Anyone running an IPAC and controllers?

[deezdrama]

I recentlly rebuilt my cab with a new win10 based pc, and added 2 led64's and rgb buttons.

In this cab before I had the same ipac4 and same controllers using win7 and an older retroarch version and everything worked fine. I mapped the arcade controls from the ipac4 in retroarch and my wireless xbox 360 controllers would autoconfig and I could use either or with no issues.


Now i got my cab done and spent a week trying to get retroarch controlls working.

If my ipac4 is plugged in then my controllers are rendered useless nomatter what I try.
The controllers are set as xinput, they are recognized and auto configure but wont work.
Ive manually mapped them but wont work. Ive set to dinput and mapped....wont work.
Ive mapped them in the cores and set core over ride .... Wont work.

As soon as i unplug my ipac4 then the controllers work just fine.
I uninstalled winipac utility and reinstalled and it indeed is in keyboard mode.

It just doesnt make any sense when this all worked before.

I thought maybe my retroarch cfg was messed up socompared it to a fresh one, even installed retroarch fresh on another drive and installed just a single core to test......same issue.

I been loosing my mind at this for a week....any ideas?   


Update.....

I just a minute ago tried switching controller input driver from xinput to dinput (neither worked) but when I switched it to sdl2 it made my ipac4 give an error message that it wasnt detected or configured and said falling to backup.... But the controller and arcade controls both worked! It seems like the ipac4 is taking priority from the controllers but cant get controllers to take input slots 1 and 2 unless i do this driver switch

So thats a step in the right direction!
Still messing with the input drivers.

Id be happy with it like that if i could keep the error messages from popping up from bottom left of screen.


Also i have the wireless dongle for the controllers plugged into a usb powered hub with the mouse and kb.... Could that be an issue?




Update 2........
I plugged the wireless transceiver dongle directly into motherboard....no change there.


The problem I believe is that the ipac is taking priority over the controllers.
If I could get the controllers to populate input ports 1 and 2 then everything would be fine.

By switching to sdl2 controller driver it forces the ipac to give an error for long enough for the controllers to move to input slots 1 and 2, then the ipac loads fallback config but stays in ports 3 and 4.

[deezdrama]

Well... I tried plugging the controllers wireless dongle into the motherboard and unplugging the ipac4 and rebooting computer hoping it would give some kind of priority to the controllers, then started retroarch and configured ports 1 and 2 with the controllers. turned of auto config inputs and then plugged in the ipac4 and the ipac still took priority.

Keeping the input driver on dinput and setting the controllers input driver to sdl2 ended up giving priority to the controllers finally and sofar they been staying that way.

I do get these weird input notifications when loading each game....
Device disconnected from port1 sdl2
Device disconnected from port2 sdl2
Device disconnected from port3 sdl2
Device disconnected from port4 sdl2

but.... my controllers and arcade controls are finally both working in retroarch.

If anyone knows another way to force controllers to take priority without changing driver or how to disable the input notifications on every game start with the sdl2 driver please let me know....thanks!

[deezdrama]

I find it hard to believe noone else is running controllers in tandem with their arcade controls.

Im curious to know if anyone elses setup ran retroarch without issues using controllers in xinput mode with an ipac2 or ipac4.
It just wouldnt work for me and the fix was to set joypad driver to sdl2 like stated above.

Sadly i have probably 20-30 cores running in retroarch and use different commands,shaders,run ahead etc for different systems so needs to use core specific cfg files for most cores so I manually have to open each cfg file and paste my control bindings and change driver to sdl2.... But in the several cores ive tested its working out sofar.

Ive also got mame running my arcade controls in tandem with the wireless controllers. It gave me some issues as the default cfg file (where your keybinds are saved) kept being rewritten everytime my controllers were off and i would loose all my controller bindings. I had to launch mame exe and map control panel controls and controllers then save and then changed the security settings of default.cfg to read only.

I plan to hopefully get every emulator running with controllers and the arcade controls except for newer gen stuff where it wouldnt make sense to run on the control panel. Ill keep this thread updated incase I need to know what the hell I did in the future or for anyone else having similar issues.

