Kodi Community Forum

Hi guys

I bought and built an Adafruit PiGRRL2. This emulator enclosure runs a retropie 4.0 beta2 over a raspbian Jessie. I actually took retropie latest image.

Code:
pi@retropie ~ $ uname -a

Linux retropie 4.4.15-v7+ #897 SMP Tue Jul 12 18:42:55 BST 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux

Everything works fine from a game emulation point of view.

Then, I installed kodi 16.1 with retropie built in installer. I had some issue to setup the small 2.8" lcd display but I finally succeeded.

Unfortunately I am now stuck with the keyboard. Of course I'd like to use the builtin "joypad" (which is actually a virtual keyboard) but it seems it is not recognized by Kodi.

This joypad offers 16 keys (up, down, left, right, start, select, A, B, X, Y and a few others). It is connected to the Rpi2 via GPIO. To be usable someone at Adafruit wrote a C program to make it recognized as a virtual keyboard using uevent. Basically this utility maps gpio connected buttons to keyboard event.

Interesting part of retrogame.c:

Code:
ioStandard[] = {

        // This pin/key table is used when the PiTFT isn't found

        // (using HDMI or composite instead), as with our original

        // retro gaming guide.

        // Input   Output (from /usr/include/linux/input.h)

        { 4,  KEY_LEFT     }, // Joystick (4 pins)

        { 19, KEY_RIGHT    },

        { 16, KEY_UP       },

        { 26, KEY_DOWN     },

        { 15, KEY_LEFTCTRL }, // A/Fire/jump/primary/RED

        { 14, KEY_LEFTALT  }, // B/Bomb/secondary/YELLOW

        { 20, KEY_LEFTSHIFT}, // X/BLUE

        { 18, KEY_W        }, // Y/GREEN

        {  5, KEY_RIGHTCTRL}, // Select

        {  6, KEY_ENTER    }, // Start

        { 12, KEY_A        }, // L Shoulder

        { 13, KEY_S        }, // R Shoulder

        { 17, KEY_ESC      }, // Exit ROM PiTFT Button 1

        { 22, KEY_KP5      }, // PiTFT Button 2

        { 23, KEY_KPMINUS  }, // PiTFT Button 3

        { 27, KEY_F12      }, // PiTFT Button 4

        // For credit/start/etc., use USB keyboard or add more buttons.

        {  -1,     -1           } }; // END OF LIST, DO NOT CHANGE

Here is what I get when I do a "cat /proc/bus/input/devices":

Code:
I: Bus=0018 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000

N: Name="stmpe-ts"

P: Phys=stmpe-ts/input0

S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/soc/3f204000.spi/spi_master/spi0/spi0.1/stmpe-ts/input/input0

U: Uniq=

H: Handlers=mouse0 event0

B: PROP=0

B: EV=b

B: KEY=400 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

B: ABS=1000003

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=04d9 Product=2519 Version=0110

N: Name="2.4G Wireless Touchpad Keyboard"

P: Phys=usb-3f980000.usb-1.4/input0

S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.0/0003:04D9:2519.0001/input/input2

U: Uniq=

H: Handlers=sysrq kbd leds event2

B: PROP=0

B: EV=120013

B: KEY=10000 7 ff9f207a c14057ff febeffdf ffefffff ffffffff fffffffe

B: MSC=10

B: LED=7

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=04d9 Product=2519 Version=0110

N: Name="2.4G Wireless Touchpad Keyboard"

P: Phys=usb-3f980000.usb-1.4/input1

S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.1/0003:04D9:2519.0002/input/input3

U: Uniq=

H: Handlers=kbd mouse1 event3

B: PROP=0

B: EV=1f

B: KEY=3f 3007f 0 0 0 0 483ffff 17aff32d bf544446 0 0 1f0001 130f93 8b17c000 677bfa d941dfed 9ed680 4400 0 10000002

B: REL=1c3

B: ABS=1 0

B: MSC=10

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=0001

N: Name="retrogame"

