Help With Troubleshooting Erratic Button Presses with NES controller to GPIO.

[punx45]

This is my hardware setup:

Genuine NES Controller > NES controller socket from console > solid core wires to breadboard > breadboard jumpers to pi zero GPIO pins

Software setup:
I have gamecon_gpio_rpi installed and configured according to the retropie docs.
Emulation Station recognized the controller on startup, and I configured it there also.

I briefly tested the controller with a genuine NES, and it worked fine.
The controller does work in emulation station briefly, but then starts up with erratic button presses frequently, such as pausing (start), or resetting the rom spontaneously. (start+select) After which some button presses register, and some don't.

Before I start tearing everything apart to troubleshoot, or build a 5v filter for nothing, I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask:

Will sketchy wire connections such as a loose wire somewhere along the way cause unintended button presses?

Or is it more likely the 3.3v vs 5v problem?

thanks!

[johangrimm]

@punx45 , I'm about to go almost the same way myself, wiring up buttons from my genuine arcade machine. I'm planning to use the grounding instead of the plus feed (Raspberry's GPIO's should trigger fine on three state i.e. either open circuit going high to feed voltage OR going low to GND).

However, my thought was also a prevention from involentary multi triggering but not by H/W support, we do have plenty of computer power at hand; have a look at this article Physical computing with Raspberry Pi. Some simple sleep timers should do it.