Rasberry pi 2, what do you do with yours?

CiDeRmAn · 11-02-2016 08:25AM

Amalgam wrote: »

Amazing how things have progressed, going from needing an 'able' X86 PC to having something the size of a credit card, sipping a few hundred milliamps, at most.

The D&D arcade games on a Pi Zero blows my mind, loafing around Quirkey's in the early 90s.. I can finally have a go at finishing them.

I'm probably going to put my Zero into a NES controller, unless something else pops up in the meantime.

eddhorse · 11-02-2016 08:35AM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Little more time and I have a decent, working romset installed with Mame4all, now to configure the hdmi to vga and the resolutions for the cab and wire up the buttons to my ipac-type thingy to give me control.
Not looking forward to a few hours of crimping but, sure, it'll all be worth it in the end!
Hoping to have it quite neat, the RP2 tucked away under the CP in fact, get shot of the ugly PC next to the cab, and have ready to dazzle at the upcoming Beers!

What do you use to connect the RPi to the cab?
Ipac? Jpac? Hdmi->vga?

CiDeRmAn · 11-02-2016 09:06AM

eddhorse wrote: »

What do you use to connect the RPi to the cab?
Ipac? Jpac? Hdmi->vga?

No, its some Chinese one, basically it appears as a pair of joysticks on your device when plugged in, you just have to crimp in the button and stick inputs.
There were some issues with it in past versions of Retropie but they've been ironed out.
Best of all, it cost about €20 and works well, apparently...
We shall see.

eddhorse · 11-02-2016 09:07AM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

No, its some Chinese one, basically it appears as a pair of joysticks on your device when plugged in, you just have to crimp in the button and stick inputs.
There were some issues with it in past versions of Retropie but they've been ironed out.
Best of all, it cost about €20 and works well, apparently...
We shall see.

Link me up !

CiDeRmAn · 11-02-2016 09:25AM

eddhorse wrote: »

Link me up !

http://r.ebay.com/SYo7KR

eddhorse · 11-02-2016 02:40PM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

http://r.ebay.com/SYo7KR

Thanks, i already have one it turns out.

Steve X2 · 11-02-2016 02:45PM

For those having some problems or difficulties with retropie, definitely checkout raspicade. Much easier to setup, and much better in many ways.

Or, piplay.
http://piplay.org/

CiDeRmAn · 11-02-2016 03:01PM

Steve X2 wrote: »

For those having some problems or difficulties with retropie, definitely checkout raspicade. Much easier to setup, and much better in many ways.

Or, piplay.
http://piplay.org/

I'm looking for something that'll look good at VGA resolution.

Steve X2 · 11-02-2016 03:05PM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I'm looking for something that'll look good at VGA resolution.

Have a go at PiPlay.
You can config everything and upload roms via a web based interface if that's what you want.

eddhorse · 11-02-2016 03:20PM

Steve X2 wrote: »

Have a go at PiPlay.
You can config everything and upload roms via a web based interface if that's what you want.

How do you connect the controls then if you already have jamma setup?

Steve X2 · 11-02-2016 03:25PM

eddhorse wrote: »

How do you connect the controls then if you already have jamma setup?

You mean for MAME and the other Emu's?

Just do it via the onscreen setup, MAME should be good to go if you used defaults.

eddhorse · 11-02-2016 03:51PM

Steve X2 wrote: »

You mean for MAME and the other Emu's?

Just do it via the onscreen setup, MAME should be good to go if you used defaults.

I meant physically connect to the microswitches,

You have a jamma harness going to standard pcb and then an IPAC also connecting to your buttons and joysticks.

Would a JPAC not work to Rpi?

Steve X2 · 11-02-2016 03:58PM

eddhorse wrote: »

I meant physically connect to the microswitches,

You have a jamma harness going to standard pcb and then an IPAC also connecting to your buttons and joysticks.

Would a JPAC not work to Rpi?

JPAC works fine on the Pi. Just connect it and MAME works out of the box. You might have to config the other emu's.

Here's a vid I did a year or two ago on the Pi B+ connected to a JPAC with a fresh unmodded Raspicade install.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQNTG51FelE

um7y1h83ge06nx · 11-02-2016 05:30PM

Anyone on Retropie 3.5?

I'm no 3.4 and wondering if I should update.

Some people have had issues, see the comments here:

link

eddhorse · 11-02-2016 05:37PM

Steve X2 wrote: »

JPAC works fine on the Pi. Just connect it and MAME works out of the box. You might have to config the other emu's.

Here's a vid I did a year or two ago on the Pi B+ connected to a JPAC with a fresh unmodded Raspicade install.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQNTG51FelE

Great , JPAC it is , thanks steve.

Alcoheda · 11-02-2016 05:38PM

I have a model B+ which I mainly use for IRC logging. The power consumption is almost nothing so It's nice to have a machine that's always available and that you can ssh into from your phone.

