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Setting up the GPIO Pins as keyboard Controls for Chameleon

Former Member

So basically I have been setting up an emulation station on my Pi for the past few months. I am getting very close to finishing this project. It will be housed in an Atari 2600 Sears Sixer case. Play games for NES, SNES, MAME, and the Atari 2600. Well actually let me rephrase that, currently it emulates NES, SNES and MAME. It plays actual Atari 2600 cartridges. Like plug in your cartridge and go play it with 100% compatibility as far as I can tell (With over 100 of my personal games it works with no glitches or problems).

 

Anyway, on to my question. Everything works fine and dandy with my keyboard. But that is lame. Its supposed to use actual Atari 2600 Joysticks. The Chameleon program only allows the use of a Keyboard for controls. Ive spent a few hours looking without a definite answer on how to set up the GPIO pins to correspond to Keyboard inputs.

 

So like I map it out and connect it to the D-Sub port for atari joysticks. When I press up on the joystick the Pi thinks im pressing up on the keyboad etc.

 

It boots straight to Chameleon too, there are no other Images on the SD card (Like desktops, or other things)

 

 

Im not looking for links to other forums i've seen all of that already. This is the final part of my project and im just all out of brain juice and need step by step help with this. If you also know how to change what buttons do what in Chameleon let me know too, thanks.

  • Hi Connor,

     

    I think you're saying you have some application called Chameleon, which accepts keyboard input,  but you'd like to emulate keyboard input using pins configured as inputs?

    If so, I've not tried it, but it looks like this URL has what you need. Download, compile (i.e. type 'make'), and follow the instructions in the README (keyboard settings are to be placed in a config file that it mentions).

  • in reply to shabaz

    shabaz wrote:

     

    but you'd like to emulate keyboard input using pins configured as inputs?

    No need to emulate anything

    I've not tried it, but it looks like this URL has what you need.

    I didn't dig too deeply into that, but I can't quite come up with any use case for it other than NIH syndrome.

     

    The kernel provides this sort of stuff for you, from Documentation/gpio.txt in the kernel source

     

    Note that standard kernel drivers exist for common "LEDs and Buttons"

    GPIO tasks:  "leds-gpio" and "gpio_keys", respectively.  Use those

    instead of talking directly to the GPIOs; they integrate with kernel

    frameworks better than your userspace code could.

     

    These days there are actually two drivers:

     

    config KEYBOARD_GPIO

            tristate "GPIO Buttons"

            depends on GENERIC_GPIO

            help

              This driver implements support for buttons connected

              to GPIO pins of various CPUs (and some other chips).

     

              Say Y here if your device has buttons connected

              directly to such GPIO pins.  Your board-specific

              setup logic must also provide a platform device,

              with configuration data saying which GPIOs are used.

     

              To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the

              module will be called gpio_keys.

     

    config KEYBOARD_GPIO_POLLED

            tristate "Polled GPIO buttons"

            depends on GENERIC_GPIO

            select INPUT_POLLDEV

            help

              This driver implements support for buttons connected

              to GPIO pins that are not capable of generating interrupts.

     

              Say Y here if your device has buttons connected

              directly to such GPIO pins.  Your board-specific

              setup logic must also provide a platform device,

              with configuration data saying which GPIOs are used.

     

              To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the

              module will be called gpio_keys_polled.

     

    These drivers are mostly used by Arm devices or other embedded boards precisely to make gpio based buttons appear as if they are just another keyboard to all userspace applications. The obvious advantages are that your app can't tell the difference and that they're properly integrated, so can be configured with the standard tools i.e. you can remap your gpio keys just like remapping your normal keyboard from UK to French to German etc.

     

    I gave up counting the number of Arm boards using gpio_keys when I passed 100....  plenty of example code to copy, just grep -r -i 'gpio_keys.h' arch/arm/* in the kernel source.

  • I appreciate the responses. But like I said I'm out. I'm post op and will be on meds for a while. Right now I can't make much sense of this and thank goodness for autocorrect t right now. I just want to play my childhood games on my tv. If someone could kindly make a nice little Image of this and chameleon so I can just install it and have my buddy wire it up for me that would be great. I'm stuck on the couch and one can only watch so many episodes of judge Judy before you lose your mind

  • in reply to Former Member

    that is funny !!!!!!!!!!!   thanks for the laugh !  lol  image   but I do hope you are Ok buddy !... Sincerely,

    Chuck... U.S.A.  Delaware state,

  • in reply to Former Member

    Sorry, as I was trying to say. Can someone please reconfigure this so I can play my Atari 2600 games. Set it up so player 1 and 2 have the 4 directions and fire? Then just make a nice little image for me to download