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Raspberry Pi

I'm thinking of getting one for game emulation as well. I'd love to just buy a NES Classic Edition but 3 months after release they are still are basically unobtainable. I wanted to give you my money, Nintendo, but it appears you'd rather play the manufacturing deficit game, forcing people to go another route.
 

BradWorld

Dances with Wolfs
I loaded up a R-Pi 3b yesterday with Retropie, which is the preferred game emulation package, or so I am told. I am not a stranger to game emulation. I have two full size arcade machines in my home that have been gutted and installed with PCs running MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator). I have been doing this game emulation thing for over a decade.

I gotta tell you, the Retropie was easier to setup, configure and use than anything I have tried in the past. It also has a huge number of emulators and apps built in, including MAME. And it found and configured my wired Logitech game controller instantly, which was a huge plus! I have a large number of different bluetooth and Xbox game controllers as well, and will be trying out some of them today to see how they work. I develop interactive apps, VR, AR, and games for the event industry, so I have a ton of this type of hardware on hand at all times. Lots of toys to play with.

The big unknown regarding how this Retropie would replace a full MAME PC is how it would interface with the arcade controls. In my full arcade sized arcade deployments, I use a board sourced from Ultimarc in the UK which converts analog aracade controls to USB keyboard emulation. MAME uses keystrokes to run the games. The board allows mapping of analog joystick and push button actions to keystrokes, and sends it through the USB as normal keyboard keystrokes. It works like a charm on PC. I will do some research today to see if it will work with R-pi and Retropie. If not, I will have to see if there is another product that does a similar thing.

I also installed the optional kodi package into the Retropie environment. It seems to initially run okay. I have to load up a few add-ons today, like Exodus, and see how they stream.

So far so good.
 
They are fun. I have a model b+ and Pi2.

Mine have seen most use as media players. It's nice to have a tiny, silent open source computer hiding behind my tv/hi-fi unit in the living room. Beyond that it's just amazing you can now have a capable well supported computer for £20.

It's a nice platform to try things out on.

Most used stuff was omxplayer/mpd/ncmpcpp/ranger/tmux

It was worth it for this alone:
Alpine Ski - Wikipedia
 
Has anyone run Kodi media player on a R-Pi? Specifically one of the newer models? Ive run it on android stick and the performance has been lackluster compared to running it on a PC. This thread has made me wonder if its worth loading up Kodi on a R-Pi and giving it a shot.

Been running KODI on the RPi for close to two years with no major issues. Basically PnP.
 

BradWorld

Dances with Wolfs
Printed up a nintendo style case for my retropie system. Hot off the press. I just switched it from a wired gaming controller to bluetooth. Works great. Now I can move it to the family room and see how the rest of the family digs it!

2017-02-23 10.00.05.jpg
 
Printed up a nintendo style case for my retropie system. Hot off the press. I just switched it from a wired gaming controller to bluetooth. Works great. Now I can move it to the family room and see how the rest of the family digs it!

View attachment 763832

Looks great! Did you buy one of the 8bitdo controllers? Been thinking about getting one of those.
 

BradWorld

Dances with Wolfs
Looks great! Did you buy one of the 8bitdo controllers? Been thinking about getting one of those.

No. Not yet anyway. I have a variety of controllers already. Im an interactive technology guy by trade, so i have lots of gear to play with. I have a Logitech PS/Xbox wired controller that works perfectly. I have tried two bluetooth controllers so far, and both have given me some weird latency issues. I tried the Razor Serval and the Snakebyte. Both were quite unsatisfactory. I have a few more controllers floating around. I have a Moga Bluetooth controller, which I will try next. I also have the Xbox controller that came with my Oculus Rift, which has the USB receiver included. That is also supposed to work. I am hoping to find a controller that has not latency issues. The 8bitdo claims to have zero latency, so if all else fails, I may have to pick one up. The model with the arcade joystick looks really cool. We will see.
 
@BradWorld I dig the case.

I did a little bit of research a while back and read that the I-PAC works good on the Pi. I have a box of arcade buttons and joystick along with a controller board. Eventually I want to build a bartop arcade. That project is stuck in the planning phase, courtesy of SWMBO. Not allowed to add new projects until my projects for her are caught up.

I forgot where I saw it, but I saw a project where a guy made a full arcade cabinet and used the Pi. He put the Pi behind the monitor and had LEDs for the marquee. There was quite a bit of extra space left. He put one of the sides on hinges, so it would open up to shelving. It was a genius idea.
 

BradWorld

Dances with Wolfs
@BradWorldI did a little bit of research a while back and read that the I-PAC works good on the Pi.

I have been thinking about the I-Pac on the Pi a lot lately. I have two full size arcade machines in my house that I gutted out and run MAME with PC's and I-Pac boards. They work great with MAME. Stellar in fact. However, both of these systems were built many years ago. And the PCs are old and tired. I would love to upgrade them to something as simple as Retropie. But my thoughts are that the I-Pac is most definately optimized for a MAME deployment, where keystroke emulation is the main UI. The Retropie seems to maintain that keyboard/keystroke centric UI for the MAME emulation. But it seems to be much more gamepad oriented for the other emulators. The huge mix of different emulators within one interface is what makes the Retropie compelling for me. If I replace the PC in my I-Pac based arcade systems with a Retropie, and I can only use MAME, that may not be worth the effort. I will have to do some experimenting and see how it goes.
 
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