| Author | Thread |
User 06.08.2011 16:22:40 | PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused by Remote Buddy?) | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. I've been fighting with getting my PS3 gamepads to pair with my 2011 Mac Mini for the last couple of weeks and based on some other forum posts here, I believe my problems tie back to Remote Buddy (though, I'm perfectly willing to be wrong on that). When I try to pair my PS3 gamepads to my mac mini, I use the following process: turn gamepads off, plug them into mac mini using USB cable, press and hold PS button for 3 seconds, release PS button, unplug gamepad. On my 2010 Macbook pro which has never had Remote Buddy installed on it (tested in Snow Leopard and Lion), both a Sixaxis and Dualshock gamepad pair instantly using this method. On my 2011 Mac Mini running Lion, I get a popup asking for a pairing code (I've tried 0000-0010 and they all fail to pair). Lion correctly identifies the PS3 controller trying to pair, but it won't pair for some reason unknown to me. One of the reasons I'm speculating this may be a Remote Buddy issue is that I saw other threads here referencing similar problems with pairing a PS3 remote control (i.e. pairing code request popup appearing). At the advice of these threads, I deleted all bluetooth preferences files I could find (using all the directories listed on those threads, even the ByHost files). When I did this and rebooted, my sixaxis controller still generated the pairing code popup, but did successfully pair and was usable until I rebooted. At that point, using the same pairing process resulted in the pairing code popup and the controller would not pair. The dualshock controller also initially showed the pairing code popup and then paired successfully, but was not usable (tested in MAME OSX). I should also mention that I have remote buddy set to run at startup and is the only software I can think of that deals with Bluetooth that is installed on my Mac Mini that isn't installed on my Macbook pro (both running the same OS). I'm also running the most current version of Remote Buddy (1.18.1) in case that helps too. I saw posts from Felix back in 2007 and 2008 saying that PS3 gamepad support was on his to-do list so I'm hoping that either he can offer some suggestions on what to try next or perhaps someone on these boards has already successfully tackled this problem. I'll be glad to provide more information and/or test further and report back as needed. Thanks in advance for your help!
| These entries from the FAQ may be relevant to this topic: Hardware - Apple® Remote
To enable you to use all capabilities of the IR Receiver of your Mac®, Remote Buddy is using its own driver. In contrast, all other applications with integrated Apple® Remote support usually use the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.
As long as you're running Remote Buddy, Remote Buddy and its driver are responsible for turning the received button presses into actions. As soon as you quit Remote Buddy, this task is again handled by the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.
If other applications don't use the interface to the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem correctly, this can lead to the effect that nothing happens when you press a button on your Apple® Remote. For as long as you're running Remote Buddy, issues like this are covered by Remote Buddy and it's driver and are therefore not visible to you. However, as soon as you quit Remote Buddy, the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem is back in control and any issues caused in it by other applications become visible.
Therefore Remote Buddy is neither the cause of the issue nor is it responsible for it. Instead, the cause of the issue exists independently of Remote Buddy. It's located elsewhere and can also only be solved there.
Although our products can't cause any such issues, we're regularly contacted about such issues and asked for help. In order to make locating and fixing the cause of such issues as easy and efficient as possible, we've developed a free diagnostics tool: Remote Control Diagnostics. It can locate issues with a single click and will provide you with information about the issue as well as with instructions on how you can fix it.
Hardware - Harmony® Smart Control Hardware - Sony® BD Remote Control
There's a bug in the Bluetooth®-stack of OS X® 10.8/10.9 in the context of pairing a Sony® PS3 BD Remote. OS X® 10.8/10.9 will ask you to enter a PIN code when you try to connect your remote control. This problem is known by Apple®.
If you pair your Sony® PS3 BD Remote with your Mac® for the first time
- Use Remote Buddy's Setup Wizard to pair your remote control
- Restart your Mac® directly after the pairing was successful, while the remote is still connected.
- The remote should now work without problems.
If you've already paired the Sony® PS3 BD Remote with your Mac®
- 10.9 only: Try entering 0000 as PIN and reboot. If you're lucky, that was all you needed to do. If this does not solve your issue, please continue with the steps that follow.
- First, we'll need to remove the Link Key of your Mac® from the memory of your remote control. Since this remote control can only store one Link Key, it's as easy as pairing the remote control with another Mac®. To do so, open System Preferences > Bluetooth on another Mac® and pair your remote with it.
- All steps that follow should be performed on the Mac® that you want to use your remote control with.
- Remove - if it exists - the entry of your remote control at Remote Buddy > Preferences > Hardware ® Bluetooth Receiver. The entry usually is titled "BD Remote".
- If existant, remove the device "BD Remote" from System Preferences > Bluetooth.
