[guide] kitsch-bent i2c board without a teensy

[vizigr0u]

Hey guys,
I recently acquired my input board from kitsch-bent, i2c version.
I finally got this to work and now I hope this guide can help anyone that wanted to use this board !

Foreword:
Maybe I should have looked at these threads before buying.
As my first DIY/electronics project, this board wasn't the easiest to figure out
My choice for this board was because I didn't want to use the gameboy main board but still felt like the project wouldn't be as fun if I bought one of the board that already have everything pre-built in them (USB hub, teensy etc.).
I also wanted to experiment with buttons straight on the raspberry pi so this board looked perfect for just this!

A few obstacles were on the way, including the mk_arcade_joystick_rpi driver that has had a bug for almost a year now, which basically ignored the MCP23017...
I'm a programmer and I had a lot of fun writing a python program to test i2c communication with my board, remapping the keys in the driver and finally debugging and fixing the MCP23017 bug. Now to the guide!

The Guide:

Prerequisite:
a shell to your raspberry pi with root/sudo rights (follow this tutorial to enable ssh)

Wiring the board
Connect each pin to your raspberry pi (I'm using 3.3V as Vcin because it's closer but you can use 5V).
MAKE SURE YOUR WIRING IS CORRECT BEFORE TURNING ON THE RASPBERRY PI


Connect to your board:
Enable i2c and install everything needed (I followed this adafruit tutorial)
If your board is properly connected, you should see it on "port" 20

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sudo i2cdetect -y 1

Test your buttons:
I made this python script to figure out the button key codes on the board. You can use it to make sure all your buttons are working before you try installing a driver for the board.

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wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/vizigr0u/5308bef88934967b687ca6921846f49b/raw/72aef1d19d47280b646ae63538d6c982e3046f62/i2ctest.py
python i2ctest.py
 

pressing buttons should display them on your console. (press CTRL+C to quit)

Install an input driver:
Unfortunately, as the time of writing, the mk_arcade_joystick_rpi driver has a bug for MCP23017. It also doesn't have the right mapping for the Kitsch-Bent board.

So I went ahead and forked that repo and made a version that both fixes the bug and uses the Kitsch-Bent inputs here.
(appologies to kitsch-bent, at the time of coding I was certain your name was Kitsch Bench )
I also compiled it and uploaded a debian package to my github.

Anyway, to install a version of my driver on your raspberry pi:

Method A (easy and untested) :

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wget https://github.com/vizigr0u/mk_arcade_joystick_rpi/releases/download/v0.1.5b-0-1/mk-arcade-joystick-rpi-0.1.5.deb
sudo dpkg -i mk-arcade-joystick-rpi-0.1.5.deb

Method B:
compiling from source :

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git clone https://github.com/vizigr0u/mk_arcade_joystick_rpi.git
cd mk_arcade_joystick_rpi
git checkout git checkout kitsch-bench-board
make
sh utils/makepackage.sh 0.1.5
sudo dpkg -i build/mk-arcade-joystick-rpi-0.1.5.deb

Please note that if a method doesn't work and you try the other one, you should probably try to uninstall the driver first :

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sudo dpkg -r mk-arcade-joystick-rpi-dkms

(by the way, I have no idea why the name keeps changing between the package the .deb and the module, but I guess it's related to some configuration somewhere...)

Testing the driver (final step!) :

Let's start the module, then test it!

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sudo modprobe mk_arcade_joystick_rpi map=0x20
jstest /dev/input/js0

If it looks like it's working, congratulations, you can now enable the module to start at boot !
Add mk_arcade_joystick_rpi to your /etc/modules file

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echo mk_arcade_joystick_rpi | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

and don't forget to give the modules its parameter, by adding a conf file in /etc/modprobe.d/ :

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echo options mk_arcade_joystick_rpi map=0x20 | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/mk_arcade_joystick_rpi.conf

[Helder]

Awesome! many people who bought this board have had trouble getting it setup and this guide will fix that. I will move it to the appropriate subforum.

[abrugsch]

there's a new driver on the block too, adafruit's arcade bonnet now uses an MCP23017 for the hardware interface so their retrogame service now caters for it.

[stewbacca]

I want to start by giving huge thanks to vizigr0u for doing this tutorial, I purchased two of these i2c based kitsch-bent boards, however I'm running into an issue. I've enabled i2c and teh i2ctest.py scripts works perfectly as far as the button presses go, but once I install the driver, either method, the x, y, start, and select buttons don't work at all. I noticed that it seems to identify the board as a 2 axis 8 button joystick, but the d-pad seems to show up under the buttons when the driver is loaded and the a and b buttons are registering as axis 1. I'm using a raspberry pi zero ver 1.3 and I've enabled the pwm audio overlay, otherwise it's a basic install of RetroPi 4.2 Any assistance would be appreciated.

UPDATE: I found that if I ran the install script with the update options on the mk_arcade_joystick_rpi driver install, then followed these instructions it works perfectly. In case anyone else runs into the same issue.