P: Phys=

S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input5

U: Uniq=

H: Handlers=kbd event1

B: PROP=0

B: EV=3

B: KEY=1682 1001400 1000400 f0020002

Bloc #1 is the not-used touch screen.
Bloc #2 and #3 are a wireless usb keyboard and mouse
Bloc #4 is the device joypad which is causing trouble

Listing my /dev/input:

Code:
pi@retropie ~/ $ ll /dev/input/

total 0

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     100 Jul 20 02:17 by-id

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     120 Jul 20 02:17 by-path

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 64 Jul 20 02:11 event0

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 65 Jul 20 02:29 event1

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 66 Jul 20 02:17 event2

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 67 Jul 20 02:17 event3

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 63 Jul 20 02:11 mice

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 32 Jul 20 02:11 mouse0

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 33 Jul 20 02:17 mouse1

and after a "dmesg":

Code:
[ 1127.158690] input: retrogame as /devices/virtual/input/input5

Kernel modules:

Code:
Module                  Size  Used by

cfg80211              427855  0

rfkill                 16037  1 cfg80211

evdev                  11396  8

joydev                  9024  0

stmpe_ts                3929  0

snd_bcm2835            20511  0

snd_pcm                75698  1 snd_bcm2835

snd_timer              19160  1 snd_pcm

snd                    51844  3 snd_bcm2835,snd_timer,snd_pcm

bcm2835_wdt             3225  0

gpio_backlight          2427  0

bcm2835_gpiomem         3040  0

spi_bcm2835             6678  0

uio_pdrv_genirq         3164  0

uio                     8000  1 uio_pdrv_genirq

fb_ili9340              3204  1

fbtft                  26084  1 fb_ili9340

syscopyarea             2945  1 fbtft

sysfillrect             3443  1 fbtft

sysimgblt               2069  1 fbtft

fb_sys_fops             1309  1 fbtft

i2c_dev                 5859  0

uinput                  7454  1

fuse                   83461  1

ipv6                  347530  36

+

I then went to Kodi wiki to try to figure out how to make my joypad seen by Kodi. I read a lot about keymaps, keyboard.xml and so on... without success.

Anyway, one of the first thing I checked was kodi.log in debug mode.
Kodi startup:
http://pastebin.com/jg0vzt8y

With my wireless keyboard plugged in, I was able to see keycodes received by Kodi. Nothing with the joypad:

Code:
30:08 4752.533203 T:1944715840  NOTICE: Log level changed to "LOG_LEVEL_DEBUG_FREEMEM"

30:08 4752.533691 T:1944715840  NOTICE: Enabled debug logging due to GUI setting. Level 2.

30:08 4752.535645 T:1944715840   DEBUG: ------ Window Init () ------

30:11 4755.973633 T:1944715840   DEBUG: Keyboard: scancode: 0x6a, sym: 0x0113, unicode: 0x0000, modifier: 0x0

30:11 4755.974121 T:1944715840   DEBUG: OnKey: right (0xf083) pressed, action is Right

30:12 4756.935547 T:1944715840   DEBUG: Keyboard: scancode: 0x67, sym: 0x0111, unicode: 0x0000, modifier: 0x0

30:12 4756.935547 T:1944715840   DEBUG: OnKey: up (0xf080) pressed, action is Up

30:13 4757.434082 T:1944715840   DEBUG: Keyboard: scancode: 0x6c, sym: 0x0112, unicode: 0x0000, modifier: 0x0

30:13 4757.434570 T:1944715840   DEBUG: OnKey: down (0xf081) pressed, action is Down

30:13 4757.879395 T:1944715840   DEBUG: Keyboard: scancode: 0x69, sym: 0x0114, unicode: 0x0000, modifier: 0x0

30:13 4757.880371 T:1944715840   DEBUG: OnKey: left (0xf082) pressed, action is Left

Then, I went to a more basic layer: checking system in console via "showkey":

Wireless keyboard:

Code:
pi@retropie ~/ $ showkey -a

^[[D     24 0033 0x1b

         91 0133 0x5b

         58 0104 0x44

q       113 0161 0x71

PiGRRL2 joypad using retrogame.c:

Code:
pi@retropie ~/ $ showkey -a

^[[D     24 0033 0x1b

         91 0133 0x5b

         58 0104 0x44

q       113 0161 0x71

I forgot to mention that I set a French azerty keyboard layout in both system and Kodi. I use to choose this layout which works fine so far on other systems.