- Delete the Bluetooth preferences files by entering the following in Terminal.app and hitting return (Warning: this deletes all information about all paired Bluetooth® devices):
sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist
sudo rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist
sudo rm ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.Bluetooth.*.plist
Please enter your admin password when requested. Then restart your Mac®.
- Use Remote Buddy's Setup Wizard to pair your remote control
- Restart your Mac® directly after the pairing was successful, while the remote is still connected.
- The remote should now work without problems.
Hardware - Wii™ Remote In order to automatically activate the Bluetooth® Receiver on startup, enter the settings, choose "Hardware", then click on "Bluetooth® Receiver". Finally activate the checkbox "Search for supported remotes on startup". Remote Buddy will then automatically look for remote control paired through the "Setup Wizard" on next startup.
| User 06.08.2011 16:44:01 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 3:22 PM, Daniel5 wrote: I've been fighting with getting my PS3 gamepads to pair with my 2011 Mac Mini for the last couple of weeks and based on some other forum posts here, I believe my problems tie back to Remote Buddy (though, I'm perfectly willing to be wrong on that). Hmmm. I can confirm under the same general circumstances not ever had PS3 Controllers working. Remote Buddy has always been installed and running. Mac Mini (1,1). Your suggestion about clearing the preferences files sounds good. Perhaps uninstalling the RB kext might make a difference. I have no idea. | User 06.08.2011 18:16:39 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. Perhaps uninstalling the RB kext might make a difference. I have no idea. Thanks so much for the quick reply! I'd be glad to try your suggestion as well, but I'm not sure how to proceed. Where would I find the RB kext? Is there a specific filename I should be looking for? Also, I've literally spent hours configuring Remote Buddy to work correctly with my Harmony 900 Universal remote (i.e. 9 virtual apple remotes, several custom behaviors, etc.) and I'd hate to lose all of that effort as well. Are there any files I should worry about backing up before this process?
| User 06.08.2011 20:06:02 | Re: Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 5:16 PM, Daniel wrote: Perhaps uninstalling the RB kext might make a difference. I have no idea. Thanks so much for the quick reply! I'd be glad to try your suggestion as well, but I'm not sure how to proceed. Where would I find the RB kext? Is there a specific filename I should be looking for? Also, I've literally spent hours configuring Remote Buddy to work correctly with my Harmony 900 Universal remote (i.e. 9 virtual apple remotes, several custom behaviors, etc.) and I'd hate to lose all of that effort as well.. Are there any files I should worry about backing up before this process? Settings are stored elsewhere. You're only going to loose them if you delete the RB settings files which are hidden in your home directory. The Remote Buddy kext should just like any other regular osx kernel extension. Theres plenty of info on the web about all of that. Or you can go into RB Menu -> Setup wizard and it gives a simple way
to un-install it. "Calendair" its called. Probably how I would do it.
Unless some special reason or occasion where you can't trust RB to do
it for you. [standard mail footer removed] | User 06.08.2011 21:06:43 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. Thanks for clarifying. I tried uninstalling the candleair plugin via the setup wizard per your suggestion and I got the same results (pairing code request popup) after uninstall/reboot and after reinstall/reboot. (BTW, thanks for confirming the settings would be ok, everything still works fine with my harmony remote). If anyone has any other ideas of things to try/check, please let me know and I'll be glad to provide more info and/or test and report back.
| User 06.08.2011 22:10:56 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. I may have clarified the scope of the problem and just wanted to pass along an update in case anyone had any other ideas. If I delete the com.apple.Bluetooth.plist file found in "/Library/Preferences/" (not ~/Library/Preferences/ as there is no com.apple.Bluetooth.plist file in that dir) and then reboot my machine, I can successfully pair both PS3 gamepads. They both initially show up in the Bluetooth OSX settings and I also receive the pairing code request popup; however, if I ignore the popup, it will go away after 30 seconds or so and the controllers work great in MAME. When I turn the controllers off and back on again, they pair almost instantly without any pairing code request popup appearing. However if I reboot my machine, I'm back to the same problem of getting the pairing code request popup and the controllers won't pair. At the end of the day, it's a technically a working solution but it requires me to delete a plist file and reboot if I ever have to restart my machine. Not ideal by any means, but working nonetheless. The last post I could find from Felix on adding PS3 gamepad support via bluetooth was back in 2007/2008 when it was on his to-do list, but I'd gladly be willing to pay an upgrade fee if PS3 gamepad support were added to Remote Buddy so I had a more functional solution to this problem :) | User 07.08.2011 22:21:01 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused by Remote Buddy?) | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. Thanks for asking. The only times that Remote Buddy *may* have any influence on the pairing behavior of devices is *while* you are running Remote Buddy's