[Roboman]

I'm running tethered Xbox360 controller in tandem with buttons and a joy on ipac in Retroarch, under Win 10.
Not by design, but more by accident as the controller is mapped to the same keyboard strokes as my buttons.
I had an issue with the controller not being recognised after rebooting.
I solved it by plugging it into a powered-usb socket.
Since then it's always being recognised.
I never had any problems with mapping controls though.
 

[deezdrama]

I'm running tethered Xbox360 controller in tandem with buttons and a joy on ipac in Retroarch, under Win 10.
Not by design, but more by accident as the controller is mapped to the same keyboard strokes as my buttons.
I had an issue with the controller not being recognised after rebooting.
I solved it by plugging it into a powered-usb socket.
Since then it's always being recognised.
I never had any problems with mapping controls though.

Thanks for replying!
Do your controllers autoconfig and just worked or did you have to map manually?
When you load a game through retroarch does your controllers pop up first as configured in ports 1 and 2?


I started with my wireless controller dongle on a powered usb hub and moved them because of the issues. Even tried a different wireless dongle and 2 different controllers. 
Ugggg super frustrating.

[Roboman]

Find attached screenshots of my RetroArch input settings.
I think 1 is Xbox controller, 2 is Ultrastick and 3 is the Amtrak gun.
In general I found Retroarch a monumental pain in the arse to configure.
Of all the emulators (and I have loads) it was the most difficult to setup.

[deezdrama]

Find attached screenshots of my RetroArch input settings.
I think 1 is Xbox controller, 2 is Ultrastick and 3 is the Amtrak gun.
In general I found Retroarch a monumental pain in the arse to configure.
Of all the emulators (and I have loads) it was the most difficult to setup.

Ive tried everything, I got things working by setting controller driver to sdl2 which I shouldnt have to do... it should work fine with xinput as it does in MAME.
But switching it to sdl2 made the ipac have a momentary error letting the controllers take priority then the ipac would load fallback config and all would work as expected.

I didnt like seeing all these error messages everytime I loaded a game so decided to just start fresh on my ssd.

Ive tried every combination of drivers for keyboard/ipac and controllers

Ive re-installed retroarch a dozen times trying to configure with ipac connected only at first- then when connecting controllers- they didnt work...

Tried re-installing with only controllers and they worked fine but as soon as I plugged in ipac ... neither the ipac or controllers would work

Ive saved control profiles, deleted profiles, deleted configs, edited configs, changed input ID index with every combination possible,....

I just give up at this point. Its rediculous. Every other standalone emulator and mame have no issues whatsoever. I jumped on github/ libretro/retroarch and just reported it as a bug..... maybe a dev will read it and know something. I dont know at this point. I cant even get the hack workaround trick to work again.

[deezdrama]

So finally after countless hours of trial and error i got things setup and working. The problem was everyone and every guide out there says to map ipac and controllers to different ports which did not work.
Also xinput did not work.
I had to piggyback ipac keybinds and controller button binds to the same port much like in mame.
But i could never do this before because the default backup key binds were there.
I did end up going through the retroarch.cfg file and setting all player1 binds to "nul" after turning off autoconfig controls.
Then in retroarch i set controller drivers to sdl2 and quit to save.
Back in retroarch/settings/input/ port 1 inputs i mapped my wireless 360 pad as retropad with analog, and index was "xinput controller" after mapping controller buttons i remaped with my arcade control buttons(ipac4) key binds, this left 2 sets of binds per port.
I left it set as xinput controller and both the controller and the arcade ipac controls work simultaneously now like they should.

What i nightmare. Every article and video and suggestion I read pointed at needing 4 ports set up when they just needed piggybacked in each port, but with sdl2 drivers and deleting default keybinds which can only be done in the cfg file

[IntegrumRetro]

So I'm running an IPAC 4 with four player and 2 8BitDuo wireless controllers with 30+ Retroarch cores without issue. Meaning, I can use my native joysticks for all games connected to the iPAC and then I to go into the Quick settings in Retroarch while in game to switch input to the wireless controller when I want to go wireless.

What firmware version are you running on your iPAC and which input mode do you have it configured for?