Configure a USB Spinner in RetroPie on Your Raspberry Pi

[@NessylumGames]

Thank you so much! I love how your folks' videos are quick and to the point with no needless chit chat!

[@DoubleDguitar]

Thanks so much for taking the time to post this, you just made a lot of tinkering go away and helped me finalize one of my favorite cabs. Much appreciation.

[@ChesterSpringsKarate]

This was a huge help and fixed my problem. Thank you for this video.

[@bm63]

Thanks! I needed this soooo bad. If you only knew how long and how many FB posts this has taken to solve. And it was a simple bit of text in a config file and now centipede/marble madness/missile command are now working perfect without me manually changing the input every time.

[@charlesruvola3513]

Thank you, this was really helpful, and solved my retropie spinner/trackball issues.

[@gordons-alive4940]

Pretty good instructional video. Helps to know which index the spinner is at. Wish there was more chit chat though. I like to know who the person giving me tips is, the person behind the video.

[@jayhays8267]

I don't have many of the config files you are showing, but I was able to determine my trackball is "mouse0" and Spinner is "mouse1". My spinner only works in a game if I have the trackball disconnected. If I have both connected only the trackball works and my some of my button configs don't work (like the hot key) and cannot access retroarch or exit a game. My Retroarch looks very different from yours!

[@chiyuryuu2687]

don't see a mame2003 current mouse enable in the retro core options folder.... the line cd /dev/input then ls -la to list all devices is not recognized. this tutorial doesn't work for me.

[@bFOURdwZEROlf]

They should do something like a pre-built modular user interface, but when you own or collect games, you download the roms yourself and it recognizes what games you have, and disables the ability to use a game you don't have (it doesn't display it) also for homebrew it gives you the option to manually add it to your system) what would be cool is having information as to what basic or usual controller it uses from data taken from people who play the game, and it knows what controllers you have, (even though this is tinkery,) there should be folders for flowcharts of setups people are using (certain configurations) and this modular system has a user interface that you can create a button layout but show what modules you have with basic shapes. so if you have a certain amount of buttons, you can have pins not used, or you can have different sized modules that have different numbers of pins. You can input that information and from what inputs you have per button, it shows which buttons are being pressed so you can create the layout, then save the layout. You can also swap functions of buttons, or label a button what it usually is, or make per-game a button layout on that. It would recognize which buttons are more up, sticks positions, and connects with layouts that other people made, so you can make a "preset layout" for a certain system, I.e. something codenamed for reproduction of a layout, and an author, and if they want to publish something, they can online, if not, they can have it privately owned and not shared. But in the basis of which, You can have trackball, spinny things, buttons, joysticks, hook up a ps4 controller, the whole 9 yards.

[@moxxichannel5950]

Running into a problem as I've done the cat mouse0 (Spinner) and cat mouse 1 (trackball) - both are working. When I went into Player 1 binds to change the Mouse around - my spinner worked automatically but trackball wasn't - when I changed it from 0 to 1 nothing happened, as you said in the video - changed it to 2 and viola! the trackball worked in Centipede - however - the spinner stopped working in Tron / Arkanoid etc. Any idea how to resolve this so I can have Spinner and Trackball working in all games?

[@licoricewhip]

Thank you! This helped a lot.

[@AndrewHoeveler]

Just adding a note here that the "/configs/all" folder you navigate to at 0:51 is "/opt/retropie/configs/all" when connected to the Pi via FTP.

[@Kevin-sl3gk]

Do you guys offer this Centipede theme artwork on your website via. the custom printing section?

[@Teckno77]

Hi I have Arknoid running on RP2 mame2003 plus but when I connect my usb ultimarc spinner, it works in game fine but it seems to block my usb buttons and they dont work anymore, any idea why this is happening? If I unplug the spinner and restart all is well, I have two cheap Ipac usb for both joysticks and button sets btw. Cheers

[@davidmcghee7696]

Have you heard of the atari console with trackball recognizing the trackball as a mouse cursor instead of moving the crosshairs in missile command for example. I plugged in a wireless mini keyboard with pad and noticed I lost my trackball game functions. I have been on this mission to get that back and still have not solved it. I thought just unplugging the dongle and going back to the wired keyboard and mouse would fix it but nothing works. I have changed the mouse setting in RA to 0 1 and 2 and still a cursor. Even acts a a mouse control on the raspi desktop. All updated to date.

[@Slaintemaith]

What happens when the spinner doesn't do anything when you cat mouse0?

[@mightycomicsandcollectibles]

How do u tell the fans to use mame2010? And what about games like kaboom that are not made?

