Why does my 8bitdo and PS3 controllers randomly move?

mitu

@jamrom2 said in Why does my 8bitdo and PS3 controllers randomly move?:

I have iBuffalo USB SNES controllers. I made a build for a co-worker...his does it too. He has Retroflag USB SNES controllers.

This kind of issue with the iBuffalo controllers has been reported and discussed multiple times in the past - it seems to be a controller issue. See for instance here.

jamrom2

@mitu you're spot on.. It is... and for the sake of closing this thread... it's not Retropie (as you already know)...

I just bought the new "The C64" (full-size)... plugged in my iBuffalo SNES... and it does the same thing. Randomly moves.

Thanks as always for the reply and thread reference.

kireol

@mitu

Got my new power supply (3.1A 5v). Issue still happens with new power supply

mitu

I'll try to reproduce the issue with my PS3 controller. I have one, but it's not connected.

mitu

That was easier than I thought.
After configuring the controller on my Pi3, tried to scrape for more videos and the issue appeared during scraping - I think producing any load on the system triggers this when EmulationStation is started. So instead of using the videos in ES, I just re-ran Skyscraper in a loop, re-generating gamelists to produce load.
The ghost inputs appear also in jstest or evtest - not only sdl2-jstest. Running evtest is actually easier to see the new inputs.

What fixes it is lowering the BT baud rate (as mentioned in https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Bluetooth-Controller/, but it's line 27 not line 22 as mentioned there). Modify /usr/bin/btuart and lower it from the 921600 to one of the values recommended (230400 or 115200). With 115200 set, I think I had only 2 or 3 ghost inputs with more that 30 min of continuous testing. Give it a try and see if that makes a difference for your setup.

kireol

@mitu said in Why does my 8bitdo and PS3 controllers randomly move?:

That was easier than I thought.
After configuring the controller on my Pi3, tried to scrape for more videos and the issue appeared during scraping - I think producing any load on the system triggers this when EmulationStation is started. So instead of using the videos in ES, I just re-ran Skyscraper in a loop, re-generating gamelists to produce load.
The ghost inputs appear also in jstest or evtest - not only sdl2-jstest. Running evtest is actually easier to see the new inputs.
What fixes it is lowering the BT baud rate (as mentioned in https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Bluetooth-Controller/, but it's line 27 not line 22 as mentioned there). Modify /usr/bin/btuart and lower it from the 921600 to one of the values recommended (230400 or 115200). With 115200 set, I think I had only 2 or 3 ghost inputs with more that 30 min of continuous testing. Give it a try and see if that makes a difference for your setup.

That worked perfectly for me. 10 minutes and no ghost movements.

I'll let the people in /r/retropie know. Should make a lot of people happy :)

Thanks for looking in to this. I know you all have to be doing this on volunteer basis.

jamrom2

@mitu other than swapping transistors which that thread points to (I've already ordered them)... is there a null input value to set in a USB Joystick control file somewhere?

Maybe that could be added if not?

mitu

@jamrom2 said in Why does my 8bitdo and PS3 controllers randomly move?:

Maybe that could be added if not?

Not sure if I follow - you mean to disable the button inputs for EmulationStation ?

jamrom2

@mitu you know how some games allow you to set a 'null input' so that there is a little play in the input to the game? This is done with a lot of Flight Sim games so that you can make slight adjustments without the plane doing rolls or loops.

Maybe that's what it needs to void out the ghost inputs? I don't know if it's possible. Does ES just see an input value... or does it see an input based on a length of time or a set voltage value.

so if a ghost input is +.02 volts... and an actual press gives + 1.2 volts... you would set the null to ignore anything under +1.0 volts. Effectively ignoring the ghost input.

That's what the capacitor mod is doing to the controller. It's adding a higher filter to the input so more power is required.

mitu

@jamrom2 said in Why does my 8bitdo and PS3 controllers randomly move?:

so if a ghost input is +.02 volts... and an actual press gives + 1.2 volts... you would set the null to ignore anything under +1.0 volts. Effectively ignoring the ghost input.

It doesn't work like that. There is no method to know how much 'volts' trigger the input, in order to ignore it or not.