Dedicated Save/Load buttons WITHOUT hotkeys? Pi3, Retropie 3.8

[Smoghog]

Hey all! I know the hotkey issue is a common one to ask questions about, but despite my digging, I haven't found a way to do what I'm trying to do...

I'm in the middle of building an arcade panel using a generic set of buttons with usb controller, each button assigns as a number with no problem, and I can even use the standard Select+xxx hotkeys with it.. But what I want do do is put dedicated buttons on the panel I'm building for save/load/exit emulator without having to press a hotkey. There's additional input openings on the usb controller if I need to go that way, but I don't know how to set it up so that P1 controller buttons (just the necessary ones) will work without having to hold an additional hotkey? I've tried nul hotkey button, hotkeys enabled, hotkeys disabled, and a few other things within the retroarch.cfg file, but nothing I've come up with so far has worked.

Is this possible with just the usb controller?
If not, is it possible using GPIO buttons assigned to keyboard shortcuts?
Or maybe with a teensy or other similar setup?

Edit:
I've gotten it setup now where all the hotkeys are disabled on the controller itself. Instead, F1 exits emulator, F2 saves state and F3 loads state. Can I simply connect 3 buttons to GPIO pins and have them act as those 3 keys? How would I do that from within RetroPie? Or is there a better way I'm completely overlooking?

[xdreamwalker]

Did you ever get this figured out? I'm trying to use buttons hooked up the GPIO for save/load/exit and I have not had good luck. I did try to use the Adafruit RetroGame, but I couldn't get it to work.