[@nova396]

This sure did make things easy! Thanks!

[@djd-cepticon7215]

Good info! Currently trying to configure my GRS (Glen's Retro Show) spinner and Tron Joystick. I have all dipswitches on and the spinner still feels a bit laggy in some games, some games it doesn't work at all. How can this be adjusted? Second question, have you setup a Tron joystick or any kind of "Flight Stick" on Retropie? I'm on Pi4 and I have been stuck for months now.

[@martygilpatrick9727]

good luck getting a response. Doesn't seem to answer anyone's questions. what image are you using? As for the flightstick for tron try this site www.arcaderenovations.com/8-way-2-button-flight-stick-joystick-ver2.html You'll also need the IPAC2 controller board here www.arcaderenovations.com/ipac2-with-usb-cable.html

[@jonhayes4039]

I like the look of the Pi image you used. Which image was that?

[@colinross971]

Hi i have a question please i have a 2 player system setup i want to use player 2 side and remove the joystick and replace it with a trackball so if i go to a game that needs a mouse like tron or starwars i can just switch sides question is i can only find trackballs with usb and no buttons how can i use the buttons for player 2 with a trackball ? thanks

[@jaz8088]

Time to replace the PS2 Mouse spinner on the old Cad and grab a new one for the Pi, Cheers Great Info

[@rednroll1]

Do you know of a way to enable ALL mouse devices for mame2003 instead of having to select one or the other? I have 2 spinners and a trackball on my Retropie setup. I was able to figure out a way to enable both spinners and the trackball simultaneously for emulators advmame and advmame1_4. However found my Missile command game ROM won't run with those emulators but works using lr-mame2003. So would like to do the same for lr-mame2003. A problem with most older arcade games is that you have a 2 player joystick setup, but the game rom makes players alternate between using Player1 Joystick controls. I prefer to just map Player 1 controls to the Player 2 controls simultaneously and since I have a spinner near each joystick on both sides of my setup, just have both spinners enabled regardless of which player is active. This also helps with the trackball for left or right handed players.

[@pavlosskiadas9279]

Thank you for the video. The line cd /dev/input then ls -la to list all devices is recognizing my spinner but in the Retroarch/Input user 1 Binds, I cannot find the User 1 Mouse index.

[@seanmcgrath1991]

Same here - did you find out what caused this and have you got your spinner working?

[@Grasshopper-KI]

Hi what if mouse0 does nothing and mouse1 is both trackball and spinner?

[@steveolson5542]

jacob bidwell sameissue

[@thebandit1324]

hi, do you have your trackball and mouse connected to something like an ipac2 ? I am thinking of getting one but not sure how the trackball and spinner will behave in raspberry pic with it all being connected to the one device along with 2 player joysticks

[@Grasshopper-KI]

I have both on a 12 in 1 board. I got it all to work but on glens trackball you need to open it up and remove the DIP switch

[@Patzfann1978]

How does your retroarch look like that

[@stillchasingcharlie9408]

Any chance you'll be making your 32" full size cabinet that is plug and play like your bartop?

[@scottc6086]

How do you get to the retroarch menu within a game? the only thing I can find is pressing F1 and it only gives me a "quick menu" with only retroarch menu. I can get into the main menu but that's in ES.

[@AtomFry]

Thanks for this, super helpful!

[@Vutsman1]

Liked it. You helped me too. Had wrong emulator.

[@francisgauthier7272]

I have exactly the same control boards, So my spinner is on Mouse_index 0 the Y axis, and the trackball is on the mouse_index 2. The problem is that I cannot make arckanoid to work with the spinner since, my spinner is on the Y axis and Arkanoid is taking the X axis. How do I change that?? (I have the exact same spinner by the way)

[@Mauricewanda]

You ever solved this issue? I've got the same problem

[@patrussomusic4987]

Ugh - when I go to config-all-retroarch-config mame2010 doesn’t show at all and the mame2003 doesn’t have the game I need to setup in it. Can anyone help me to figure this out?

[@VincentScalaBrooklynChildxBC]

i got both trackball and spinner to work i can't set the settings per game i don't even see the folder for the mame 2003 i'm using is there another way to change the setting per game?

[@Arcadehollywood]

Will Tempest work with this???

[@seanmcgrath1991]

Thank you for the video. I followed all the way up to the cat mouse0 bit and my spinner doesn't create any text/marks on the command line. I can get responses on cat mouse0 by either pressing keys on my keybaord or buttons/joystick movements on my x-arcade. When I enter cat mouse1, 2, 3, 4 ir returns a message saying nothing recognised or no input (Something like that). Do you know what I have done wrong please? I've followed all installation instructions and connected things as per the instructions. is there anything I can do or check please? Thanks in advance.

