Pico Fighting Board

[Gunstar]

Essentially a GPIO breakout board for the Pico (Should be noted you can also solder directly to the Pico without the fighting board)


The board is open source: https://github.com/FeralAI/PicoFightingBoard

It currently supports the following formats:
- PC, Raspberry Pi, MiSTer, Android, Nintendo Switch, PS3, PS4 (legacy controller support)
- Select from 3 SOCD modes: Neutral, Up Priority (Hit Box) and Last Input Wins
- Default polling rate of 1000 Hz / 1 ms in all input modes
- Less than 1 ms of input latency
- Left/Right stick emulation via D-pad inputs
- Selectable input modes: XInput, DirectInput, Nintendo Switch

Prebuilt sold here ($25+Shipping): https://shop.feralai.com/product/pico-fighting-board/

Review here

[maxtherabbit]

nice!

[NoAffinity]

Wondering if this would work with the undamned lineup? Thinking it should. Might get one to test.

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[jd213]

Looks to be a much more affordable option than Brook's boards. It's more expensive than the so-called Zero Delay boards but those actually have a fair bit of lag. Would get this if I didn't already have a stick with a Brook PS4 board.

[BrianC]

When I saw "pico", I was wondering why a fighting board was being made for a children's system with a touch pad. I'm glad that's not actually the case.

[bobrocks95]

What exactly does "PS4 (legacy controller support)" mean? Certain games accept Dualshock 3's or something and that's what it shows up as?

[buttersoft]

cheers for sharing! I have a few Pico's i'm looking to use, so this is great.

[Konsolkongen]

What exactly does "PS4 (legacy controller support)" mean? Certain games accept Dualshock 3's or something and that's what it shows up as?

It means that it doesn’t have PS4 support at all really. Some PS4 games (far from all) will allow you to use a PS3 stick, and unless I’m misunderstanding it’s only these titles the Pico board will work with.

The Pico board seems very interesting. Super cheap and with lag that low it will be an essential upgrade for Nintendo Switch sticks, because god knows that thing could use all the lag reduction you can throw at it

I am hoping that we will see more systems added to the Pico board in the future.

[NoAffinity]

Got my pico board today.

https://shop.feralai.com/product/pico-fighting-board/

Very easy hookup. The video I watched about it mentioned the terminal labeling being confusing. Not sure if the boards are now relabeled, but it couldn't be simpler - 1p, 2p, 1k, 2k, start, select, grounds, etc.

I hooked it up straight out of the box. Havent checked to see if theres a firmware update. Tested only with a undamned usb on a supergun, and it worked flawlessly in ps3/dinput mode. Responsiveness is noticeably very clean - fast and no dropped inputs that I could detect.

That's all I have to report about it at the moment. Great product for $25.

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[Gunstar]

Got my pico board today.

https://shop.feralai.com/product/pico-fighting-board/

Very easy hookup. The video I watched about it mentioned the terminal labeling being confusing. Not sure if the boards are now relabeled, but it couldn't be simpler - 1p, 2p, 1k, 2k, start, select, grounds, etc.

I hooked it up straight out of the box. Havent checked to see if theres a firmware update. Tested only with a undamned usb on a supergun, and it worked flawlessly in ps3/dinput mode. Responsiveness is noticeably very clean - fast and no dropped inputs that I could detect.

That's all I have to report about it at the moment. Great product for $25.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Thanks for sharing your initial experience/impression with this! I'll probably try and build the board at some point assuming it will be cheaper than importing a pre-built.

[NoAffinity]

I also tested pc/xinput mode in conjunction with the undamned usb. It too worked flawlessly.

I will probably test switch mode this weekend.

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[Konsolkongen]

I installed this in a RetroBit USB Mega Drive controller today. Not having any luck accessing the web configurator on Mac or Windows in VMware.

Does it work fine on a regular Windows PC?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... G_1126.JPG

[NoAffinity]

I installed this in a RetroBit USB Mega Drive controller today. Not having any luck accessing the web configurator on Mac or Windows in VMware.

Does it work fine on a regular Windows PC?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... G_1126.JPG

I'll check it out tonight after work. Haven't tried accessing it yet, myself, because the board seem to be working great out of the box.

