USB | Intensive Gaming Diary

You Don’t Want to Use a Generic Controller

Posted on October 30, 2021January 11, 2022 by Viljami

So I encountered a slight issue with my generic controller for Xbox 360. I first bought this gaming console from a friend of mine. It was a good deal. I got the regular game pad with it. As I got to know the system a bit more I discovered that it would require a battery or a cable so that I wouldn’t have to change the alkaline batteries all the time. I am not a big fan, as I wrote earlier to this blog, of AA batteries.

My solution to this slight issue was to buy a generic controller. It was cheap. It was like twenty euros or so. It played nicely for some time. It wasn’t that awful when playing driving games like Project Gotham Racing 4 or Forza Motorsport. As I was thinking about to play a FPS called Crysis 2 I encountered and totally understood the problem I had. This generic game pad wouldn’t be a solution for me as I would need a better, a sharper, controller for my Xbox 360.

It was a pain to try to aim and move efficiently while playing Crysis 2. Where I think the controller performed the most poorly was at moving the sight. The left thumb stick of this controller just isn’t accurate and sharp enough. I was very lucky although. When I first bought the console it came with a controller. This game pad was the original that was delivered with the system in the first place when the console was bought as a new. I just had to buy a USB cable for the controller or else I would have to buy some AA batteries for it and keep changing them every time they would get consumed.

I bought a cable. I actually bought one nice game also so I wouldn’t make just an order of only twenty euros. I was happy. I had finally the cable that I needed. Then I figured that the cable was actually a charging cable. Well alright then. Its length was only about two meters. That’s not a good cable for powering a game pad. So what I actually had to do was to buy an extender cable. So it got a bit messy but I finally managed to plug the controller to my Xbox 360.

I think playing FPS games with a cheap, generic, controller on Xbox 360 or maybe even on your PC is something that a real gaming enthusiast wouldn’t do. Some people like to play these shooting games with a mouse and a keyboard. And you have to say it has its advantages. I like to casually play first person shooters with a controller but when I do I prefer a good quality controller that doesn’t require me to change the batteries all the time and maybe even consume the natural resources with these kinds of actions. So save your money and buy these controllers as wisely as you can. That is all for now my dear readers. Til the next time!

Gaming with Raspberry Pi

Posted on August 13, 2021January 11, 2022 by Viljami

So I have this old Raspberry Pi 1 that I got back in about 2011. While it has many uses I haven’t utilized it in a while. What makes this interesting for the readers of this blog is that it can be used for retro gaming. While it is not able to run decently games that have 3D graphics it is perfectly good for playing retro video games like SNES games to give an example. Newer Raspberry Pis are capable of running some more advanced games that have 3D graphics. It is also not a bad choice to pick up a NVIDIA Shield if you are interested in emulated retro gaming and you want to be able to run games with 3D graphics. Shield can even run some Sega Dreamcast with Sony PlayStation games. If you want to be able to run PS2 games I think this is not, at least yet, your way to go.

So we have this Raspberry Pi 1. It has many ways that you can connect different equipment to it. It has two slots for USB. The connections are white which tells us that they are of type USB 2.0. This doesn’t affect us so much. The connections could be colored blue that only tells that they would be a bit more advanced and more effective in transmitting data through them. But for a USB controller or even Bluetooth dongle would work with USB 2.0s just fine. You can even expand these USB slots with an USB hub. It can provide you more USB slots.

If you don’t want to sacrifice one USB slot for Wi-Fi dongle you can connect your Raspberry Pi to your network and internet with an Ethernet connection. There’s no Wi-Fi built in the first Raspberry Pi but some newer models also have this feature included. So you might want to consider buying for example Raspberry Pi 4 instead of the first release. The first release also only supports SD memory card up to 32 GB. While this is just enough to support playing retro games, it might be too small for some uses. There is HDMI connection which delivers the sound and the picture from the computer to the display. There’s also a slot for video output and a small slot, actually a mini-plug connection, for audio output. Raspberry Pi also needs a power input that is provided with 5V micro USB connection. You can probably use your old smart phone’s cable for this, that is you have one available.

You get that Raspberry Pi needs a memory card and a power cable to work. You will also need a keyboard, maybe even a mouse, a cable for Ethernet and an HDMI cable. That’s just for setting up. You have to install yourself a good operating system. For gaming I would go with RetroPie or Lakka OS.

Here’s some links:

https://retropie.org.uk/ and https://www.lakka.tv/

There are many ways that you can get the image file to your memory card. You can probably read some deeper instructions from those links that are above this text. It depends on your host operating system but I know that you are able to make the installation with Windows and Linux PCs.

After getting the software installed you need to fiddle around a bit with the settings. You can usually just connect your game pad and configure the controls. After that you only need to use the Raspberry Pi with your controller. You need to transfer the roms to your device also. This can be done in several ways. You can for example transfer them to USB stick or you can transfer them from your local network. I am not getting to this since this blog post is not actually a tutorial. I am only discussing about the possibilities and I am trying to give you a clear picture for what it is like to get your old, dusted, Raspberry Pi to work for you as a gaming device.

I really think that this is all about this subject. You can run your SNES, NES, Mega Drive/Genesis, Master System, DOS and Atari 2600 games like this (just to mention some of the most popular systems). I would recommend for your game pad Logitech’s or a USB SNES pad although there are plenty of possibilities. Some controllers might not work so don’t try to plug your PS4 controller in as it won’t probably work and would need some fiddling.

Getting your old PS3 racing wheel and pedals to work with PS4

Posted on April 20, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

I had an issue with my old Logitech G27 racing wheel and pedals. I couldn’t get them to work on my PS4. Originally G27 works with PS3 and PC. I was a bit sad as I thought I’d have to spend hundreds of euros to buy a new product. It didn’t make any sense to me. I was glad to find a solution to my problem.

And the solution was simple. I found a company called Brook. It had a “Super Converter”. It actually had many kinds of converters, but I was interested in this PS3-to-PS4 functionality. It was hard to find, but finally I managed to succeed in my search. I found the piece needed and made my order.

This product is actually called, or named or whatever, Brook Game Controller Super Converter. Its main function is to transform any PS3 controllers, joysticks or steering wheels output to match PS4s. Don’t ask me so much about the technological side of this issue. Though I can tell you that I had to update this devices firmware to the latest. You can find this software from Brooks website. Basically you just plug the converter to a PC and run the update process. Once that is trough you can just plug the thing to your PS4 and plug your PS3 device to the USB block. So it’s easy to use and even more eaasier if you have some tecnical experience with PC and embedded software installations.

This product works nice. And it wasn’t so badly priced if the other option would be to buy a new steering wheel. Since my G27 is in great conditon, working nice and I’m very satisfied with it, I’m not going to buy a new one. There seems to be some problems with consoles not being compatible with each other. This is understandable when considering Xbox and PlayStation but I can’t understand why it isn’t possible to play PS4 with my PS3 controller or steering wheel. As we have seen USB devices being compatible I don’t understand the reason why Sony would want its users to not be able to do this. That would make gamers happier and maybe make their life a little easier. Money might be the reason. I had to pay about 80 € for this converter. But now I’m happy and able to play Dirt Rally 1 and 2.0 and maybe even pursue a career as eSports driver. Everything seems to be possible!

All in all this situation is not nice. You have a device that’s not working right. You do have a solution for this. You just have to pay some very clever electronics and/or software engineer working at Brook some money-money to clear this issue. It would be nice to have some standards, but you’ll find your way to solve this issue. And I’m glad to bring this answer to you and write a post to this blog.