raspberrypi – L5J.NET

Everything I Used for My RetroPie RaspberryPi Bartop Arcade

Justin Ide — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 15:08:00 +0000

In January 2017 I learned about RetroPie and RaspberryPi emulation. I first started off creating a RaspberryPi that connected to my TV and used the Wii PRO Controller. I’ve always been into emulating old classic consoles however it never seemed right playing them on my phone or computer. After I tested different images and different components I started reading up on bar top arcades.

In March of 2017 I’ve watched tons of Youtube videos and joined several different Facebook groups where users have already created their own bartops. I started to plan out and piece everything I would need to purchase to make a complete RetroPie Bartop Arcade machine.

My bartop arcade is running a RaspberryPi Model 3 board using RetroPie/EmulationStation/HyperPie

The Outside

T-Molding Cuts Included! – MDF Bartop Arcade Cabinet – Do It Yourself Kit

I’m not that great with cutting wood so I decided to order a premade bartop that was already cut to hold a 19″ monitor and the T-Molding was already cut out. I watched YouTube videos were people have entire work-shops setup in their garage. Even tho this was precut and you would think everything should just fit we had to a lot of different modifications.

Purchased On: eBay

Price: $85.00

20ft of 3/4 Chrome T-Molding for Arcade Games, Mame Machine, or Cabinets

Since the pre-cut bartop MDF board we purchased already had the T-moldings cut this was easy to install. We installed the T-molding after the entire bar top arcade was completed.

Purchased On: eBay

Price: $13.00

Bubble Bobble “B” Arcade Marquee 26″x8″

I had to do a lot of modifications to make this fit. Lets face it if I did my own cuts and measurements I wouldn’t of had to modify however this was my first bartop arcade build. I also used a pre-cut bartop layout MDF board that was already cut so we had to do a lot of hacks to get everything to fit correctly.

Purchased On: eBay

Price: $18.00

RockStar Print

I ordered all the Vinyl’s from the side art, bezel, controls from Rockstarprint the price was great the only problem is they ship from the United Kingdom with USPS. Which took a little more then 2 weeks to get to me. Again the sizing was off since this was a bartop, so we used the best pieces and just cut off the excess. I used a heat gun on very low heat to get the vinyls to stick nice to the mdf particle board.

Purchased On: RockStarPrint.co.uk

Price: $18.00

The Inside

SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC

If you are using HyperPie or any other image I’d recommend using a 128GB card, or 256GB card.

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $40.45

WINGONEER Protector case for Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

Awesome case for the price also allows for cooling.

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $9.99

CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 Kit with Clear Case and 2.5A Power Supply

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $49.99

Sunnest 16.4ft 5M Waterproof Flexible LED Strip Lights 5050SMD RGB 300 LED Color Changing LED Strip Kit with 44Key Remote+12V 5A Power Supply+IR Control Box

I placed this behind the marquee banner so this way I could change the color or fade between different colors.

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $19.99

Easyget 2 Player LED Illuminated Arcade Game DIY Parts Kit for USB MAME & Raspberry Pi RetroPie Cabinet DIY Color: Red + Yellow

These actually came out awesome and was super easy to map. The hardest part was my precut arcade MDF board I had to purchase a router to route the wood so the joy sticks would stick up higher.

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $65.00

2 Ports Dual USB 3.0 Male to USB 3.0 Female AUX Flush Mount Car Mount Extension Cable for Car Truck Boat Motorcycle Dashboard Panel -(3 Feet)

I purchased this after I pretty much had the entire bar-top arcade assembled. I never actually installed it yet but I figured this would be an awesome idea to charge your keyboard or another device off the back of the arcade cabinet.

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $11.99

The Audio

The audio was a key part to the build because I wanted to be able to control the volume. So I figured if I purchased an Amplifier wired up a potentiometer I could place the volume knob where ever I wanted. It actually worked out to easy and sounds amazing I’m happy I spent all of the money on good speakers and good hardware it paid off in the end. So basically I took apart the amplifier, desoldered the volume potentiometer and ran wires to the bottom of the cab. I also had to use an external usb device more info here.

ONEU Mini amplifier Super Bass Hi-Fi Stereo Audio Amp Booster for Car Moto Home with DC 12V 3A Power Supply, Black

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $19.99

RCA Cable, iXCC 6ft Dual Shielded Gold-Plated 3.5mm Male to 2RCA Male Stereo Audio Y Cable

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $7.99

Rockford Fosgate R14X2 R14X2

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $27.49

Plugable USB Audio Adapter with 3.5mm Speaker/Headphone and Microphone Jacks

More information on how to install this here.

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $7.79

2-pack 500KOhm Long-Shaft Guitar Volume Potentiometers (Pots) – Audio-Taper

Purchased On: Amazon

Price: $6.99

YMC Chrome-Dome-Knob-4pc 4 Pieces Chrome Brass Dome Knob for Etc Guitar or Bass

Purchased On: Amazon

Price: $6.31

Cabinet Cooling

This totally was not necessary however I thought it added so much character to the bar-top arcade. Throughout all the builds I looked at I didn’t see one build with any type of cooling. I did some google and amazon searches and found this product. Plugged it into the power strip and it works perfect.

AC Infinity AIRPLATE T7, Quiet Cooling Fan System with Thermostat Control, for Home Theater AV Cabinets

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $59.99

Display

The display work was the hardest part of getting the bartop arcade completed. At first it was hard to figure out how we were going to mount the monitor on the inside. I should have left it inside the case and just left it as that however since we already disassembled everything we had to get a piece of plexi-glass (purchased from Homedepot or Lowes) on the top and we used pieces of vinyl around the bezel. For some reason when display turned on. You would have to press a button to exit out of the display menu. I noticed however if I held down one of the buttons it would bypass this. So I soldered all (4) legs of the toggle button which bypassed the menu.

