This is a question about the Player X Usb board, as seen here:
Currently, I am unable to get my board to be recognised as a USB device when I plug it into either my Pi 3B+ or my Windows 10 PC. When plugged in, the integrated LED does light up, but that’s the only output I’ve managed to get from it.
My understanding was that the Player X USB is supposed to be a plug-and-play device. Do I need to install any drivers in order to get it to work?
On my Pi, I am not using the full size Picade X hat and thus do not have any Picade scripts installed; I purchased the Player X USB specifically to put together a transferrable control pad. I do have installed Raspbian with Retropie - neither front-end detected the Player X when it was plugged in.
Other USB input devices, such as keyboards and a replica SNES joypad have been detected by the Pi without issue.
I am unfortunately coming to the conclusion that my Player X USB board is kaput. Maybe it came broken or I managed to damage it when wiring up buttons to it (I just used generic tactile push switches for my prototype).
Pictured: my input setup for the Player X USB prior to wiring.
Before I declare it dead, do you have any suggestions for further debugging steps I could take with it?
And an ancillary question: does there exist a wiring diagram for the board? I’m sure that it’s self obvious, but my difficulties have left me second-guessing myself. I assumed that although the joystick has a shared ground, the other buttons should all have their own individual grounds, which is why these buttons have double-layer female headers installed.
It should work as a USB HID Device. Make sure the USB Cable your using is Data and Power and not just a Power cable.
1 Like
@alphanumeric Ah, you hit the nail on the head - it was the USB cable causing the issue!
Much to my embarrassment, I didn’t think to swap that part out. I never knew that some USB cables are only able to transfer power, so that’s actually really useful to know for the future! 😅
Thank you so much for your help!
For the benefit of future readers: once I had an appropriate cable, the device was identified in Windows 10 as a Picade USB controller in the devices window. It didn’t require any buttons to actually be wired up for it to be recognised, though you obviously couldn’t do anything with it in that state.
You can indeed wire up a d-pad like input to the joystick input by sharing the ground wire between each button. I’ll update this thread later on when I’ve tested it in a game to see how that actually works in practice.
I also tested out one of the generic buttons by wiring its two ends into the two female headers above the label. That worked as a button input, so the circuit is as simple as it originally appeared.
I was hoping it would be something simple like the wrong cable. Now it’s game on ,lol.
1 Like
Pinouts for the Hats etc are here.
Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout
It’s stuff that plugs into a Pi’s GPIO header. The Player X doesn’t do that which is likely why its not listed. It all goes via the USB port.
As you found out, most of the time with stuff like this the buttons / switches all share a common ground, and just ground a pin when pressed. Normally open, momentary contact switches. I used a bunch of the mini arcade buttons with my pHat Beat for volume up down etc. Made life easier with the bigger buttons.
1 Like
Ooh, thanks for that resource, I imagine that could be very useful in the future!
To give an update on my input prototype: basically it just works as expected. Happy to report that the labels on the board are very self explanatory.
I’ve noticed that my dpad might be dropping inputs - I don’t know if this this because the intended input (arcade sticks) aren’t supposed to have multiple circuits closed simultaneously, or it’s just my awkward little tactile switches. Hopefully it works better when I wire up my proper buttons.
Pictured: Using the Player X USB as an 8-button controller.
Again, thanks for the help, alphanumeric!
