Trust GXT 542 gamepad on Linux

Motivation

These days I purchased two Trust GXT 542 gamepads. It started with our kids playing Super Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch at our friends’ place after christmas brunch and I thought that SupertuxKart on our laser projector at home would do the trick, too. However, my last gamepad was from 20111, and caused me to write joydevmap back then.

So in any case we would need a second and since my shiny new Lenovo Thinkpad X13 has only two USB type A ports – one sort of permanently allocated by a Yubikey 5 Nano – I was looking for new wireless gamepads, i.e., via Bluetooth.

Features

This is how I came to two GXT 542 gamepads by Trust. Their main features for our use case are:

Trust GXT 542 Gamepad with accessories.

Linux stuff

The gamepad worked out of the box on a T460s Thinkpad running Debian Bookworm. In the following I report on what I get on my Gentoo Linux on a Thinkpad X13 Gen 4 running kernel 6.12.8.

USB connection

You can use and charge the gamepad by connecting it via USB. When plugged in via USB cable then dmesg reports the following:

usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-1: can't set config #1, error -71
usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 6
usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
input: shanwan Android GamePad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:c3:00.3/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/0003:2563:0526.0010/input/input41
input: shanwan Android GamePad Consumer Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:c3:00.3/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/0003:2563:0526.0010/input/input42
hid-generic 0003:2563:0526.0010: input,hidraw7: USB HID v1.10 Gamepad [shanwan Android GamePad] on usb-0000:c3:00.3-1/input0

Note that there is an error reported, the USB device is removed, and on another try the gamepad is added. We can test it with jstest like this:

❯ jstest /dev/input/js1
Driver version is 2.1.0.
Joystick (shanwan Android GamePad) has 8 axes (X, Y, Z, Rz, Gas, Brake, Hat0X, Hat0Y)
and 15 buttons (BtnA, BtnB, BtnC, BtnX, BtnY, BtnZ, BtnTL, BtnTR, BtnTL2, BtnTR2, BtnSelect, BtnStart, BtnMode, BtnThumbL, BtnThumbR).
Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
Axes:  0:     0  1:     0  2:     0  3:     0  4:-32767  5:-32767  6:     0  7:     0 Buttons:  0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off  7:off  8:off  9:off 10:off 11:off 12:off 13:off 14:off

Here axis 0 and 1 are the x- and y-axis of the left stick, likewise axis 2 and 3 are the right stick, axis 4 is a continuous trigger at the right shoulder and axis 5 is the one on the left, and axis 6 and 7 are the x- and y-axis on the left cross direction buttons.

The reason for the initial error is described at ArchWiki: the gamepad enters the Android mode a fallback mode. It basically works also in the fallback mode but it comes at limitations, e.g., no working vibration, no working gyroscope (which would be axis 6 and 7).

I have not yet managed to bypass this issue, but since I run the gamepad via Bluetooth anyways, this is not a really an issue for me.

This is what lsusb reports:

❯ lsusb -v
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 2563:0526 ShenZhen ShanWan Technology Co., Ltd. Android GamePad
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            0 [unknown]
  bDeviceSubClass         0 [unknown]
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x2563 ShenZhen ShanWan Technology Co., Ltd.
  idProduct          0x0526 Android GamePad
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           1 shanwan
  iProduct                2 Android GamePad
  iSerial                 0
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength       0x0029
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0
    bmAttributes         0x80
      (Bus Powered)
    MaxPower              350mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           2
      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Device
      bInterfaceSubClass      0 [unknown]
      bInterfaceProtocol      0
      iInterface              0
        HID Device Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType        33
          bcdHID               1.10
          bCountryCode            0 Not supported
          bNumDescriptors         1
          bDescriptorType        34 Report
          wDescriptorLength     128
          Report Descriptors:
            ** UNAVAILABLE **
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0020  1x 32 bytes
        bInterval               8
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0020  1x 32 bytes
        bInterval              10
Device Status:     0x0000
  (Bus Powered)

Bluetooth connection

The gamepad can also be connected via bluetooth. A little plate at the backside tells that pressing “Home + R” initiates the connection.

This is what dmesg reports:

microsoft 0005:045E:02E0.000B: unknown main item tag 0x0
input: Xbox Wireless Controller as /devices/virtual/misc/uhid/0005:045E:02E0.000B/input/input34
microsoft 0005:045E:02E0.000B: input,hidraw7: BLUETOOTH HID v9.03 Gamepad [Xbox Wireless Controller] on 8c:3b:4a:a0:c6:92

This is what bluetoothctl gives us as info:

[Xbox Wireless Controller]# info
Device 83:50:28:B0:22:9E (public)
        Name: Xbox Wireless Controller
        Alias: Xbox Wireless Controller
        Class: 0x00002508 (9480)
        Icon: input-gaming
        Paired: yes
        Bonded: yes
        Trusted: no
        Blocked: no
        Connected: yes
        WakeAllowed: yes
        LegacyPairing: no
        UUID: Human Interface Device... (00001124-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
        UUID: PnP Information           (00001200-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
        Modalias: usb:v045Ep02E0d0903
        RSSI: 0xffffffd6 (-42)

Note that if you have “Bonded: no” then the HID profile will not be activated and the gamepad does not work. To fix this you have to pair the gamepad, which is done under the hood if you use the usual GUI bluetooth config tools under Plasma in Debian or so.

Then you can again run jstest and will now get something like this:

❯ jstest /dev/input/js1
Driver version is 2.1.0.
Joystick (Xbox Wireless Controller) has 8 axes (X, Y, Z, Rx, Ry, Rz, Hat0X, Hat0Y)
and 10 buttons (BtnA, BtnB, BtnC, BtnX, BtnY, BtnZ, BtnTL, BtnTR, BtnTL2, BtnTR2).
Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
Axes:  0:     0  1:     0  2:-32767  3:     0  4:     0  5:-32767  6:     0  7:     0 Buttons:  0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off  7:off  8:off  9:off

Now axis 0 and 1 are the x- and y-axis of the left stick, axis 3 and 4 the one of the right stick, axis 2 and 5 the axes of the left and right continuous shoulder button and axes 6 and 7 are the discrete x- and y-axes of the left cross direction buttons. Vibration works through the Bluetooth connection.

Final comments

There is also a gamepad test in the browser by this Gamepad Tester page.

I have also tested the xpadneo briefly. It basically seems to work but after connection it did stop to rumble (vibrate).

I can connect both Gamepads using Bluetooth and they work fine with SupertuxKart for the multi player mode. So far it seems to be a nice piece of hardware.

  1. It also was from Trust; the model is called Predator. ↩