GATEWAY TFT19W80PS+ 19″ WideScreen LCD Monitor Black w/Speaker Bar & VGA Cable

Since I knew my pre-cut MDF board would hold a 19″ screen I found a nice LCD screen on eBay for cheap. I actually removed the entire enclosure of the screen then placed a piece of wood over the back and inserted screws through the mounting hardware of the screen.

Purchased on: eBay

Price: $34.00

Premium 10Ft. HDMI Male to DVI-D 24+1 Male Gold Adapter Cable HDTV LED LCD Cord

Purchased on: Amazon

Price: $8.89

Power

Powering the device was easy I knew I needed a big power strip and a rocker switch so the machine turns on everything with the flip of a switch. Wiring the rocker switch was a little difficult there actually wasn’t that much information available since it was an eBay auction. However I did figure out the correct pin out.

C2G / Cables To Go 14719 18 AWG Universal Power Cord for NEMA 5-15P to IEC320C13, Black (25 Feet/7.62 Meters)

I wanted a long cord especially for testing and getting everything setup so I could virtually plug this thing anywhere in the house and no one would trip over the cord.

Purchase On: Amazon

Price: $12.62

1x Green LED Rocker Switch Fuse Holder IEC320 C14 Inlet Power Socket AC250V 10A

Make sure you put the fuse in the one I purchased actually didn’t come with the fuse installed which caused some minor headaches.

Purchase On: eBay

Price: $6.99

Other

LANMU 48CM TF to Micro SD TF Flex Zip Extension Cable Memory Card Extender Cord Linker

This came in handy so much, since I was constantly making changes to my SD-Card and apply different images and different tests to the card it was much faster to edit the card then to make my changes via WiFi and FTP. This cord would fit perfectly into the RaspberryPi 3 and I had it hanging out the back until the image was finally complete. Definitely purchase one of these it will save you a lot of hassle.

Purchase On: Amazon

Price: $7.99

Eco-Fused Memory Card Carrying Case / Suitable for SDHC and SD Cards / 8 Pages and 22 Slots / Microfiber Cleaning Cloth Included (Black)

Since I was constantly switching images from Rey’s img, to HyperPie, trying to find the best one. I have a ton of SD-Cards I bought a little storage case so I could label all the different IMG’s I had.

Purchase On: Amazon

Price: $7.09

Rii Mini Wireless 2.4GHz Keyboard with Mouse Touchpad Remote Control, Black (mini X1)

This is another must have device. I purchased one of these just so I can leave it dedicated to the bartop arcade. Trust me it’s a pain in the ass when your at command line and you have to take everything apart to plug in a USB keyboard.

Purchase on: Amazon

Price: $16.99

Completed

RaspberryPi – RetroPie | Bat script to Reboot RaspberryPi

Justin Ide — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 19:28:20 +0000

If you are using your RaspberryPi / RetroPie and you would like an easy way to reboot from your computer you can easily write the following command to a Windows bat script.

If you prefer you can skip all this and download the already assembled BAT file below.

Step 1. Open up a note pad copy the commands below.

Code

reboot-retropie-bat

Step 2. Click on File -> Save As (Be sure under Save as type you choose “All Files“) so it does not save as a .TXT document.

Step 3. Now you can simply double click the bat file and I believe it will Reboot all RaspberryPi’s connected to your network.

PiGrrl Zero Plus Helpful Documents

Justin Ide — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 15:46:02 +0000

When I was creating my PiGrrl Zero plus with sound I had several helpful documents that I made to map out the pins on the GPIO.

I was cleaning up files on my computer and before I deleted them I wanted to post them.

The picture below is the mapping of a RaspberryPi B board.

This is the wiring setup for the PiGRRL Zero Plus board.

This is a diagram I created to help easily wire everything to the GPIO.

[Review] Nintendo Wii U Pro Controller with RetroPie

Justin Ide — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 21:31:13 +0000

Since I have been dabbling in the whole RaspberryPi / RetroPie / EmulationStation world, I wanted to have the best wireless controller. Why? because it’s not the 90’s any more and people aren’t sitting on the floor in front of their televisions. My TV is mounted above the fire place on the wall so to have a silly USB cable coming down while my two kids are running around isn’t practical.

I also wanted a bluetooth wireless controller that was just going to work and always work even if I had to spend $30-40 bucks. I’ve tried over 10 different controllers from 8bitdo, to Dualshock PS3, and the OEM Xbox 360 controller. Out of every single controller I tried I always went back to the Nintendo Wii U PRO. It just felt right in my hands, the controls and buttons are perfect there is no delay. I even left the system running for 8 hours I came back and the controller was still powered on and responsive.

I’m a huge fan of Nintendo 64 emulation so I’ve been looking for a system that could handle the ROMs and emulators on the big screen. I’ve tried the Raspberry Pi2 which was still laggy but after testing the RaspberryPi3 it seems the lag has gone down tremendously. One of my favorite games is Mario Kart 64 and the controller feels perfect. It’s not the same as an official 64 controller with the Z trigger on the bottom or shape. Instead the controls are your RB/LB buttons and gas utilizes the B button.

So out of all the controllers I demoed I will have to this is by far the best for use with the RetroPie/EmulationStation. Be sure to make sure you by the official OEM version as there are several knock-offs.

You can purchase here: Nintendo Wii U PRO

If you know of something that works better that you can recommend please leave a comment below.

Faster RetroPie Scraping

Justin Ide — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 16:16:39 +0000

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“.

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: