PS3 Sixaxis Controller - some weird issues.

diogenes

Hi, all. I just installed Batocera on an old laptop. Loving it so far, just having some weird issues with my PS3 controller.

Before anything else I should say that, this controller doesn’t have any of these issues when using it with my Retropie (rpi 2b) setup.

My first issue is that, while using the bluez (default) driver, the controller will shut off randomly. I’m not sure if it’s an issue with a power-saving feature, but it happens while playing games. I always have battery remaining as well.

I wondered if switching to the official driver might help the issue, since the official (called ‘sixaxis’) driver in Retropie works without issue. This brings me to my second issue, which is that I can’t connect the controller after having switched to the official driver in batocera.conf and rebooting.

I have also not tried the shanwan diver yet, but maybe that would be worth a shot. As long as I can use it without having it turn off randomly.

Anybody have any suggestions or have luck pairing with the official driver? Thanks in advance!

joinski

diogenes

Which architecture (PC, RPi?) and which Batocera version are you on?
Is it a genuine/original Sony Sixaxis Controller? The one without rumble (so no Dual Shock 3, only Sixaxis)? Or a clone/fake one?
Can it be, that the shut offs happen every time after the same amount of time or are they completely random? So sometimes after e.g. 5 minutes and sometimes after 10 or 20 minutes for example?
The current version 36 has an issue regarding reconnecting PS3 controllers, see: https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux/issues/8196
Hopefully the devs will fix this soon. Until that i would suggest to downgrade to v35 (see wiki on how to downgrade manually: https://wiki.batocera.org/upgrade_manually)

diogenes

joinski

Hi, thanks for the reply! Sorry it’s taken me this long to respond. I haven’t been able to tinker with it until the last day or so.

To answer your questions:

I’m on an old Laptop (Dell Inspiron 11 3148) that was originally on v35, but had upgraded to v36
The controller is genuine, I believe, unless it’s a very good clone. I’ve checked it against reference pics online and opened it up. Do clones show up as “PLAYSTATION® 3 Controller” when connected and work with the official driver?
I was never able to time it to see if it shuts off at a regular interval.

I am able to replicate the reconnecting issue, but I think it might be unrelated to the controller shutting off.

I did change one variable, and it may have solved the issue, because I played an hour or so last night and it didn’t turn off at all. I switched out the stock internal wifi/bluetooth (broadcom 43142) card for an Intel AX200. Since the broadcom chip has terrible linux compatibility, I had been using separate wifi and bluetooth usb dongles. Bluetooth was a TP-Link UB400.

Not sure why exactly this would work and I’ll only know if this solved my issue if I play some more. I’ll check back with an update though.

One thing: I still wasn’t able to get the official driver working under Batocera. It does work under Retropie, but I’m not set on it as long as the controller isn’t shutting off mid-game.

Thanks again for your help and to the devs for doing such an amazing job with this distro. Cheers!