Using GPIO Buttons in RetroPie To Make Your Own Game Controller or Handheld Console

If you're making a handheld Raspberry Pi games console with an emulator like RetroPie you'll want to connect some buttons to your GPIO pins to make a game controller.

In this video I'll show you how to wire up a controller, connect it to your Raspberry Pi and then use the GPIOnext software to allow RetroPie to use it as a gamepad.

Make sure you check out my website for more information, links and code for this project.

if you want to make your own handheld retro games console check out my full project page at...

GPIOnext GitHub repository

Buttons

Joystick

Prototype boards

[Hondarider]

This is exactly what i was looking for to finish my arcade machine project, thank you for the great video!

[epicFAILproLP]

I am working on a little gameboy advance arcade cabinett, this is exactly what I needed (and what I will use) eventhough I wanted to do it nativ with no extra software

Thanks for showing ^^

[iAmGrizzlyBear]

Glad I found this tutorial, been having issues with the adafruit arcade bonnet and honestly this seems a million times more simple especially for what I'm doing, just need 4 buttons. Thanks for the info! 😁

[KingALLO]

Thank you so much for this Video! I would have liked if you had shown more in depth how the Buttons are connected with each other but I managed to gather that information through googling and at the end it worked out exactly like you have shown.

[ama]

u r a star i m new to retro gaming n got raspberry pi from some one who didnt know how to use it and after days of search u made it easy thanks you

[idiedlastmonth]

I absolutely loved this. The amount of work went into making this video is inconceivable. Thank you so so much.

[tech.valiant]

Just stumbled upon this video when I needed it the most. Wonderful content!

[ddummer]

First search result popping up was this... and it was the solution! My table pinball machine is going forward. Many thanks. :)

[umutkayacan]

My man buildin a literally gaming console. Nicely done!

[rdean]

Wonderful job. Thank you for helping figure out a good GPIO program. Just an FYI. I have a pi 3 b, installed the base pi image and the install and setup of the GPIOnext would fail. I finally updated all the updates in the retropie_setup.sh. After all of the updates, the GPIOnext installed without a hitch. In case anyone has this problem. Great instructional.

[howforless]

Thanks, I didn’t need this for retro-pi, but instead for a custom radio tuner project, i needed to bind some keyboard keys to some custom front panel control, this worked wonderfully.

[joshuaplank]

This was super helpful. Thanks for laying it all out like that! What screen are you using? Most of the gpio screens I see use up way more pins than that one.

[TheFlatEarthChannelcom]

Thanks for the easy to follow tutorial!

[waynesmith]

now i know everything i know wow great video thanks :-
D

[invisainc-dpp]

This Tutorial I Wonderful It is easy to follow and everything 11/10👍

[damianzelazny]

great stuff, thank you for sharing ;D

[esotericsean]

So, I'm making a little RPi Zero 2 game console project, but the screen I found uses all of the GPIO pins (or at least I think it does). Is there a way to use the USB connection to connect buttons?

[rutu]

Not sure if i missed it, but what GPIO header did you use for the common? is that just ground?

[mgpmbass]

Thank you for this great tutorial! What display are you using? And is the setup the same with a RaspberryPi-4? Also, I want to make a miniature RetroPie multicade with swappable control panels. One will be a standard joystick and buttons, one will be using a Pim447 trackball and buttons and the other will be using a rotory encoder as a spinner and buttons. standard tactile buttons.

[yololollipops]

I'm trying to build controls for my own pi project, when you say you connect 1 end to 0v from the pi, would ground be suitable?