KeRbDoG · 14-02-2016 12:54PM

One Pi2 working as;
- Weather Station - working as a weewx weather station by connecting to a WH1080 weather station
- House Room Temperatures - using a USB-WDE1 receiver and compatible wireless units, now makes nice client side graphs via highcharts
- FM Transmiter - a USB soundcard with its output connected to an integrated FM transmitter which can transmit around the house/garden whatever I play via the command line on the Pi (none of your GUI for me!)
- Wireless 'smart' home receiver WiP - have another USB adapter for more wireless sensors I've yet to get working, picks up my electricity monitors on my heating system and whole house. Proved to me that 1/3 of my house electricity use was my heating system (heatpump yokie)

Another Pi2 as a Kodi media player, CEC works great allowing me to use the little TVs remote to control everything. I really should sell one of the Apple MacMini units I have that do the same function, really overkill

Yet another one, a Pi B+ I think - it needs work again but acts as a games menu for a Sega Naomi NetDimm to allow yea select a game via a special wifi network that just displays a list of games, tap on a game and BAM! It pushes the ROM to the Naomi

Dr Bob · 15-02-2016 01:20PM

vaguely relevant but always had a few power problems with the older pi b+'s ..ie getting the undervoltage warning ( rainbow square) and the occaisional brown out ('fnaaaar')..I always figured the usb psu adaptor was the fault...turns out it was actually the cables..I got a highspeed charging cable and tried it and immediately eveything improved..eurogiant sell a "juice bank samsung charger cable" for €3 which is the one I used.

CiDeRmAn · 16-02-2016 10:18PM

Steve X2 wrote: »

JPAC works fine on the Pi. Just connect it and MAME works out of the box. You might have to config the other emu's.

Here's a vid I did a year or two ago on the Pi B+ connected to a JPAC with a fresh unmodded Raspicade install.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQNTG51FelE

Could you give me the raspian config to output properly across a HDMI to VGA convertor?
I'm having zero luck with this one here

Steve X2 · 16-02-2016 10:46PM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Could you give me the raspian config to output properly across a HDMI to VGA convertor?
I'm having zero luck with this one here

I don't have it setup anymore. But basically set the config output to hdmi at 640x480 @ 60Hz.

What type of VGA converter do you have? Active or passive?

Edit:
This is the sort I used
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/HDMI-to-VGA-15-Pin-Converter-Adapter-Cable-Digital-Analogue-006824-/191417779035?hash=item2c9163835b:g:pb0AAOSwmrlUvX2x

$_57.JPG

CiDeRmAn · 16-02-2016 11:36PM

That's the same one I have.
Feck, more experimenting needed.

Steve X2 · 17-02-2016 12:24AM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

That's the same one I have.
Feck, more experimenting needed.

But you are outputting 640x480 @60Hz?
Check it on a HDMI display and make sure its correct before moving on to the VGA.

KeRbDoG · 17-02-2016 11:19AM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

That's the same one I have.
Feck, more experimenting needed.

Steve X2 wrote: »

But you are outputting 640x480 @60Hz?
Check it on a HDMI display and make sure its correct before moving on to the VGA.

Just follow this guide for pushing VGA via a HDMI->VGA adapter. You edit the config.txt file on the partition which pops up when you put the SDCard into your main PC. Any issues Cider, pop up to me. We can discuss the benefits of creating an I-PAC type adapter to JAMMA edge board instead of directly wiring to buttons in a pre-wired and working cab that you prob don't wanna hack apart.

Use one of the following modes;
Mode 4 -> 640x480 60Hz
Mode 9 -> 800x600 60Hz

Even a YouTube video for yea

The Last Bandit · 17-02-2016 11:37AM

Hacking up a Jamma cable is a bad idea alright. Its pretty easy to build a Jamma edge to USB adapter, should still have the AVR microcontroller code somewhere if you want it.

CiDeRmAn · 17-02-2016 01:12PM

No hacking up a Jamma cable!
Just taking the taking the current button wiring, from the old school, non usb IPac, and wiring it into a USB encoder doodad instead.
The VGA can go straight into the VGA feed to the monitor, that can be disconnected from the video cable from the Jamma loom.

The Last Bandit · 17-02-2016 02:19PM

Actually now that I think of it, since you're hacking up the jamma loom now is an ideal opportunity to replace the old dirty monitor with a really nice new LCD 16:9 screen.

Its what all the kool kids are doing

CiDeRmAn · 17-02-2016 03:47PM

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Actually now that I think of it, since you're hacking up the jamma loom now is an ideal opportunity to replace the old dirty monitor with a really nice new LCD 16:9 screen.

Its what all the kool kids are doing

I'm not hacking anything!!!!

And, I was hoping to replace the Trisync with a 15" lcd monitor, using a coloured in cereal packet as a bezel.... get a few black markers at it.

Steve X2 · 19-02-2016 02:32PM

For those still having issues with MAME on the RPi. I've modified the720k's portable MAME a bit to make it a little quicker to boot and run and also cleaned up the interface graphics to make it look a little cleaner.
It's designed to replace those 60 in 1 type boards in arcade builds.

It's a locked version of MAME 0.37b5(running a modified version of MAME4ALL), all linux boot info is hidden so it boots directly into a list of MAME games. Or you can easily set it to boot directly into any game on the list.
The file system is locked, so there's a lot less chance of SD card corruption when the power is just cut to the Pi(as in if it was inside an arcade machine). You can temporarily unlock the file system to make changes and it will lock again on next boot.

I've made a version for myself with just a selection of the romset as I don't want all the games on a massive list. But I also did a version without roms, so it can be downloaded legally as it contains no copyright material.

Will post a link to that "safe" version here if anyone wants to give it a go.
It's setup for the RPi 2 right now, but a small change to the config.txt file will make it work on older PI's(but not the PiZero just yet). You'll also need a 32GB or larger microSD card as that's what I used to make this, so that's what WIn32DiskImager expects.

CiDeRmAn · 19-02-2016 02:40PM

Could you pop up a link to the file, thanks Steve.

Steve X2 · 19-02-2016 02:45PM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Could you pop up a link to the file, thanks Steve.

Yeah will do that a bit later. Need to stick it online, its 11.7GB zipped. Should have done it on a 8GB card, but I only had 32GB ones at hand.

Rasberry pi 2, what do you do with yours?

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