I use a wired PS3 controller, have been able to map all the buttons I need.
Running Fedora 34 KDE on an old laptop.
Hi Folks,
Hope everyone is doing fabulous and are making some neat projects. We’ve recently planned out some new features and improvements we want to tackle for gamepad/joystick support in gSender and we are pretty excited about it. Here is a quick breakdown of some of them:
- Adding a dynamic component that looks like a regular controller layout to indicate which buttons are being pressed in real time on your gamepad. If your controller has a weird button map it will default to a list layout of all the buttons it has
- Adding the ability to set a lockout button on a gamepad, which will act as a button that activates/deactivates the shortcuts
- Adding the ability to set a modifier button on a gamepad, where pressing and holding it will activate a second set of actions you can have on the same combination (this is similar to the shift key keyboards use).
- Customize analog movements, where you can assign an action to a position
- Dynamic speed for the analog sticks. The harder you push the analog in a specific direction the faster the jog will be
- Adding an MPG mode, where you can use your controller thumbsticks to make incremental changes to jogging
Although these features above will make some great additions to the gamepad/joystick, there could be other features that some people would like. If you have any suggestions or requests please let me know I’m more than happy to take them into consideration.
Thanks!
Walid
3 Likes
Walid,
Thanks for the info and I have a suggestion for the future. What I was wanting to do is map the left stick to x/y (which is does already) and map the right stick to Z. That would mimic the controls of most video games that I’ve played. I have no idea how/if others would like that type of control or not, but figured I’d share the idea. I mapped the Z jog to the directional pad and that works well (I just need to retrain my brain a bit).
Another suggestion is around the probe shortcuts. Right now there is only a “start probe” option and it will probe based on what option is selected on the screen. I often do 2 probe runs, one for X/Y on the part and one for Z on the table. It would be nice to be able to shortcut to a specific probe action directly without having to go back to the screen.
I’ll keep playing with the setup and see if I have other suggestions. I have a lot to learn on the package overall still, I had been using UGS from 2019 until I saw this thread and decided to try your package. I like a lot of the features you and the team built into it, great work.
1 Like
What WIRED controllers have been tested and approved for use with latest gSender?
A specific wired controller we’ve tested out was the QUMOX Wired USB Gamepad, a PlayStation-like controller. We did notice some inconsistencies with it when testing it a while back which is why we don’t recommend it.
Another one is the PDP Gaming Wired Controller, an Xbox-like controller. It works quite well and we still use it today for testing at times.
We’ve also tested a PS5 controller via USB, and it worked fine.
The two controllers we do recommend are in the documentation here:
They are both wireless by using a USB dongle, but they work quite well and we confidently use them in our testing phases.
Hi,
I am trying to use an 8bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth controller under Mac OS (14.4.1) with Gsender (1.4.7) but it doesn’t recognize the gamepad.
I managed to make it installed on the os via Bluetooth but not to be detected by Gsender.
The controller is the following one:
Thanks!
It should recognize the controller, but being a Bluetooth connection might cause some connectivity issues. Could you try this online tool out and see if your controller is detected there or not:
Hi Walid,
I tested and the tester doesn’t recognize the pad under Brave 1.65.133 (Chrome) but does under Safari (17.4.1).
Even if detected under safari, it still doesn’t detect the pad under Gsender.
Weird. 
One additional thing, the tester does not detect the buttons correctly. On the letter cross (A,Y,X,B), the following are detected:
- B (low) instead of A (right) and vice versa
- Y (left) instead of X (top) and vice versa
All other buttons are correctly detected.
Hope this helps.
Yes, it sounds like this controller does not have support for macOS. It only mentions a few compatible OS’s on the website link you sent me, but no mention of macOS unfortunately:
You could try a wired connection and see if that helps as macOS sometimes has problems with Bluetooth controllers.
Hope this helps
Unfortunately this one only works wireless.
Too bad then that I am on macOs. 
Thanks anyway for your help.
1 Like
I see its wired. im guessing a usb wireless keypad would work as well. Do you set it up as a controller in Gsender? Im ordering off amazon this looks like the very solution i was looking for… also can you set a button for percision movements? or do you have to change the movement speed and use the controller?
It would be an awesome thing for you to make a youtube video showing everyone how you hooked it up and how it works… IMO 
1 Like
Pretty please… Mac user here
2 Likes
Welcome @Amorcito to the forum! Good folks and yes even a few Mac users here (I’m one). I use a simple mouse to move my machine. Works well, and was something I had floating around so no additional expense! Again, welcome!
Jake
1 Like
@walid_kayhan have you tested support for the F710 on a raspberry pi 4 running piOS bullseye or bookworm? When I attach the dongle the controller is picked up right away, but gsender doesn’t see it as connected. What is gsender looking for to connect, perhaps something specific in /dev/input?
Also, I’m using dmesg and lsusb to verify the device is “seen” by Linux, but I don’t know a good way to test the inputs, help here would be appreciated. Thanks!
Update: I got it working, as well as a F310 wired gamepad. I was trying to go through a remote session to add a gamepad and it was not being seen, but it turns out you have to add it through the same $DISPLAY that the main app is running on. I didn’t see any documentation about this so perhaps adding a blurb about my mishap in the user guide would help the next person. Thanks, gSender is great software!
2 Likes
@YAMLcase thanks for letting us know. Yes, we’ve not thoroughly tested gamepad support on the Raspberry Pi so our support is limited currently. I’m glad you were able to figure out the solution there, we’ll keep it in mind for the future with documentation.
Hi Walid! Thanks for reaching out and working to improve the Gamepad/Joystick functionality in gSender—it’s great to see this level of community support!
For anyone experiencing issues, it might be helpful to test your controller using an online joystick tester like https://gamepadtester.io/. This tool can help you check if your controller inputs are being recognized correctly and identify any potential hardware or compatibility issues before diving into troubleshooting within gSender.
If your controller works fine on the tester but not in gSender, it might help narrow down whether the issue is with mapping or software compatibility. Hope this helps! 
1 Like