I'm a bit dry now. I hope my (first) post is clear enough and that it would be helpfull. I'd really appreciate. Don't blame me too much if I missed something. Thank you for reading.

I don't fully understand your system. Does kodi run on top of retropie, or do you have to reboot to get into kodi?

Sorry for not having been clear enough. Kodi runs on top of Retropie.

Edit:
This actually gave me an idea. I set Kodi to start at boot before EmulationStation (Retropie frontend). No change, still unable to use joypad as input device.

OK forget about Retropie. To simplify, here is the heart of the problem:

I'm using a bunch of tactile switches connected to a Rapsberry Pi 2 through GPIO.
To map these switches to legacy keyboard keys I'm using a C program: retrogame.c from Adafruit.
This tool, which runs in background, creates a Linux virtual keyboard
This virtual keyboard works as expected in a console but not with Kodi

I don't know a lot about the kodi input subsystem, but:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master....cpp#L1234

Looks like you need a /dev/input/event* node for an input device to be detected.
If you don't have one of those I don't see it being detected.

So you either need a kernel module that reports your input device as a /dev/input/event* device,
or you need to modify kodi to search for other types of device node.

Thanx for replying Popcornmix.
I have a /dev/input/event node:

Code:
cat /proc/bus/input/devices

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=0001

N: Name="retrogame"

P: Phys=

S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input4

U: Uniq=

H: Handlers=kbd event0

B: PROP=0

B: EV=3

B: KEY=1682 1001400 1000400 f0020002

ls -l /dev/input

total 0

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 64 Jul 22 03:04 event0

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 63 Jul 22 03:00 mice

and it seems to be detected by Kodi:

Code:
04:15:56 4516.163574 T:1944932928  NOTICE: Found a non joystick : use it as standard kodi input device - /dev/input/event0

...

04:15:56 4516.420410 T:1944932928    INFO: Found input device /dev/input/event0

04:15:56 4516.420410 T:1944932928    INFO: opened device 'retrogame' (file name /dev/input/event0), m_bSkipNonKeyEvents 0

04:15:56 4516.420898 T:1676145584   DEBUG: Thread CLinuxInputDevicesCheckHotplugged start, auto delete: false

So I guess it should work. I likely miss something obvious...

Open a terminal, hit the buttons, do they show up.

Yes they do.

And what characters show up? Do they match what you'd expect for using a keyboard with kodi?

Yes. For instance if I set the Up key on up arrow, I scroll up in my commands history in a console. If I set the "A" key on a button and I hit this button in a console I get a "A" on the prompt. As far as I can see, it works as expected in a console.
unfortunately, when I do the same in Kodi nothing happens, neither in Kodi gui nor in kodi.log.

OK I finally resolved my issue.

In retrogame.c, I changed this (line 396):

Code:
// ----------------------------------------------------------------

        // Set up uinput

#if 1

        // Retrogame normally uses /dev/uinput for generating key events.

        // Cupcade requires this and it's the default.  SDL2 (used by

        // some newer emulators) doesn't like it, wants /dev/input/event0

        // instead.  Enable that code by changing to "#if 0" above.

by this:

Code:
// ----------------------------------------------------------------

        // Set up uinput

#if 0

        // Retrogame normally uses /dev/uinput for generating key events.

        // Cupcade requires this and it's the default.  SDL2 (used by

        // some newer emulators) doesn't like it, wants /dev/input/event0

        // instead.  Enable that code by changing to "#if 0" above.

Thanks for helping.

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nickr

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popcornmix

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