On that note, I tested switch mode as well. Works great, as expected.

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[Konsolkongen]

Thank you

[NoAffinity]

Thank you

I tested it out, and yes, web configuration works.

It didn't work on the first plug in. And, it took about a minute for my PC to do the usual "new hardware connected" sound. But, I unplugged and tried again, the PC made the sound right away, and the web configurator came right up.

Following the below instructions, for reference.

1. Hold START while plugging the controller into a computer.
2. Open a browser and navigate to http://192.168.7.1

I saw other instructions that referenced the button as S2, which looking on the button assignment chart, is start (or + in switch mode...same button). But maybe you have things wired uniquely in your application, so that might be something to double check.

[Konsolkongen]

Thank you for confirming. I am using S2, and the controller works fine with both Switch and OpenEmu on Mac. There are reports of poor compatibility with web configuration and Macs on github, but I thought that Windows in VMware would bypass that, but obviously not.

It’s not a big deal, but I hope it can be improved one day

[buttersoft]

Web configurator works fine for me as well, FYI.

TBH i'd love it if they'd also make a version using more dinput buttons. There's enough IO for direct input that i could power a 2p/6-button arcade cab from one Pico... I'd need 24 inputs in total, though it hardly matters which key is which.

[Konsolkongen]

On Windows, right?

I've tried the new firmware and the beta one too, but I can't get it working here. Even tried on a Raspberry Pi 400

It's not the first time I've seen Macs not working with these things. I hope they can get it working eventually because it's a neat feature

[buttersoft]

Yeah, i'm on Win10

[Konsolkongen]

Great, I think that confirms the Mac is the problem on my end

[feralai]

Great, I think that confirms the Mac is the problem on my end

GP2040 and PFB dev here. Unfortunately the USB network protocol the web configurator uses isn't natively compatible with Mac and Linux (it's an MS protocol called RNDIS). I did create an enhancement request on the firmware repo to add compatibility for other operating systems, however that's probably a ways out from completion unless someone else picks it up since I have a bunch of other features ahead of it in the priority queue.

Also happy to answer any other questions and take suggestions you all might have.

[NoAffinity]

Great, I think that confirms the Mac is the problem on my end

GP2040 and PFB dev here. Unfortunately the USB network protocol the web configurator uses isn't natively compatible with Mac and Linux (it's an MS protocol called RNDIS). I did create an enhancement request on the firmware repo to add compatibility for other operating systems, however that's probably a ways out from completion unless someone else picks it up since I have a bunch of other features ahead of it in the priority queue.

Also happy to answer any other questions and take suggestions you all might have.

Hey great, thanks for jumping in here!

One request: make a way to update firmware through web configurator. My board is installed in a fight stick which requires loosening screws to access it. Ergo, in order to press the bootsel button, I have to remove a fastened panel, which is a bit inconvenient.

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[Konsolkongen]

Great, I think that confirms the Mac is the problem on my end

GP2040 and PFB dev here. Unfortunately the USB network protocol the web configurator uses isn't natively compatible with Mac and Linux (it's an MS protocol called RNDIS). I did create an enhancement request on the firmware repo to add compatibility for other operating systems, however that's probably a ways out from completion unless someone else picks it up since I have a bunch of other features ahead of it in the priority queue.

Also happy to answer any other questions and take suggestions you all might have.

Hey thank you for your response. There's no rush, I can imagine more exciting improvements than my Mac working with the web configurator

One thing, would it be possible to add button combos as a substitute for the Home Button? The MC Cthulhu had this feature where you could press Start + Select to act as the Home button.

This is asking a lot, but ideally this feature should be customisable, as some controllers don't even have a Select button. I'm planning to install this inside a Retrobit Saturn USB pad too. In this case something like L+R+Start = Home would be better I think.

...perhaps it could even use another separate button combo to substitute a Select button

[feralai]

One request: make a way to update firmware through web configurator. My board is installed in a fight stick which requires loosening screws to access it. Ergo, in order to press the bootsel button, I have to remove a fastened panel, which is a bit inconvenient.

There's a currently undocumented way to get into bootloader mode via hotkeys. Hold SELECT + START + UP while plugging in and it should start in USB mass storage mode (bootloader/flash mode). I'll look into ways to automatically update via the configurator, but knowing what's available in the Pico SDK it might be a hacky workaround type thing.

