How to test joystick and buttons for faulty wiring or bad connection - Retropie

[tfphumorblog]

Hi everyone,

I just built my first cabinet using Zippyy joysticks and led chrome buttons. My joystick and button control interface is the Mini-Pac with harness. Emulation Station recognizes the Mini-Pac, but when I use the GUI button assignment it won't accept D-Pad right for some reason (on either player one or two). It will take D-Pad up, down, and left. Also, a few of the buttons I can't assign either. For example, I can assign start but not select. I can't figure out if this means my joystick right switch is funky (or funky button wiring) or if this is an Emulation Station issue.

I know that I can manually configure via retroarch, but I don't know the actual button/joystick variables per switch. If I try a jstest js0, it shows all the switches but when I tap buttons, move joystick, nothing is affected on-screen. I'm wondering if I have a sticky button or bad wiring on one of the switches.

Any suggestions on how to test each switch in real time to determine if it's registering a click effectively? Also, I would like to know the variable of each click so I can program that into retroarch config.

This is my first build and I wouldn't be surprised if I knocked a wire loose along the way. All the LEDs light up, so I know that part is correct, but those aren't related to the actual switch functionality. I just don't know how to find the bad switch.

I have the Windows software to program the Mini-Pac, but I don't think it allows for "push a switch and we'll tell you the keyboard assignment" - I was hoping that functionality exists on the Pi either via command line or GUI.

I'm running the most recent binary install of Retropie on a Pi 3 attached to a Mini-Pac.

Thanks for reading this long post. I appreciate it!

D.J.

[Malenko]

swap the lead between a working switch and a non working switch, and see if input starts working.  This is almost always a ground issue.

[JDFan]

For a keyboard emulator there are testing programs online ( like key test - http://en.key-test.ru/ ) that you can use to see what key is being pressed when the button is pressed.

[DeLuSioNal29]

Also, test it for continuity for each wire by using a multimeter.

DeL