Bluefruit EZ-Key - 12 Input Bluetooth HID, button Lag

[kpa62]

I've dropped about 120.00 on these boards and I'm getting worried. I've wired one up and when I play a emulator like Super Mario there is a slight lag in changing directions. it's making the game unplayable. Is there a firmware update or way to calibrate for a 1 to 1 button pressed?

[adafruit_support_rick]

This is bluetooth. There will always be a slight delay while the information is transmitted.
How much of a lag are you seeing?

[kpa62]

The lag is a delayed input depending on buttons pushed it's not normal. I use Bluetooth wiimotes in these controllers prior, there is zero lag like the ada fruit, the issue appears to be a bottle neck of inputs. press 1 key maybe 2 you seem to be fine, try holding a key down, pressing another to jump, another to run, and maybe one for a in game action and the input gets lagged by almost half a second or more, meaning when you try to jump you are off or the press didn't register fast enough and your dead. I can understand the lag over Bluetooth. but if there is suppose to be that much lag, then this chip should not be marketed for a SNES build, which is exactly what I did.

[adafruit_support_rick]

OK - that's not normal lag. I'll check into it.

[kpa62]

thank you.

[kpa62]

I've done a lot of testing, lagging I'm experiencing only seems to be with android, the quick response I get on the pc, I can't seem to get out of android. I've tried different emulators, they all seem to be lagging when inputs are sped up. my devices are agalaxy s5 , nexus 7 and ipad mini retina, the ipad mini . I have not been able to get a emu to see yet.

[adafruit_support_rick]

Well, I guess I'm glad to head it's not an EZ-Link problem. I don't know what to tell you about the androids, though. Sorry.

[adafruit2]

we know that android can work with the ez-key at fairly high speeds as in this tutorial (DDR sucks if its laggy!)
https://learn.adafruit.com/diy-wireless ... uit-ez-key
but also it isnt multiple-keys at once
but it sounds like its not the EZ-Key tho - could it be something else on the android is running to slow it down? maybe upgrade to 4.4? maybe try mapping the keys to other keycodes (who knows, might help!) not sure what else to suggest :(

Please let us know if you do/dont find a solution!

[kpa62]

Here's the solution, I been building Bluetooth controllers for years with wiimotes, i've learned a lot from hacking apart wiimotes including about signal and lag. I have also spent a set amount of years with Android. Heres what my digging into the problem found. I run Android Kit Kat on Both Devices. 2 Facts for new comers. 1 Wiimotes on android won't work past 4.1 due to changes in Bluetooth Stacks, they still haven't fixed it in Android 4.4 kit kat. In Android 4.4 they also created a New bug, Bluetooth was Tuned as well as Wifi, Wifi now blats out a 5ghz band causing issues in some Bluetooth keyboards. This chip unfortunately is a victum as well. How to solve it? turn off Wifi and the problem goes away. I'm still testing but performance has seemed to returned.

[adafruit2]

Thanks for the update! I've updated the EZ-Key faq

[inof8or]

Thats why my wii-motes stopped working! Haha, thats all I was using them for. Had some bouts of lag with my DDR set up and doing songs in challenge mode are a bit tough (though it was probably me being a bit rusty with DDR). Good to know turning wifi off will improve results.

[kpa62]

I'm still doing some testing, looks like nexus is doing ok but s5 and touch wiz still laggy. You can however use a bt/joystick gold app and a CSR Bluetooth dongle with OTG and bring wiimotes back to life on android. As for blue fruit, It hates touchwiz, wiimotes were the same. it seems Android with no overlays pure google and wifi off are the way to go.

[Amtias]

Seems not working on me :(
I did some testing on my Nexus 5 (5.0.1) and Motorola's Moto G (4.4.2). On both of them I start to turning off the WiFi and the turning on the BT, and it works with no lag. But only for 10 seconds or so... After that, don't know why but the controller goes laggy again. Then I turn off and on the BT and the controller and works for another 10 secs.

I am very frustrated...

[inof8or]

I don't know if there is an easy solution to this, a few months ago I tried to make a game controler like Noe and Pedro recently had on 3D handouts. Unfortunaly the lag was way to great to be usable on my nexus 7 and galaxy s4. Works great on my Linux machine so this is definately more of an Android problem then a problem with the EZ-Key itself.

If that is truely the case there is very little Adafruit can do. Even if someone fixes the Android bluetooth stack the update still need to pushed out to all these devices.

Has anyone had good expeiriences with EZ-Keys + android devices? Under what conditions?
I did have it working with the DDR pad and the Nexus 7, but there have a few system updates since I last used it.
game pad + DS/GBA emulator has not been effective enough to consider as working.