Hey all, a few questions regarding using a generic usb gamepad to control Carbide Motion 521. I tried using the gamepad pictured below (robbed from an old retropie project):
First, does CM only work with specific gamepads? If so, which ones?
Second, is there a setup process involved that I’m missing? I plug in the gamepad, windows pops me a notification saying it’s ready to use, I fire up CM, connect to and initialize the Pro, then go to the jog screen and…nada. No mention of the game controller and the buttons don’t do anything.
Per some threads on this topic earlier this year, I sort of expected it to just recognize the controller when it was connected and have some text on the jog screen saying the controller was enabled.
I have a very similar no-name gamepad and found Carbide Motion 521 would not recognize it so I tried the free version of Joy2Key. I was able to make it work when CM’s Jog Window is active except for smooth jogging when holding down the directional pad for an extended smooth move in X or Y. I experimented with the auto-repeat features of Joy2Key but could not find a setting that resulted in the same smooth jogging one gets when holding an arrow key down on a keyboard. I ordered a Logitech controller others has said CM does recognize.I am running a Shapeoko Pro and a Win 10 laptop.
Thank you @gcb and @Julien for your replies and suggestion of using a third-party app like Joy2Key.
I also read in a previous thread on this topic of people using a program called antimicro which seems to perform a similar function.
I suppose that will be the route I have to take to get this generic SNES-style gamepad working. I had hoped to avoid the hassle of mapping gamepad inputs to keyboard shortcuts as I had read CM now recognizes controller inputs natively. Ah well!
I ended up using antimicro to bind the gamepad inputs to the keyboard shortcut keys in CM.
As there doesn’t appear to currently be any shortcut keys to navigate + or - jog increments (number keys 1-4 are assigned to jog speeds, but there’s no way to go up or down to the next speed in the series) I just assigned the gamepad’s A/B/X/Y buttons to the number keys. L and R shoulder buttons take Z up and down. D pad of course moves X and Y axis.
Overall pretty happy! Not as elegant or as native as I thought it’d be, but using the third party app does indeed work.
Yes, life would be much simpler if @robgrz would expose the +/- jog increment buttons from gamepads as keyboard shortcuts.
Alternately, if there were a game controller with a simplified layout like to a gamepad, that would work using keyboard re-mapping — need to check if that would work for the 8bitdo N30 I just picked up.
