[Solved] analog joystick dead zone

[Tichy]

Hi! Does someone know how to set the dead zone in analog joysticks on gnu-linux?
I use a Logitech extreme 3d pro. I roll and pitch with the x and y axis, and yaw twisting the stick. My problem is that the twist is very sensitive and it's too easy to activate the yaw movement by mistake.

I already searched for similar problems, but all I was able to find was windows related, i.e.: install the logitech utilities.

[CommRLock78]

Hi! Does someone know how to set the dead zone in analog joysticks on gnu-linux?
I use a Logitech extreme 3d pro. I roll and pitch with the x and y axis, and yaw twisting the stick. My problem is that the twist is very sensitive and it's too easy to activate the yaw movement by mistake.

I already searched for similar problems, but all I was able to find was windows related, i.e.: install the logitech utilities.

I guess the first question to ask is what distro are you using?

[Tichy]

I'm using Arch

[CommRLock78]

I'm a couple years from Arch yet (I'm still learning with Mint in the Debian branch), but I found this site. I hope it helps:
http://www.thelinuxblog.com/linux-man-pages/4/joystick

[Tichy]

I installed the X11 driver (xf86-input-joystick). When using the joystick in X11 as mouse and keyboard, the deadzone option works, but looks like the game ignores it. Maybe oolite hooks directly to the kernel driver, not the x11 input device.

[Tichy]

Problem solved! You need jscal and jstest ("joyutils" package in Arch's AUR). There's also al frontend called jstest-gtk.
Calibrate and set the dead zone with jstest-gtk. We need to set CenterMin and CenterMax values.
My settings:


Then you need to save these values, in order to reload them every time you plug the joystick. This is done by making jscal dump the actual values in a script file:

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jscal -p /dev/input/js0 > jscal.sh

Edit the file and add this on top of it

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#!/bin/bash

Make the script executable (chmod +x jscal.sh) and move it in /usr/local/bin

Now, we need to make this to automatically load every time we plug in the device. To do so, we'll make an udev rule.
Create a file in /etc/udev/rules.d and name it 85-jscal.rules (or something similar).
This is mine

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SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d", ATTRS{idProduct}=="c215", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/jscal.sh"

If a device matching these rules is plugged, the script specified in RUN+= will be executed. You need to adapt it to your device. To find your idVendor and idProduct, launch

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udevadm info --attribute-walk --name /dev/input/js0

or, with lsusb (Bus ... Device ...: ID vedor:product Name):

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Bus 005 Device 011: ID 046d:c215 Logitech, Inc. Extreme 3D Pro

The last thing to do, is to export an enviroinment variable that says to the SDL libraries that we are using /dev/input/js0 as joystick. Without it, Oolite would ignore our settings.
Put in your .profile or .bashrc or where you usually set your evniroinment variables that line

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export SDL_JOYSTICK_DEVICE=/dev/input/js0

ps. I hope that the guide is understandable. And forgive my grammar: english is not my native language.

[CommRLock78]

I'm glad you got it figured out ; sorry I couldn't be of much assistance.

[Tichy]

No problem

[captain122]

Wow. I have been searching for an answer to that issue for years. I just rediscovered my account here and the first thing I see is just what I needed. I am very impressed and happy! (Also amazed at how many of the old faces are still around and how many are long gone!)

[cybertiger]

Sorry for thread necromancy, but this solution is worth a sticky.

Calibrating joysticks in linux is non obvious and is not helped that SDL by default ignores your calibration (without setting SDL_JOYSTICK_DEVICE to /dev/input/jsX).

[hayden]

Does this fix work in windows at all, or purely Linux?

[Tichy]

Only gnu-linux.