One thing, would it be possible to add button combos as a substitute for the Home Button? The MC Cthulhu had this feature where you could press Start + Select to act as the Home button.

This is asking a lot, but ideally this feature should be customisable, as some controllers don't even have a Select button. I'm planning to install this inside a Retrobit Saturn USB pad too. In this case something like L+R+Start = Home would be better I think.

...perhaps it could even use another separate button combo to substitute a Select button

The same SELECT + START + UP shortcut from above can be used to trigger a Home button press while in use. All the current hotkeys are listed at https://gp2040.info/#/usage. I'm currently working on a large button remapping refactor, so remapping any key including hotkeys triggers (like SELECT + START, called function buttons in GP2040) will be adjustable when finished. No ETA, but it is the top priority and likely at least several weeks out.

[Konsolkongen]

Thank you I had completely missed that page

Good to learn that this was already implemented

[buttersoft]

Cheers fun jumping on here, feralai! Well, I filed my request for more buttons on the github issues page, as you saw. I tried looking at the code but i can't seem to see how to do that. If it's not hard, i'd be happy to help out. If it adds lag by lengthening the scan, it might be nice to have a way to enable and disable extra buttons, but that is definitely beyond my capabilities at this stage

Some of the features already there are really nice. I find that playing Tekken 7 means i have to have both dpad (menus) and left analog sticks (game) active, and being able to switch between is nice. I'd actually love to be able to set a ground state, so each time i reset the cab it boots back into dpad mode, and i can change it to left-analog when needed.

[feralai]

Cheers fun jumping on here, feralai! Well, I filed my request for more buttons on the github issues page, as you saw. I tried looking at the code but i can't seem to see how to do that. If it's not hard, i'd be happy to help out. If it adds lag by lengthening the scan, it might be nice to have a way to enable and disable extra buttons, but that is definitely beyond my capabilities at this stage

Haha yeah I saw this thread come up on a search and figured I'd drop in

Regarding the extra buttons, adding them shouldn't substantially affect performance. Extra buttons would be defined in the USB descriptors of the MPG library dependency. If you want to take a stab at it and need a hand you can hop in our Discord and we can discuss further.

Some of the features already there are really nice. I find that playing Tekken 7 means i have to have both dpad (menus) and left analog sticks (game) active, and being able to switch between is nice. I'd actually love to be able to set a ground state, so each time i reset the cab it boots back into dpad mode, and i can change it to left-analog when needed.

The last Dpad mode does get saved, but I get what you're saying where you want a certain setting to persist instead of retaining the last mode. This would also be a great feature request

[buttersoft]

Regarding the extra buttons, adding them shouldn't substantially affect performance. Extra buttons would be defined in the USB descriptors of the MPG library dependency. If you want to take a stab at it and need a hand you can hop in our Discord and we can discuss further.

Sorry for not replying sooner! I saw your post, but life and back-to-school for the kids has kept me pretty busy. I've taken a look at the MPG library and remain somewhat confused. I'll try to drop into the Disc tonight, but I'm in Aus, so there might be a timezone mismatch to contend with I'm sure we can work something out.

[buttersoft]

Well, i haven't gotten around to really looking at the code yet, but...

Has anyone else tried the GP2040 encoder? I installed one on my Tekken 7 setup, and it feels kinda... weird, is the best way to describe it. The GP2040 pico is either noticeably slower than my Daemonbite 1ms pro micro encoder, or it's so much faster my habits are off, and i have time to draw breath between inputs where i never did before. To be honest it feels like the latter, but it would be nice to hear other opinions or take a look at any lag tests vs other encoders.

EDIT: i should probably rephrase and say that while i've seen the initial lag results published about the GP2040, something about it feels different. Maybe to do with debouncing, or... i'm really not sure. Again, it doesn't seem bad, it's just different.

[NoAffinity]

For me, its perceptibly a slight bit faster than other encoders. I am used to adjusting depending on which of my 7 sticks I fancy playing on for a particular game pairing and/or factors like online lag. Tje pick requires adjusting in the "right" direction - shortening the gap between perception and input.

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