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May 16, 2017

Building RetroPie PiGrrl Zero Plus with Sound

Here is my entire build out of the RetroPie PiGrrl Zero Plus (WITH Sound) Retro Handled Gaming System.  What an awesome and a fun project to build; since my time is limited this took about 3-4 days to fully complete.  I did mess up in the beginning when I went to remove the the GPIO pins that come preinstalled.  I actually removed 2 pad’s from the board and I had to retrace the entire pad’s back to the build (this costed me a day in build time).

The device itself is pretty nice the battery time lasts about 1-3 hours depending on usage the buttons are clicky I actually went and installed soft buttons of A,B,X,Y buttons and kept the clicky buttons on the DPAD.  If you notice once I screwed down the screen the screws provided with the 3D printed build I over turned them causing the screws to come out of the plastic which pissed me off a lot.  I was able to sand the plastic down which made it less noticeable.
This can play almost anything from Arcade, Atari, Super Nintendo, Nintendo. Almost everything up til N64 (I tested playing Nintendo 64 ROMs it loaded them just could not handle them on the Pi Zero).

Here are the following guides I followed:
Main PiGrrl Build from Adafruit:
https://learn.adafruit.com/pigrrl-zer…

PiGRRL Zero Plus Build by Jpete (Jpete 3d prints most of the cases and hardware I used for this build he also helped me out a lot during this build).
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1769656

Some of the products I used:
Adafruit PiTFT 2.2″ – http://amzn.to/2qmOtML
Raspberry Pi Zero – http://amzn.to/2oFaEBi
PowerBoost 1000C – http://amzn.to/2qeVIHs
Battery Packs Lithium Ion Battery 3.7v 2000mAh – http://amzn.to/2pcdRa8
10x 6mm Tactile Buttons – https://www.adafruit.com/products/367
1x Slide Switch – https://www.adafruit.com/products/805
USB Mini Wifi Adapter – http://amzn.to/2ptDMLn
Tiny OTG Adapter – USB Micro to USB – http://amzn.to/2pcbowH
2×20-pin Strip Dual Male Header – http://amzn.to/2oQgaMK
Uxcell a13070200ux0794 SPST Momentary Push Button SMD Tactile Tact Switch, 6 mm x 3.5 mm x 4.3 mm – http://amzn.to/2oF8OAF

Products for the Audio
Mini Metal Speaker w/ Wires – 8 ohm 0.5W http://amzn.to/2oPXSvm
5Pcs 16mmx2mm 10K ohm Stereo Volume Control Wheel Potentiometer B103 http://amzn.to/2oTez9H
Adafruit Silicone Cover Stranded-Core Wire – 2m 30AWG White
http://amzn.to/2qfdhY3
Adafruit Silicone Cover Stranded-Core Wire – 2m 30AWG Yellow – http://amzn.to/2pGogN6
Adafruit Silicone Cover Stranded-Core Wire – 2m 26AWG Yellow – http://amzn.to/2pccqZr
Hakko CHP CSP-30-1 Wire Stripper, 30-20 Gauge Maximum Cutting Capacity – http://amzn.to/2ptt4US

These helping hands helped me out so much in this build
QuadHands™ Flex – Helping Hands Soldering Tool Add On – Add Four Flexible Metal Arms to Your Favorite PanaVise – http://amzn.to/2oT6nXg

PiGRRL Zero Plus Case https://www.etsy.com/listing/46545611…

PiGRRL Buttons https://www.etsy.com/listing/45984778…

PiGRRL PCB Gamepads https://www.etsy.com/listing/48642710…

PiGRRL Screw Kit https://www.etsy.com/listing/28069127…

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January 26, 2017

Faster RetroPie Scraping

Since I jump from different projects every single day I decided to purchase a RaspberryPi and try out the RetroPie emulation software.  The software allows for playing classic video game consoles such as Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari 2600, Atari Lynx, MAME Arcade games, Nintendo 64, Sega MegaDrive, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1 and many more.

I loved the whole idea that it would showcase the different games cover art.  However when you have over 3000+ games installed I couldn’t sit there for days and continue to hit the “A” button to download the correct metadata.  Since Google is amazing, I decided to browse for an easier method of grabbing all of the metadata.  I came across this blog by Stephen Selph

This is an auto-scraper that runs from a command line that supports:
NES, SNES, N64, GB, GBC, GBA, MD, SMS, 32X, GG, PCE, A2600, LNX, MAME(see below) ROMs

I decided to write my own tutorial on how to achieve this using his software.

Step 1.  The first step you need to do is make sure your RaspberryPi is connected to the internet either via Ethernet or Wireless (ethernet) preferred.

Step 2.  We now need to find out our RaspberryPi or RetroPie’s current IP address.  You can find this out by going to the main menu of the RetroPie interface and choosing “Show IP Information”.   If you can’t find this screen you need to go to your system console list and choose “RetroPie” this is how you access the RetroPie interface menu.  Choose “Show IP Address”.  You should now have your IP  i.e  (192.168.1.2)

Step 3.  Now you need to download Putty so you can SSH into your RaspberryPi / RetroPie.  Once you have downloaded and installed Putty, launch the Putty application and enter your RetroPi’s IP Address information.  Then Press “Open“.

Login as username “pi” and password “raspberry“.

You are now successfully logged in to your RetroPie

Step 4.   Next you want to make sure no instances of EmulationStation are running.  Type the following command and press “Enter“.

Code
ps-u-pi

If your screen looks similar to the above and you do not see “EmulationStation” your good.  If EmulationStation is still running you need to use the following command to End it.

Code
killall-emulationstation

Step 5.  Next we need to install the proper scraper script.  Navigate to https://github.com/sselph/scraper/releases Since i’m using a RaspberryPi 3 I’m going to install:  https://github.com/sselph/scraper/releases/download/v1.2.1/scraper_rpi2.zip.  Now we are going to use the following command to install the script to RetroPie.

Code
httpsgithub-comsselphscraperreleasesdownloadv1-2-1scraper_rpi2-zip

Type in the code above and press Enter, you should see something similar to the screenshot below.

Step 6.  We now need to unzip the script that we just transferred to the RetroPi.  Do that by type in the following command and pressing Enter.

Code
sudo-unzip-scraper_rpi2-zip-scraper-d-usrlocalbin

You should have something similar to the screenshot posted below:

Step 7.  Alright now that the script is installed and unzipped on your RetroPie, it’s time to put it to use.  You have 2 options you can scrape all the consoles or you can navigate to the specific console you want to scrape.  So in this tutorial I started with SNES (Super Nintendo).  Follow the following commands to get you there:

Code
cd-retropie

Running the last command once you are in the SNES directory will display all of the ROMs you have installed on your RetroPie.  Like shown below:

Step 8.   Now we are going to run the following Scraper command to scrape all the metadata for the SNES directory.

Code
scraper-thumb_only

You should now see something similar to the screenshot above.

Step 9 (Optional).  If you want to scrape all of your consoles run the following command.

Code
scraper-scrape_all-thumb_only

Once you reboot your RaspberryPi or RetroPie, you should notice all of your cover art successfully downloaded.

Additional Info

You can find the scraper here:
https://github.com/sselph/scraper

You can scrape all systems with this command:
https://github.com/sselph/scraper#all-systems

YouTube Video that Helped a lot:

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