jstest-sdl

The jstest-sdl is a fork of the http://github.com/Grumbel/sdl-jstest. In this repository we have the SDL2 version only, and its name is jstest-sdl.c (in the original repo it is named sdl2-jstest.c).

The jstest-sdl is a simple program that lets you find out how many joysticks SDL2 detected on your system, how many axes, buttons, hats and balls they have each. They also lets you test the joysticks by displaying the events they send or by displaying their current button, axis, hat or ball state (this is a cool way to substitute the jstest).

(The README of the original repository says that "sdl-jstest is especially useful if you want to test your SDL_LINUX_JOYSTICK configuration." I'm repeating this info here, but I don't use this feature, it isn't usefull for my needs.)

Usage examples

Get a simple list of available joysticks with their respective index number:

[prompt]$ jstest-sdl --listsimple
0:Twin USB Joystick
1:Twin USB Joystick
2:ipega Extending Game Controller
3:8Bitdo Zero Game Pad

Now you can test the joystick input with the --test option and a joystick index number. Here is an output example of what I got using jstest-sdl --test 0:

Joystick Name:   'Twin USB Joystick'
Joystick Number: 0

Axes  4:
   0:      0  [                             #                              ]
   1:      0  [                             #                              ]
   2:      0  [                             #                              ]
   3:      0  [                             #                              ]

Buttons 12:
   0: 0  [ ]
   1: 0  [ ]
   2: 0  [ ]
   3: 0  [ ]
   4: 0  [ ]
   5: 0  [ ]
   6: 0  [ ]
   7: 0  [ ]
   8: 0  [ ]
   9: 0  [ ]
  10: 0  [ ]
  11: 0  [ ]

Hats  1:
   0: value: 0
  +-----+  up:    0
  |     |  down:  0
  |  O  |  left:  0
  |     |  right: 0
  +-----+

Balls  0:

Press Ctrl-c to exit

Now you can press the buttons and see the feedback. Those bars at the top are for analog directionals and the trigger buttons (usually R2 and L2).

Installation

jstest-sdl requires the following packages to build:

libsdl2-dev
libncurses5-dev

So, to install it in a Debian-based distribution:

install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev libncurses5-dev

download the code

git clone http://github.com/meleu/jstest-sdl

compile it

cd jstest-sdl
make

put binary at /usr/local/bin/

make install

Info from the original repository

Configuration

The SDL behaviour of what axis is treated as a hat and which as normal axis can be configured with the environment variable SDL_LINUX_JOYSTICK:

ftp://ptah.lnf.kth.se/pub/misc/sdl-env-vars

SDL_LINUX_JOYSTICK: Special joystick configuration string for linux. The format is "name numaxes numhats numballs" where name is the name string of the joystick (possibly in single quotes), and the rest are the number of axes, hats and balls respectively.

A simple example would be:

export SDL_LINUX_JOYSTICK="'Xbox Gamepad (userspace driver)' 6 0 0"

Which makes all axis be handled as normal axis and none as hat, as most games don't use hats.