[@brandonsmith1670]

You probably need a different cable. I bought a data specific cable and it didn't work. I went back in and put in an old cable and it connected right away.

[@seanmcgrath1991]

@@brandonsmith1670 thanks. I got it working in the end without changing the cable.

[@ΛΟΥΚΑΣΜΠΕΡΤΖΟΒΙΤΗΣ]

@@seanmcgrath1991 sorry i have the same problem that you describe here, how did you solve it please ?

[@seanmcgrath1991]

@@ΛΟΥΚΑΣΜΠΕΡΤΖΟΒΙΤΗΣ it was a pain but I documented what I did. See below snd hopefully you can work through this. I installed my spinner as per instructions and connected it via USB to my Raspberry Pi. I turned everything on and went to play Arkanoid. Once I started a game it was obvious that the spinner wasn’t working because I couldn’t move the platform. I’m using lr_mame2003 on a Raspberry Pi 3 built into an old style upright arcade cabinet. After hours of research on the internet, a bit of trial and error tinkering I have been successful in getting my spinner to work. Here’s what I did..... I connected to my Raspberry Pi via my PC using WinSCP. You’ll have to research what this is and how to setup if you don’t already know. That’s another tutorial and if you search PRIME ETA on KZbin he has great step by step videos on setting this up. It basically allows you to connect to your Raspberry Pi from a PC. I went into the retroarch core options config (Path below) and edited it, /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg I added the following command line to ensure that Retroarch had a mouse enabled. After all, the Spinner is basically a mouse. mame2003-mame_current_mouse_enable = "enabled" I then took my spinner out of my Raspberry Pi and plugged it into a PC and it worked straight away moving the cursor left and right. I also noticed the light on the board came on and stayed on during use. This does come on when plugged into the Raspberry Pi but only initially and then turns off. This test confirmed that the spinner equipment and power lead are working ok and that it is setup correctly. I am using an X-arcade Tankstick for my controls and this emulates a keyboard so to eliminate any confusion in the system I removed this and just used a keyboard for the setup. I plugged the Spinner back in and tested it. I turned my Raspberry Pi on and kept pressing F4 to enter the command line. I then typed in the following, cd /dev/input then ENTER Cat mouse0 then ENTER I then moved my spinner and it created characters meaning it was working which was great. I had tried this initially but there was no response so I believe that by plugging my spinner into my PC it somehow initialised itself and woke up. I also now knew that Mouse0 was attributed to my spinner. Note this down because you’ll need this information later in this setup guide. Next, I exited the command line by typing ‘exit’ followed by ENTER and started up my Arkanoid game using my keyboard whilst still having the spinner connected. I was now able to use my spinner in game without touching any of the internal games control options you find when you press TAB. I plugged my x-arcade back in and started up Arkanoid to now find that the spinner was not working again. This obviously meant that the X-Arcade Tankstick was taking priority over the spinner and they must be sharing Mouse0 or the spinner becomes mouse1 or mouse2 after the tankstick. I went back into the command line and checked the mouse responses again to see if the spinner was now recognised. To do this I restarted my machine and pressed F4 to get into the command prompt again. I entered cd /dev/input and pressed ENTER. Then I entered ls -la followed by ENTER. A list of all of the devices then appeared as below. I could see two inputs for the mice - (mouse0 and mouse1) whcih made sense and was correct in a normal setup. Next I entered, cat mouse0 into the command line and pressed ENTER. I moved my spinner and nothing happened - no characters appeared. When I pressed any button on my x-arcade tankstick or moved the joysticks characters appeared. This told me my keyboard and tankstick were assigned mouse0. I hit CTR+C on my keyboard to repeat the previous command. This time I entered cat mouse1 and pressed ENTER. I then moved my spinner and characters appeared in the command. This confirmed that my spinner was assigned to mouse1. I hit CTR+C again and then entered exit to leave the command line. I then went into my emulator and went to Arkanoid and booted the game. While in game I entered the Retroarch Options by pressing (Select/Coin and my top middle (I think this is the Left Alt button). I then went into quick menu > options and checked that Mouse Device was set to mouse. Then back to menu and Settings > Input > Port 1 Binds > Mouse Index > Push right to select 1. This changed the input to the spinner based on me knowing my spinner was using mouse 1 as identified earlier. I backed up once to the previous menu then quit using Select/Coin + Top (Left Alt Button) to return back to the Arkanoid game. I started the game to see if the spinner worked but it didn’t. So I went back into the options and selected mouse 2 instead. Returned to the game and the spinner was working. I am not sure why but it worked and during some research I found this happened for someone else. This however, now verified that mouse number 2 works for my spinner. Now you need to setup each game you want to use the spinner for. Go to your Raspberry Pi on your PC and find the Arkanoid.cfg file. Mine was located as per below, My path was \\RETROPIE oms\arcade\mame2003\cfg\arkanoid.cfg Open this file with notepad so you can edit. This file opened for me but did not have the correct information in it so I deleted the whole file and created a new arkanoid.cfg text document. I then added the following line into it and saved. Input_player1_mouse_index = “2” When I restarted the game the spinner would not work and I had to go into retroarch menu options again and select mouse 2. I went back into the retroarch options and reselected mouse 2. This time I backed up to the settings page and went into configuration. I changed Save configuration on exit from OFF to ON. Backed up twice to the menu and selected quit retroarch. My thinking was this would save my changes going forward and it did. I exited, turned off my system, turned it back on again and the spinner was working immediately. Certainly not a plug and play device on the Raspberry Pi. Adjusting Spinner Speed IN the game you are playing press tab on the keybaord to enter the in game options. Go to Analogue controls. Default in Arkanoid was Dial Key/Joy Speed = 15 Dial Reverse = OFF Dial Sensitivity = 30% If you get any future issues check out Https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Spinners,-Trackballs,-Lightguns,-and-other-Mouse-Devices/

