Hep requiired with Piborg's new £12 games controller

Submitted by Laurence Molloy on Fri, 10/19/2018 - 19:14

Forums:

Hi Folks,

My first forum post...

I cannot seem to get Piborg's new £12 games controller to work with anything?

Controller is switched on (via power switch on bottom) and home button has been pressed many times - controller goes between fast and slower LED flashing modes (two red LEDs).

1. Windows & Raspbian laptops' bluetooth scanning does not pick it up with dongle plugged in and controller 'synched' with home many times over.
2. Ditto with Android mobile phones & tablets using micro-full usb adapter.

Followed Piborg's getting started instructions for both normal & PS3 controllers.

PS3 instructions: got as far as compiling and running sixpair. Not output to trerminal upon running.
Std instructions: jstest fails because there is no /dev/input/js0 device file

Have I got a dud controller or am I missing a magic incantation or two to wake it up?

@piborg on Twitter has guided me here and suggested that I talk to Arron about this. However, if you have got one of these and have got it working, I'd be very interested to hear what you did to get it working.

Cheers
Laurence

piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 10/22/2018 - 17:25

I have just tried this with a fresh controller on Windows 7 and my guess is that your dongle is probably not working.

This is the sequence when i tested it:

  1. After plugging the dongle in it installed drivers and I have "PC/PS3/Android" entry in Devices and Printers
  2. After turning on the controller it flashes two LEDs while syncing
  3. Once synced the controller switches to a single constant LED
  4. The "PC/PS3/Android" is still there at this point
  5. If I right click on the device, select game controller settings, then press properties I get a dialog which responds to the buttons
  6. Pressing HOME changes to two constant LEDs and the analog sticks now function fully

If after plugging the dongle in on Windows you are not seeing a gamepad icon in Devices and Printers then it is probably a faulty dongle which needs replacing. I have attached what I see with the dongle plugged in on my machine for reference.

Images: 

Laurence Molloy

Sat, 11/10/2018 - 12:05

Hi

Sorry I didn't get back in touch sooner.
We only have a Windows 8.1 here but we've plugged the usb dongle in and there's no driver download activity. We've found the game controller dialog that you have shown is and it is empty for us.
Also... the "advanced" button gives us a dropdown list of preferred game controller options that is also empty
- it only contains the item "(none)".

What now?...

Thanks
Laurence

piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 11/12/2018 - 17:06

I am fairly certain the USB dongle is faulty given your description.

If you can send us a message using our contact form with your order number we will send you out a replacement :)

Laurence Molloy

Sun, 11/25/2018 - 15:09

Thanks.

I've put the support request in just now.

FYI (provided in email as well)
Order number is 240866
Made in the name of Arul Krishna Moorthy

Laurence

Laurence Molloy

Sun, 12/02/2018 - 22:33

Hi

Just a quick note to say thanks very much for the replacement games controller. Everything is working just grand now, both at the jstest level and with the example monsterJoy.py script.

FYI... I've tested the original controller with the new controller's usb dongle and can report that that also works. As suspected, it's just a dongle failure.

Best Regards
Laurence

willpearson

Mon, 01/03/2022 - 14:44

Hey Laurence - have you tried using this controller with the approxeng library? I bought one a couple of years ago but still can't get it to work in this way. It shows up in jstest and in approxeng_input_list_devices but not in approxeng_input_show_controls.

I wanted to use approxeng as lots of people seem to use it for piwars etc. But I'm closing to giving up on that and trying the piborg options instead...haven't really explored them yet.

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