buttons making game lag/freeze?

[dicemaster]

Today I solderd up my Tinkerboy controller PCB to my Pi zero, tested it out and it all mostly works.

The issues i'm getting is the start and select buttons don't work at all, when holding either of them down they will just freeze whatever game I'm playing. I also get lag from holding down any of the other buttons, for example just pressing A is fine, but if I hold it down it will make the entire game just lag out and run slower and the sound gets choppy.

I'm not really sure what to do about this, they seem to be well soldered, I doubt it's due to a faulty connection.
I'm using TinkerBoy's custom RetroPie image.

I would also like to know how I can rotate the screen display, I remeber reading about this before and that you needed to change some setting in config files, but I can't find info about this anymore.





Any reply, help and advice is greatly appreaciated,
Thanks!

[rodocop]

Screen rotation is easy, just add this line to the config.txt

display_rotate=2 (if that doesn't work it's rotate_display=2, I can't quite remember)

As for the buttons, check for shorts, maybe those buttons are shorting on nearby GPIO pins? Use a multimeter if you've got one.

The first step i would personally do it reinstall a fresh image (not tinkerboys, and then install retrogame manually and see what happens, you can also try a reflash of tinkerboys script too.)

[dicemaster]

Screen rotation is easy, just add this line to the config.txt

display_rotate=2 (if that doesn't work it's rotate_display=2, I can't quite remember)

As for the buttons, check for shorts, maybe those buttons are shorting on nearby GPIO pins? Use a multimeter if you've got one.

The first step i would personally do it reinstall a fresh image (not tinkerboys, and then install retrogame manually and see what happens, you can also try a reflash of tinkerboys script too.)

Thanks for the reply Rodocop!
I'll double check all my soldering and see if I can use a multimeter.

As for reinstalling an image, if I don't use tinkerboys cutom image, i'll need to configure all the GPIO pins myself, is there a tutotial somehwere to learn how to do this?

Thanks again!

[rodocop]

Sure. Check this out. All you really need to know are the BCM/GPIO numbers of the pins used. (Do not use physical pin numbers). I choose it pigrrl2 option as well.

https://learn.adafruit.com/retro-gaming ... s-software

You could also reach out to tinkerBOY for support as well if you can't get it sorted.

[dicemaster]

So after a lot of testing and changing my whole pin layout on my Controller PCB I have discovered that what was causing my game o freeze was my pwm audio, apparently having buttons that also use pwm pins alongside the pwm audio will cause the game to freeze when pressing buttons.
Some kind of conflict going on between the pwm pins.

I'm not really sure what to do about it, I've tested 2 different layouts that both have this same problem.

[Lpoolm]

i have literally just come on here to read through the threads. I have just finished a build, my first one with a tinkerboy pcb, version 2.0 and I was getting a little slow down when i first tried playing a game, didnt think anything of it as was just checking the buttons work, i also noticed start/select not very responsive just put it down to bad buttons so changed and they seem to have improved a little.
my issue I have now though is i have finished my build, left it on just to check battery and within 5 mins the whole system freezes? Tried several times and does it everytime.
I was hoping it was a bad sd card but tried another card and same issue.
I am also using the supplied image as I am using gpio controls but i have used this many times and never had an issue with that so not sure?

[tinkerBOY]

So after a lot of testing and changing my whole pin layout on my Controller PCB I have discovered that what was causing my game o freeze was my pwm audio, apparently having buttons that also use pwm pins alongside the pwm audio will cause the game to freeze when pressing buttons.
Some kind of conflict going on between the pwm pins.

I'm not really sure what to do about it, I've tested 2 different layouts that both have this same problem.

I thought you said you already know what's causing it? You cannot obviously use the PWM audio pin you configured in config.txt for buttons.

[tinkerBOY]

i have literally just come on here to read through the threads. I have just finished a build, my first one with a tinkerboy pcb, version 2.0 and I was getting a little slow down when i first tried playing a game, didnt think anything of it as was just checking the buttons work, i also noticed start/select not very responsive just put it down to bad buttons so changed and they seem to have improved a little.
my issue I have now though is i have finished my build, left it on just to check battery and within 5 mins the whole system freezes? Tried several times and does it everytime.
I was hoping it was a bad sd card but tried another card and same issue.
I am also using the supplied image as I am using gpio controls but i have used this many times and never had an issue with that so not sure?

In order for the GPIO oriented Adafruit's Retrogame Utility program to work properly there has to be a clean contact between the silicon and contact pads on the board when pressing a button. I can even easily simulate a slow down with a clean contacts when playing a game just by semi/half pressing a button. Cleaning the contact pads with an eraser or cotton/cloth will help it a lot. Otherwise check your wiring maybe some of button wires are shoring to GND.

[dicemaster]

I thought you said you already know what's causing it? You cannot obviously use the PWM audio pin you configured in config.txt for buttons.

Well I have now tested it by removing all the PWM pins connected to buttons and only having PWM pins connected to audio.
And I'm still having these freezing issues, I have also tried cleaning the contacts and doesn't seem to have helped in any way.

Some buttons weirdly work fine, pressing the left button which is connected to GPIO pin 4 works great!
But pressing up connected to GPIO 16 or down connected to GPIO 26 will completely freeze the game and audio.

[dicemaster]

==SOLVED==
The issue was cause by bad silicone pads, simply replacing my silicone pads that come in contact with the contact pads on the board fixed my issue, my games no longer freeze when pressing buttons.

Special thanks to TinkerBoy for taking his time in helping me fix this issue.

I'm still really suprised that this was the issue, it seems that the slicone pads that I was using didn't conduct properly.
I was expecting it to be a more complicated issue.