Fail to recognice XBOX controller on Bluetooth

[lscheffler]

I do not know if this is related to #347 .

New Device: XBOX ELITE 2 controller

The error started on my comp today. I can turn the error on off in turning my XBOX controller on / off. All other devices are running. In special, it happens when the controller is connected via Bluetooth. So I have

• no XBOX controller -> all running
• XBOX controller connected via USB -> all running
• XBOX controller connected via Bluetooth -> error occurs

This is a dump of the messagebox showing the error - that what the log shows too.

---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
Uncaught exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "joystick_gremlin.py", line 1269, in <module>
   File "gremlin\joystick_handling.py", line 203, in joystick_devices_initialization
   File "dill\__init__.py", line 538, in get_device_information_by_index
   File "dill\__init__.py", line 357, in __init__
 UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe4 in position 42: invalid continuation byte

---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

This error is followed by the Failed to execute script messagebox.

Let me know if I can provide additional information.

[WhiteMagic]

This sounds like the controller gets a name that contains odd/invalid UTF8 characters when connected via Bluetooth.

[lscheffler]

It's a common MS XBOX Elite 2 Controller Nothing fancy (except, MS ....)

Anything I can provide / check?

The name I see in the BT list in the registry does not hold char 0xE4, and is shorter then 42 signs Name and LEName in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BTHPORT\Parameters\Devices are just 24 byte RegBinary) followed by 0x00

[akors]

Similar error happens to me:

My Controller is a Xbox Wireless Controller M.

My Windows Locale is set to de;Deutsch

[akors]

Would it break anything to just

https://github.com/WhiteMagic/JoystickGremlin/blob/54cf26ac7b3b8f3d4c3807e5af3f7ebb36be9125/dill/__init__.py#L357

- self.name = data.name.decode("utf-8")
+ self.name = data.name.decode("utf-8", errors="ignore")

[WhiteMagic]

Unknown without trying it out. I suspect that it might result in empty strings which could become problematic if places expect them to be non-zero. Also this won't fix the issue but merely hide it. Somewhere something isn't consistent enough with UTF and causes that problem, so fixing that would be the actual solution.

[lscheffler]

In general you are right.
But you agree that Microsoft will hardly change something because a third party tool fails? The error renders Joystick Gremlin useless if the XBOX ELITE 2 controller is connected via bluetooth. If there is a string, or a generic device xx is a minor problem. All my choice is now using the controller via USB, because else nothing works as expected.

[akors]

Would it break anything to just

https://github.com/WhiteMagic/JoystickGremlin/blob/54cf26ac7b3b8f3d4c3807e5af3f7ebb36be9125/dill/__init__.py#L357

- self.name = data.name.decode("utf-8")
+ self.name = data.name.decode("utf-8", errors="ignore")

I have FINALLY managed to build Joystick Gremlin with this patch (not so easy considering the age of the dependencies), and I can confirm that it does not crash anymore.