI option in retroarch config (vs manually running the make, or trying the automated script) The gamepad was recognized and everything worked.

So then I took my 3.0 pi and re-imaged it again. Then I did the exact same process. It doesn't work. So maybe there is something wrong with my new pi. Either that or there is some hidden setting/configuration I'm missing?
Any advice is appreciated.

I'll use the 2.5 for now. If its a faulty pi, I don't think I want to buy another one now. Maybe I'll check out the 4.0.

Dr Excess

@fastfalcon94 I'm having issues with a 3.0 and the retro pie scripts, and in fact any of the other install options.

I just don't think it works.

I've tried every recommendation, I've asked for support here, through the site and on discord and I can't get anywhere.

I'm just going to count my losses and buy a mausberry.

petrockblog

@fastfalcon94 Hi! Sorry for this delayed replay.

What a cool bartop! I really like the woodworking and the paintwork!

Reading through your first post I was ready to ask if the wiring was really ok, or if there were maybe some wires mixed. However, when I read that you tested the very same hardware setup with another Raspberry and that that setup worked, I also came to the conclusion that the wiring is obviously ok.

Also, if the controls work with the 2.5 Pi, we can rule out that the ControlBlock has a fault.

Personally, I had one broken Pi 3 and one broken Pi 4 in during the last years, so from my point of view it is not totally improbable that the Pi might be broken.

Regarding the installation options: There are usually these two options, which one exactly did you use successfully, and which one did not work for you?

Driver installation via retropie setup script
Driver installation via one-line bash command

I could offer to provide you with a recent RetroPie image that already comes with the ControlBlock driver installed. Would that be of any help for you? In that way we could be sure that the software part is working as expected.

petrockblog

@dr-excess said in Control Block no longer working:

I'm having issues with a 3.0 and the retro pie scripts, and in fact any of the other install options.

Can you tell me with which exact install options you were not successful with?

Installation via the retropie setup script bash GUI
Driver installation via one line bash command
Some other way?

Dr Excess

This post is deleted!

Dr Excess

This post is deleted!

fastfalcon94

I had tried all 3 methods on my pi 3. I used the manual cmake steps, I had tried the wget install.sh method, and I had also tried the GUI option in the retroarch "optional package" menu. I ran into no errors during any method, but nothing worked. Nothing was responsive in jstest. When performing the GUI option pi 2.5, it worked. (I didn't try other 2 methods on the pi 2.5 as my first attempt worked).

I think its my pi. I bought it a few years ago and this was my first time trying to use the GPIO headers. I downloaded a pigpiod GPIO test script and it identified some of my pins as bad. I think I'll grab a pi 4.0 in the near future.

I made a video going over my gamepad design if anyone is curious.