I'm trying to connect 2 third-party Wiimotes to my Steam Deck, but so far without success
I have tried to:
- Connect using the "Emulate the Wii's..." option, but the controllers don't want to connect
- Connect using the "Passthrough a Bluetooth adapter" (while following this official guide). While the controllers seem to stop trying to sync, they get stuck lighting all 4 light-indicator-thingy (sometimes non of them stay up) until the batteries are removed.
The Bluetooth adapter used on the Steam Deck might not be compatible with BT Passthrough. AFAICT it uses a Realtek chipset and historically their chipsets performs worse than their competitors (Mediatek, Intel, Qualcomm, etc)...
(04-21-2023, 07:24 AM)mbc07 Wrote: [ -> ]The Bluetooth adapter used on the Steam Deck might not be compatible with BT Passthrough. AFAICT it uses a Realtek chipset and historically their chipsets performs worse than their competitors (Mediatek, Intel, Qualcomm, etc)...
Even so, the emulated adapter doesn't work for me.
Realtek works way better than intel nowadays.
Some third party controllers are not seen by Windows at all, on this case only passthrough could help.
You will have to check if passthrough mode is compatible. And maybe force manually on dolphin vid pid of the adapter.
(04-22-2023, 12:01 AM)trihy Wrote: [ -> ]Realtek works way better than intel nowadays.
Some third party controllers are not seen by Windows at all, on this case only passthrough could help.
You will have to check if passthrough mode is compatible. And maybe force manually on dolphin vid pid of the adapter.
I'm using vanilla SteamOS and not Windows, and not using any adapter outside what is provided inside the Steam Deck. How can I tell if the passthrough mode is compatible? I can choose it in the controller config menu.
"Emulate a BT adapter" is guaranteed to work only with original Nintendo Wiimotes, 3rd party ones may or may not work (the latter is more common), but on the other hand it works with virtually any adapter compatible with Bluetooth 2.0+.
Bluetooth Passthrough has higher compatibility with 3rd party Wiimotes, basically anything that works with a real Wii should work with Bluetooth Passthrough, however it's
very picky about the particular BT adapter you're using and perfect compatibility is only guaranteed when using the
real Wii BT module modded to USB (so you can plug it on your device). If you've already tried the Linux setup instructions from the
Bluetooth Passthrough guide on your Steam Deck and couldn't get it to work, its BT adapter might not be compatible.
The Steam Deck is relatively new and we have little to no test reports about its Bluetooth capabilities. We know it has a soldered Realtek-based BT/Wi-Fi card and as I mentioned before, Realtek-based adapters generally don't work with BT Passthrough. It should work with the default "Emulate a BT adapter" mode but then that mode is not guaranteed to work with 3rd party Wiimotes.
In the worst case, you can try plugging another BT adapter with a different chipset or better yet, try using a real Wii BT module (requires some basic soldering skills) for perfect compatibility...
I tried it with an original Wiimote and an original-with-motion-plus-inside Wiimote, but both don't seem to work after waiting a few seconds to connect.
Remember to check continous scan when using emulated mode.
Anyway, I've contacted Steam Support about this issue (since the same controllers work for me on my Windows machine, using the same configuration on the same version of Dolphin), and this is what they had to say:
Quote:The Steam Deck development team is aware of the issue. The team uses a number of community sources to help investigate the frequency and severity of issues like this. These issues are continually being addressed through Steam Deck Updates.