RPi2 / Bluetooth / PS3 endless issues!

[dannysmith43]

Hello,

I recently decided to pick up a Pi with the sole purpose of the running this fine emulation software, it looks great in Youtube videos when it’s working.
My dream was to run the Pi2 behind my bedroom TV, use my PS3 pad via bluetooth and enjoy some bedroom retro goodness, alas it is not to be!

I’ve re-imaged several times attempting to get this working. Each time I expand the filesystem, enable SSH and run the apt-get update / upgrade commands.

I have an original Dualshock 3 PS3 pad and a CSR 8510 A10 bluetooth dongle. I have managed to get the two talking to eachother and paired up. After a reboot, the dongle doesn’t want to talk to the pad (strangely enough, SSH stops working too). When the pad is paired to the dongle, I’ve tested it via jstest and it’s like buttons are being constantly pressed, it just goes crazy. I’ve tried setting it when booting into Retroarch and Emulationstation, it seems to start off ok, then as I’m entering the buttons, it loses it’s shit and spams axis commands.

I’ve followed a couple of written guides and Youtube videos, I’m doing exactly what everyone else does but it just doesn’t seem to work for me. Has the combination of RPi2 / 2.6 / PS3 pad been successful for most people? Most guides/videos are older models/versions. I’ve tried another PS3 pad, does exactly the same thing.

What started out as a fun idea is slowly grinding me down! Any suggestions would be magical :)

[mirage]

Here is what I do to get mine setup:

[mirage]

Here is what I do to get mine setup:

[gizmo98]

You could help test the updated PS3 controller driver module. Update RetroPie-Setup and select “PS3 driver install”.

After installation you can plug in your controller every time. Pairing will be done automatically. No manual six pair and so on.

In emulationstation press F4 at least two times to reach command line.
type:
cd RetroPie-Setup
sudo git pull
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh ps3controller

Ok. As written above your controller will be paired if there is a bluetooth dongle and a ps3 controller connected. It is necessary “atm” to run retroarchinput for every ps3 controller because sixad adds the mac address of every ps3 controller to the device name. Retroarch does not know these device names and VID/PID detection seems to be not broken. Had no time to evaluate why retroarch does not use given VID/PIDs.

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh retroarchinput

After reboot your controller should always connect.

[dannysmith43]

Thanks guys, I’ll give your suggestions a go! I’d like to use my PS3 pad but since reading this forum, I’ve seen that it’s possible to use a 2.4Ghz wireless gamepad so I have a backup plan at least.

Thanks for your time.

[dannysmith43]

[quote=94473]You could help test the updated PS3 controller driver module. Update RetroPie-Setup and select “PS3 driver install”.

After installation you can plug in your controller every time. Pairing will be done automatically. No manual six pair and so on.

In emulationstation press F4 at least two times to reach command line.
type:
cd RetroPie-Setup
sudo git pull
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh ps3controller

Ok. As written above your controller will be paired if there is a bluetooth dongle and a ps3 controller connected. It is necessary “atm” to run retroarchinput for every ps3 controller because sixad adds the mac address of every ps3 controller to the device name. Retroarch does not know these device names and VID/PID detection seems to be not broken. Had no time to evaluate why retroarch does not use given VID/PIDs.

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh retroarchinput

After reboot your controller should always connect.
[/quote]

I managed to give this a try today, it seems to work better in terms of it pairs after each boot of the Pi, which is great. Unfortunately I still get the problem with the controller not registering correctly. This seems to happen in Retroarch, Emulationstation and using jstest. I think it’s the analogue that goes crazy, it randomly registers phantom movements before I can set my own key. I’m using a standard dual shock ps3 controller (CECHZC2J), barely customised version of Retropie and the “standard” bluetooth dongle (CSR 8510 A10). I can’t believe that I’m the only person having this problem with a ps3 pad?!

[danrbball]

I had the same issues. The PS3 controller worked perfectly on a RPI2 retropie 2.6 using a wireless connection, but registers random button presses in 3.0 beta. I have not found a resolution and have switched to using a Xbox controller. I’m hoping it’ll be fixed when the final version is released.

[n-marek]

Same thing here. Kind of given up on Bluetooth now. :( So now the only problem I have is that the analogue sticks don’t work (mainly for the PSX emulator).
I wish there was some kind of ‘mapper’ as is for DOSBox.
Can anyone help with the analogue please? If it works for you, please give me the full retroarch.cfg file – in past I had some suggestions like add this and that to the file, but never worked.
Thanks!
And with the BT, maybe the next update will make it work again. For me, it works only randomly like 1 time out of 50.

(RPie2)

[gizmo98]

Ok. I think i know what you all mean. We have autoconfig files for ps3 controllers. These files do not work with sixad “out of the box” because sixad modifies the controller name. Retroarch can only test vendor id and product id for usb devices. So it is necessary to register every bluetooth paired ps3 controller. You could also copy vanilla ps3 controller autoconfig file and add your ps3 controller name.
I try to get vid pid detection fixed for bluetooth devices.

[gizmo98]

@all
Could you retry this again? I modified sixad source code. register controller shouldn’t be necessary anymore.

[dannysmith43]

Thanks for the replies on this, I’m only using 2.6 so it was a different issue. Found out the what the problem was last night…POWER! The 2A Samsung Note 4 charger was fine but the cable I was using (not the original Note 4 one) was not! Soon as I swapped over the cable, stable bluetooth PS3 goodness.
I need to rebuild it from scratch tonight as SSH is constantly up and down, which is driving me nuts but I’ve tried so many tweaks to get the pad working, I’ll probably screwed something else.

Thanks again!

[mccarthy]

I’ve tried RecalBox lately. The PS3 controller works like a charm with it. It’s a very nice approach, but the system is kind of close, you can’t modify much like in the retropie distro, so I came back to it.
When you connect a PS3 controller with RecalBox you only have to wait about 5secs and disconnect the usb cable. After that you are able to connect the controller with ease every time.

[gizmo98]

With the next retropie release you should see the same behaviour.

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