You don't know how to sync your 8bitDo NES30 Pro controller with your Raspberry Pi Zero W through Bluetooth?
Then stick around, because you know what time it is
So the 8bitDo controllers are really great looking controllers, they feel nice in the hands, they're a little bit small for me but they're really really nice controllers
And with the two analog sticks and the two buttons on top, for the left and right each I should say, this is a fantastic retro gaming console controller
But one of the problems that a lot of people have is the syncing thru bluetooth with their Raspberry Pi Zero W or Raspberry Pi 3
So what I'm going to do in this video is I'm gonna show you how to sync it properly and make it sync everytime you reebot your Raspberry Pi 3 or Raspberry Pi Zero W
Now, if you havent already, the RetroPie image that's currently available, which 4.1 doesn't actually works with the Raspberry Pi Zero W
So, I got a fix for that and it's up here right now if you want to go and see that video
But I'm saying that in the future if it's up to 4.2 or plus then you won't have to worry about this fix anymore
So one of the first things you need to do with your 8bitDo controller, is you need to make sure that the firmware is up to date
Now at the moment, at the time of this video at least
The latest version is 1.72
Now, I've already upgraded this, but to go through the update process, I'll show you on the PC now
So that way you can do it in the future
The first thing we need to do is go to the 8bitDo website, which is "8bitdo.com"
Once there click on the "Support" menu and choose your controller form the images on screen
Now you need to click on the gear icon underneath "Firmware"
You can see the latest version, for me it's firmware version 1.72, click on the link to download it
So one of the things with the firmware on the 8bitDo controller is
You need to use this cable and the other thing you need to do is make sure that you put it into the firmware
and to do that you need to howd down the start button and the wireless sync button for about 5 to 10 seconds and then it will start flashing yellow
You need to make sure that you don't have the USB plugged in, because if you do, it won't register that it needs to be put into Firmware mode
So once it's flashing yellow you need to put it into the controller and then into your pc and then start up the software
After you've extracted the Firmware to it's own folder, open up the executable file, if you plugged in your controller and the yellow light is flashing, you should see the button highlighted
Click on the "USB Update" button and navigate to the file you just extracted
You should see a "firmware.dat" file
Select that and it will tell you what firmware that file is, which in this case is 1.72 and what firmware your current controller is
In my case is 1.71
Click on "OK" and this will start the flashing process, don't touch the controller or PC until it's finished
Once it's completed successfully, it will come back with a message saying "Firmware upgraded"
Click "OK" here and now you can remove your controller
Now that we've gone through the firmware updating stage, what we need to do now is we need to jump over to the Pi to actually sync it with the Raspberry Pi Zero W
So in order to sync this with the 8bitDo controller you will need another controller or a keyboard set up so that way you can access the menus
So, once you've done that you need to get into the menu and then go down to "Bluetooth"
Once you're in the bluetooth configuration menu you need to firtly make sure "8bitDo Mapping Hack" is off
Next we need to make sure "Configure Bluetooth Connect Mode" is set as Default, if you go through this tutorial and it doesn't work
This what you will need to change to see if it works for you
You have the option of changing to boot or background, Default works for my particular Nes30 Pro controller so I'll leave it at that
Next we need to make sure the controller is on and we press the "Sync or pair" button so it's flashing blue like on the screen now
Once it's in "Pair" mode we can choose the "Register and connect bluetooth device" option
This will take a little while but eventually you should see a MAC Address come up, if this is the first itme you've done this then it won't have a name yet
So select this and it should come back as "being succesfully paired
Press "OK" but before we get out of here we need to do one last thing
We need to set up a new dev rule so each time the controller can connect properly, solect the "Setup New Dev Rule" and choose the 8bitDo controller
This will set the rule so each time we restart the Raspberry Pi Zero W will recognize the controller
So now that you've done that you can go back to the main screen and go to the start button menu
And here we con fo down to control and we can register the new controller by holding down "A" button
Go through and press the corresponding buttons, when you do get to the left stick and right stick buttons however, it can be a little bit tricky
so the first time you might wanna skip this and go back and do it a little bit later
So now that that's done you are set up but I'll quickly show you what happens when you do a reboot
Okay so you can see there that the 8bitDo controller is registered and synced with the Raspberry Pi Zero W so what I'm gonna do now
Is I'm going to go into the start menu, go all the way down to "Quit"
I'm just looking at my monitor offside so I can see what you're looking at
And we're going to "Restart System"
And say "Yes"
Ok, so, I'll hold this up here so you can see what's happening, but what will happen is that it will try and sync again
And because it's in the reboot more right now, it can't really do that until it fully loads up, so
On the Raspberry Pi Zero W, it does take a little while for the system to reboot or even start up
And that's due to it only having one CPU core and 512Megabytes of RAM
So the limitations between the Raspberry Pi Zero W and the Raspberry Pi 3 are fairly great
So, while this is loading I will tell you that you can get up to about Super Nintendo games emulated on the Raspberry Pi Zero W
Anything above that like Playstation and so forth, included Nintendo 64, it's not going to run that well
So we just saw the RetroPie splash screen
And now it's up to the Emulation Station splash screen, and you'll notice that the controller has stopped flashing
So, once it does move on
We're in the menu sytem now and if I press the A button
It'll start flashing rapidly and then stop, now it sync so if I press Start
There we go, it's re-sync after a reboot
Awesome
So one of the things with this 8bitDo controller is that it does require things to be done in a certain order and very specifically, so make sure you follow this tutorial
to the letter
Let me know down in the comments if you had any trouble with this, I'll see if I can help you out, also let me know if this worked for you down in the comments
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And as always
Imagine, Learn, Create