HOW TO: Disable accelerometers on your SIXAXIS gamepad.
So you've setup ZSNES, Mednafen, or any other number of emulators and you want to use that really convenient, readily available Bluetooth PS3 game control with it. You go to all the forums, do a little research and you find it's actually quite easy to setup with QtSixA or some other method and you think you're ready to go. You start up your Joy Stick option in your control panel applet and you see that all the buttons, joysticks, and even the tilt axis work correctly. You fire up Mednafen, hold Alt+Shift+1 to program the emulator to run your games then to your horror it runs through every button push on its own. You say "that's a screwy program anyways!" so you start ZSNES, go to the gamepad setup and every time you click your mouse on the button you want to program the same way you did with a dozen lesser pads and it fills in with some garbage that isn't what you pushed.
You just experienced the program taking the input from the tilt accelerometers as your programming button push.
I use Kubuntu, if you use a non-Ubuntu distribution or a driver other than mine this may not apply to you, but for those who have a setup similar to mine (most Debian-derived distros), here's what you do. According to the QtSixA manual the files I'm having you edit in /etc/default should be in /var/lib/sixad/ so you may need to do some extra searching on your own system or ask someone who's better versed in your particular distro to locate the correct config file.
Here's a hand hold - you can actually copy-paste this into your terminal window to make it easy, or if you can tell what I'm doing, do it your own way.
sudo cp /etc/default/sixad /etc/default/sixad.accel_enabled
sudo pico /etc/default/sixad
Type in your password.
Change only the things I'm telling you to, if you want to experiment later go ahead, but make sure it works before you screw it up and blame it on me.
In the file you will find these lines:
# Enable sensible buttons? (as axis)
Enable_sbuttons=1
This one is optional. You might want to make that "1" a "0". This is what makes your buttons pressure sensitive, I don't know of anything on Linux that will benefit from leaving that enabled, some emulators detect different pressure sensitivities and will register a light push but not a hard push/hard but not light. My previous work around was just to press hard when programming the buttons but disabling this all together isn't a bad idea.
Look for these lines:
# Enable axis? (Left & Right)
Enable_axis=1
Make that "1" a "0". I don't know if this is redundant or not given the next step but better safe than sorry.
Next:
# Enable accelerometers?
Enable_accel=1
Again, make that 1 a 0.
Hold Control and press "o" to write the file, yes, keep the original file name, just hit enter. Hold control press "x" to exit pico. Yes I can use vim, but I didn't suggest that because it's too complicated for people who don't already know how to use it and that's another how-to.
Reboot the system (or if you know how restart Blu-tooth)
Your control should now work without the accelerometers screwing up your control programming. You can re-enable them if you want to after configuring whatever programs have been giving you issues, but I'm just leaving mine as is, I don't see any use for them in my little world.
If you started toying with things I didn't specify, or if you just screwed something up copy paste the below into a terminal and reboot, it should put everything back the way it was. You can start over if you like.
rm /etc/default/sixad
cp /etc/default/sixad.accel_enabled /etc/default/sixad
UPDATE:
I installed Linux Mint 12 and tried this again. Totally doesn't work in the above manner, now I have to figure it out. Sixad works just fine, but not on boot up, the above instructions don't work, but the GUI handles those things.
Looks like getting rid of bluedevil helped a little, no more forever long boot up, but there's still problems with it (buggy KDE issues) and getting rid of Bluedevil keeps my Bluetooth audio from working. For the record this is something that did work better on Ubuntu.
You just experienced the program taking the input from the tilt accelerometers as your programming button push.
I use Kubuntu, if you use a non-Ubuntu distribution or a driver other than mine this may not apply to you, but for those who have a setup similar to mine (most Debian-derived distros), here's what you do. According to the QtSixA manual the files I'm having you edit in /etc/default should be in /var/lib/sixad/ so you may need to do some extra searching on your own system or ask someone who's better versed in your particular distro to locate the correct config file.
Here's a hand hold - you can actually copy-paste this into your terminal window to make it easy, or if you can tell what I'm doing, do it your own way.
sudo cp /etc/default/sixad /etc/default/sixad.accel_enabled
sudo pico /etc/default/sixad
Type in your password.
Change only the things I'm telling you to, if you want to experiment later go ahead, but make sure it works before you screw it up and blame it on me.
In the file you will find these lines:
# Enable sensible buttons? (as axis)
Enable_sbuttons=1
This one is optional. You might want to make that "1" a "0". This is what makes your buttons pressure sensitive, I don't know of anything on Linux that will benefit from leaving that enabled, some emulators detect different pressure sensitivities and will register a light push but not a hard push/hard but not light. My previous work around was just to press hard when programming the buttons but disabling this all together isn't a bad idea.
Look for these lines:
# Enable axis? (Left & Right)
Enable_axis=1
Make that "1" a "0". I don't know if this is redundant or not given the next step but better safe than sorry.
Next:
# Enable accelerometers?
Enable_accel=1
Again, make that 1 a 0.
Hold Control and press "o" to write the file, yes, keep the original file name, just hit enter. Hold control press "x" to exit pico. Yes I can use vim, but I didn't suggest that because it's too complicated for people who don't already know how to use it and that's another how-to.
Reboot the system (or if you know how restart Blu-tooth)
Your control should now work without the accelerometers screwing up your control programming. You can re-enable them if you want to after configuring whatever programs have been giving you issues, but I'm just leaving mine as is, I don't see any use for them in my little world.
If you started toying with things I didn't specify, or if you just screwed something up copy paste the below into a terminal and reboot, it should put everything back the way it was. You can start over if you like.
rm /etc/default/sixad
cp /etc/default/sixad.accel_enabled /etc/default/sixad
UPDATE:
I installed Linux Mint 12 and tried this again. Totally doesn't work in the above manner, now I have to figure it out. Sixad works just fine, but not on boot up, the above instructions don't work, but the GUI handles those things.
Looks like getting rid of bluedevil helped a little, no more forever long boot up, but there's still problems with it (buggy KDE issues) and getting rid of Bluedevil keeps my Bluetooth audio from working. For the record this is something that did work better on Ubuntu.