Buttons not working

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Chillyjam
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Buttons not working

Post by Chillyjam » Mon Jul 06, 2020 2:41 pm

I have just finished building my mintypi's innards (screen, buttons, etc.) and finally finished troubleshooting the software :roll: , so now I'm putting games on it and etc. to test it all out, only to find that the buttons are not working in exception of the right D-pad button and the start/select buttons, the speaker is bending the PCB board slightly, could that be the problem? I'm going to try loosening the screws so there is less bend. Any tips would be appreciated!

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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Helder » Mon Jul 06, 2020 9:39 pm

Pretty sure you bending the board like that could be causing damage to the board or likely the buttons GPIO solder joints.

The proper way to fix this besides checking continuity (why do people never check this?) to be sure the buttons still have a connection to the test pads AND getting rid of the wire going behind the the speaker or the likely huge solder blobs on the speaker where you soldered the wires to it.

There should be no bulging much less bending on the PCB where it's likely the soldering is not that great and any stress like the board flexing could break the connections and therefore the buttons or something else could stop working.
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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Chillyjam » Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:34 am

So I should resolder the board, get as much solder off the back of the speaker as I can, and then see if it works?

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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Xythatoneguyyx » Tue Jul 07, 2020 12:02 pm

My first go around my right and down button on my dpad werent working every time and it was because the speaker wires I put on were preventing the 3d printer park from sitting flush. I had to make the wires longer by a hair so that I could curve them around the part where the 3d printed part encloses the speaker. Hopefully my picture helps explain what Im saying. Make sure the wires aren't making it bulge and have only the necessary amount of solder in that area you may have your desired results. Hope I helped.
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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Chillyjam » Tue Jul 07, 2020 5:13 pm

Well, I tried taking the speaker off entirely (it wasn't working anyway) and resoldered the entirety of the PCB-PiZero connections, and it still wouldn't work. I have another pi that I put emulationstation/retropie on and the first time I booted it up it asked me to configure my controller. The Mintypi does not do this, is there any way to reprogram it to ask me to configure? Because I can't get to the config option in the menu because (duh) the D-pad won't work, I have tried adding solder to the button-sensor-thingies like I saw in another post, this did not work. I have even tried(like I said) taking the speaker off entirely, I also tried it without the 3d-printed part (just holding on the button), this also did not work. I have rewriten the SD card, added games, and fiddled with it for hours. I do not know if this is a consern, but I have noticed that, while running, the pi's CPU gets very hot, then cools of almost emediatly when turned off, I do not understand this...
I am fairly certain at this point that it is the software, not the hardware, that is at fault here. So like I mentioned before, if there is a way to make it ask to configure the controller, and you can tell me how, be my guest. I'm am going to attempt using regular retropi and see if it helps me at all, wish me luck!

(p.s. try to guess my age 😎)

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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Helder » Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:52 am

I think you are again skipping the important part, continuity. Have you tested continuity or are you just winging it? Without having a multimeter and doing continuity testing you are shooting in the dark and pretty much wasting our time trying to help since you can't verify the problems without it.

Your Pi getting really hot also makes me think you have some short but it does get hot under normal use, the controls for the mintyPi image are already configured so the problem is soldering not software. Don't use the regular Retropie image since it does not have the necessary drivers for controls,video,or audio so you will get nothing but a white screen.

P.S: try to guess how I know all of this :P
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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Chillyjam » Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:28 pm

yes, I have considered that it could be a continuity issue, and that would have made perfect sense, however, I have checked continuity straight from the pi to the PCB board (touchpads) and everything has continuity. And as an extra I have resoldered everything relating to the buttons, and still notta... I'm trying the original software (Beta) to see if that helps in any way, I will get back with you noting if this has fixed the problem.

P.S. I hate solder, so useful, so hard to use...

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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Chillyjam » Mon Jul 13, 2020 5:16 pm

I just finished checking continuity again, and turns out the 'mode' GPIO wasn't connecting :roll: , fixed it and it's still not working :cry: , I am using a pi zero (not W), would that change anything?

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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Helder » Mon Jul 13, 2020 8:21 pm

Do the buttons work without the 3D printed part there? just the buttons on top of the pcb? I think it's either a soldering issue as it's 95% of the time and you have have too much of a gap between the pcb and 3D print making it not have good contact with the button membranes.

And why are you using the old software? use the latest version.
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Re: Buttons not working

Post by Chillyjam » Fri Jul 31, 2020 11:20 am

So, I have tried using the buttons directly on the PCB Board, And it did not work. I was using older software because I thought that it could be a newer software bug, this doesn't seem to be the case. Is it possible that using a rspberypi0 instead of a rspberypi0W would make a difference? I have tried (said this before) resoldering the contacts! This is not the problem. The battery connector is very loose and I am planning to fix it soon, but I dought that would mess up the buttons, would it? The order of my tests goes like this:

1. I plug it in using a short USB cable (could it possibly be the cables fault?)
2. I flip the switch
3. screen turns on and stays white for a minute, then goes to Retropie boot screen.
4. Opens Retropie Menu, I am able to click around using (only) the right-facing d-pad button and sometimes I am able to get the A button to
work, the start/select buttons work consistently.

By the way, something I have noticed is that the software does not have the features that have been specified, such as the battery indicator, the time display, and the special buttons (save state and menu buttons) don't work either (haven't tested save state, I am assuming that it is broken) so maybe I have just a bare version of Retropie? I have been screwing with this stupid thing for about 2 months now, and I'm really getting tired of it...

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