ControlBlock setup issues

[jmhogan0]

@petrockblog
Forum does not allow my photo to upload. Says it's to large.

[jmhogan0]

@petrockblog
Can you offer any other advice. Still not working properly even though the driver says it's running. Does not power off the control block completely. Led on power switch and the red one on the pi stay on. Must pull power out of control block and plug back in to make switch work again.

[jmhogan0]

@petrockblog
Is it possible the card you sent is defective?

[petrockblog]

Hello John, if the ControlBlock powers the RPi when the switch is turned on, it is very unlikely that the ControlBlock is defective.
I will send you another one, though! I will be handed over to the post office today.

Regarding the image: Maybe you can resize the image such that it is smaller and try to upload again?

[jmhogan0]

@petrockblog

Received new board. Getting same results. I even started again with a fresh install of retropi from scratch. I took the switch I was using out and just used a jumper. Starts up fine. When I pull of the jumper the control block service shuts down the pi just fine. However, replacing the jumper will only restart the pie if I first pull power off of the control block card and re-apply. I have no other wires connected to control block, just power and the jumper for a switch. I even bought a new power supply thinking that might be the problem. The only thing I have not tried replacing is the raspberry pi itself. Could that be the problem? Or is it possible that the wrong driver is loaded. I installed the driver this time using retropi 4.2 menu and enabled the control block driver.

[petrockblog]

Can you please post a picture of your hardware setup? You can upload your image, e.g., at http://imgur.com/upload and use that link in this post with the image button in the toolbar above.
As another measure I could provide a RetroPie image that already has the ControlBlock driver installed. In that way we can ensure that the software part works as expected.

[jmhogan0]

@petrockblog
https://i.imgur.com/JsZl9N2.jpg

Here is a link. But if you have an image where you know that it works I will try that. Post a link for me to download?

[jmhogan0]

@petrockblog
By the way, I did buy another brand new raspberry pie 3 b and tried it with both control block board and get the same results. So for those counting the 2 different power supplies, 2 different control blocks, 2 different raspberry pies and 2 different switches. It's clearly not the hardware. I am wondered if it's was version of retro pie I have been using. I tried two different ones First efforts were with a freshly downloaded image of retro pie from the website, on the other I tried an image posted by someone else. I updated both to the most recent version of retropie and get the same results. I also tried installing the driver two different ways. One isn't your website instructions (which are old) and another using the install inside of the retro pi 4.2 software. It strikes me that there must be something wrong either the control block driver installs, or some pre-requisite install that I am missing. Or perhaps something is getting installed that is interfering and needs to be uninstalled.

[petrockblog]

I have created a RetroPie image version 4.2 with installed ControlBlock driver: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4jtme87fdxgpn19/RetroPie-4.2-withControlBlock.img.7z?dl=0

I tested this with a ControlBlock from the same batch as yours. It is attached to an RPi 3, the Raspberry Pi power supply and an LED and toggle switch attached to the ControlBlock:

[jmhogan0]

Ok, that image works. Thank you. Any chance you can provide the step by step instructions for how you created this image? I followed the steps you have currently online, but they seem to apply to an older version of retropie 3.6. Did you use the menu in 4.2 to install the driver, or the long method you have on your website? I tried following the step by step using both the fresh image of retropie 4.2 and Gamewizard Retropi image of 4.2 several times each and I did not end up with a working system. I also tried using the menu to turn on the driver with both of the other images and that did not work either. It seems evident that you did something differently than I did to effect this install.

[petrockblog]

Glad to hear that things are working now for you.

I started with a fresh image of RetroPie and I would say that I followed the instructions as described at https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2#downloading.

I put a rework of the instructions at http://controlblock.petrockblock.com to my ToDo list, though.

[skcradle]

Hi, I seem to be having the same issues here as well. The power toggle switch I have is only able to power on, however when switched off will shut down Retropie but does not stop power to the Rpi board (indicated by the red LED on the board). Not sure if that has any indication of my main issue.

Also, when running "service --status-all" it produces a "[-]" in front of the control block service, however when checking the status of the control block through "sudo service controlblockservice status" it shows that it is active and running and runs upon boot. This previously did not work but I uninstalled and reinstalled the service and it worked, though upon using the "sudo reboot" command immediately after, it gave me a "stop" response where it counted up to 5 minutes. It shut down, but never booted back up, to which I did manually (again, not sure if this has anything to do with my main issue.).

My main issue is that when I run jstest, the controlblock is detected, however the only thing that registers in it is the toggle switch, which comes up as button 3 and as "on," everything else as "off." I have 4 wires running from joystick microswitches to the block terminals as presented, and which are all daisy-chained together and connected to the left slot of the GND. Unfortunately I can't really test anything since this switch, which controls power to the system, is the only recognizable input. So even if I wanted to test anything the system goes down haha. I am getting no read on any of the joystick buttons and the values in the axes do not change off of 0.

My setup includes a Rpi 3 with a Control Block V2.1, with a switch and LED, an ethernet cable, an attached USB keyboard, hdmi output to a computer monitor, and the power running by the Rpi default power cable to the controlblock. I can attach an image if needed.

Could this be a hardware issue? Driver issue? Should I try from scratch to use the new image file you posted previously?

[skcradle]

Update:
Worka perfectly with that new image file. Been at this for a while so a huge sigh of relief going forward.

[petrockblog]

@skcradle Glad to hear.