[@ΛΟΥΚΑΣΜΠΕΡΤΖΟΒΙΤΗΣ]

@@seanmcgrath1991 thank you Sean, i did most but my problem is that in cat mouse there is no response from the spinner so i am stuck there, also windows (10) says linkfly mouse ok but nothing moves there neither, linkfly is probably the 12 in 1 board... So i am suck. Anyway thanks again 👍

[@deejayalex1650]

i did all you said and my spinner works, but it doesn move that fast, i hit tab in my keyboard and set up the speed and sensitivity all the way up and move faster but not enough , its not posible to play arkanoid, its there a physical set up on the spinner or other place at the raspberry pi? im using the arcade 1 up replacement from grs version 2

[@brianrosenthal82]

Having the exact same issue.

[@rfordjr86]

trackball is mouse1 cant get it to work on MAME2003 or MAME2010 getting frustrated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@taggerjamie]

Hello there thank you for the videos. They are a huge help. However I'm having serious trouble getting my spinner to work. I'm completely frazzled. My USB trackball is now working thank you so much. Just cant get the spinner to be recognized. Plesse help. Thx so much

[@seanmcgrath1991]

Hi, Did you manage to sort this and getting it working? What did you you do to resolve? I've just installed a spinner and it's not recgnised at all. I can't even see it the command line. cd /dev/input then ls -la to list all my devices but is not recognising my spinner. Thanks in advance.

[@HartRaver]

Where can I get a spinner ?

[@buffalo7169]

Can you please do a vid showing how to setup a lightgun.... or is it the same?

[@Gameroomsolutions]

I have only done light guns on windows rigs with hyperspin or launchbox.

[@kpikid]

Light Guns are generally configured the same as mouse. Thanks for the Video.

[@tmz90]

I would like to purchase an arcade machine for my brother but I know nothing about it and I’m not computer savvy. I would buy an arcade machine if it had games in it. Can you build one for my brother with games?

[@artconnolly9519]

That's what Ryan does. I myself am waiting on my kit (any day hopefully) Gameroomsolutions sells kits or fully built and ready to rock machines.

[@marcocavedoni7206]

Thank you for detailed instruction. Is possibile to setting the sensibility or response OF the spinner?

[@deejayalex1650]

you can do that by pressing tab on your keyboard and when the menu appears hit analog controls, there you can set up speed and sensitivity

[@The_Prankster]

All's ya gotta do?

[@paulp6504]

THANK YOU. I finally figured out why my damn light guns wont working. The GOD *DAMN* Mouse index bullshit. when you said "the index can be greater than 1, can be 2" I felt like the heavens had opened. I didnt even think to do that and I was banging my head against the wall for 2 weeks wondering why it wasnt working. God fucking bless you sir.

[@burbbully]

Is it wrong to say I love you? Hahahahaha

[@gregmarquis1886]

hard to understand.....you talk fast....i guess i'll have to watch this video 50 times....anyway, thanks for video

[@FastBoyBrax]

You can adjust the play speed to in the KZbin settings.

[@jnkmal9519]

I really didn't need that edm shitstep punch to the face at the end.