Setup Wizard to explicitly pair a device. And Remote Buddy has no influence at all on how a device is detected by OS X - particularly with regards to authentication. This behavior is completely controlled by the black box that the OS X Bluetooth stack is to all third-party applications. A few, quick thoughts, though: - the 2011 Mac Mini is one of the very first Macs to sport Bluetooth 4.0. This is a new chipset - and changes in the behavior of as well as bugs in Apple's Bluetooth stack realistically have to be expected. - the 2010 MacBook Pro still uses a 32 Bit kernel under Snow Leopard, whereas 2011 MacBook Pros use a 64 Bit kernel under both Snow Leopard. Both use a 64 Bit kernel under Lion. I know from customer feedback that the 64 Bit version of the Bluetooth stack under Snow Leopard had serious issues and compatibility problems for devices supported by Remote Buddy. Switching to the 32 Bit kernel solved these people's issues instantly. The 64 Bit version of the Bluetooth stack as used in Lion seems to be more mature, though - I personally don't know of any issues. - Apple has made significant changes to their Bluetooth stack over time. I have stopped counting how often changes to its internal behavior and device support have had effects on third-party software like Remote Buddy. - if I recall correctly, the PS3 gamepads require special setup via USB before they can successfully pair via Bluetooth. Since PS3 gamepads aren't supported by Remote Buddy at this point, I have no personal experience to share here. While I can't help you with your particular problem, I can't see how Remote Buddy should have any effect on a device it doesn't even know or support. I simply can't see any mechanism that could. If still in doubt, just uninstall Candelair and quit Remote Buddy, reboot and retry. With no byte of Remote Buddy's code running at that point, any and all chances of its influence are eliminated. However, since you'll have rebooted at this point, so will all chances of other software as well as broken state information inside Apple's Bluetooth stack. So even if you should succeed in pairing your device then, it still could have been something else and doesn't necessarily mean the issue stemmed from your use of Remote Buddy. Best regards,
Felix Schwarz
| User 08.08.2011 19:38:25 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused by Remote Buddy?) | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. Thanks for confirming Felix. While I admit I was hoping you might have an easy fix up your sleeve, I definitely understand that PS3 gamepads aren’t officially supported by Remote Buddy so I don’t mean to assign blame to your software that is being cause by the OS. I’m definitely not using the RB setup wizard when attempting to pair so it sounds like this issue has nothing to do with Remote Buddy. Also, just an FYI, there is a PS3 gamepad driver for OSX, but it appears that PS3 gamepads were (at one time) natively supported by Snow Leopard without any additional drivers; however, per your comments there may have been some changes to the software and/or mini hardware that have broken this functionality. Thanks as well for your insight into the Bluetooth stack differences in the new mini’s Bluetooth chipset and how the Bluetooth stacks differ from SL to Lion. It sounds like I don’t have any other options available at this point other than to wait for Lion Patch releases and/or purchase some other type of wireless gamepad that doesn’t run off of Bluetooth. In case you’re looking for unsolicited feedback on feature requests, I’d really love to see PS3 gamepads supported like the Wii controllers and PS3 remotes. Small review/plug inbound… That all being said, in case any potential customers are reading this thread, per Felix’s comments this doesn’t appear to be an issue caused by Remote Buddy software and in no way makes me regret my purchase of Remote Buddy. This software has given me almost complete control over making my Harmony 900 remote do pretty much anything I want it to do and has made my HTPC much more wife-friendly. Given the option of a do-over, I would purchase this software again in a heartbeat.
| User 24.08.2011 05:55:36 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused by Remote Buddy?) | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. Wow, it took me forever to find some information about pairing a PS3 DualShock 3 controller with a new 2011 Mac mini running OS X 10.7 Lion (yes, that was gratuitous keyword bait for other poor saps like me). Basically I'm in the same boat, and I have not installed RemoteBuddy at all (though I probably will soon, as I use Plex, Hulu Desktop, etc.) I have a unibody Macbook running a clean install of Lion (32-bit kernel), and the DS3 pairs easily after connecting the USB cable, pressing the PS button, and disconnecting the cable. But on the mini (64-bit kernel) I get the pairing passcode prompt. So it's a driver issue, either by virtue of 32 vs. 64-bit mode or the chipset difference. Shame really. Between bugs in Lion and new hardware quirks like this, it's a big step backwards from the "just works" I'm used to. If anyone is able to reliably pair a DualShock 3 with the new Lion-standard Macs, please enlighten us!
| User 24.08.2011 06:14:11 | Re: PS3 Gamepad Bluetooth Pairing Errors (Caused by Remote Buddy?) | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. By the by, I just checked system profiler and my 2008 Macbook is actually running a 64-bit kernel under Lion (cool, I guess). So apparently it's not a 32/64 issue. I submitted feedback to Apple (http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html) so to anyone else experiencing this, please do the same. Thanks! Looking forward to taking Remote Buddy for a spin soon.
|
|
