Raspberry Pi Catch-All

EvilDead wrote:
astralplaydoh wrote:

I just got my Raspberry Pi 3. Just waiting for the power supply to arrive today. I'll likely be installing RetroPie or OpenElec on it this evening. Yay!

So I'm new to this but does Retropie include Kodi? If so, that is what I'm doing when I get mine.

Don't think it ships that way but might be able to add it. RetroPi is an emulator specific build that makes it so in theory you never even need to hookup a mouse and keyboard to your Pi. Just plugin a controller and boot it up and it will walk you through configuration that can all be done via the controller. Hopefully mine will be here today so I can start playing around with it.

Rykin wrote:
EvilDead wrote:
astralplaydoh wrote:

I just got my Raspberry Pi 3. Just waiting for the power supply to arrive today. I'll likely be installing RetroPie or OpenElec on it this evening. Yay!

So I'm new to this but does Retropie include Kodi? If so, that is what I'm doing when I get mine.

Don't think it ships that way but might be able to add it. RetroPi is an emulator specific build that makes it so in theory you never even need to hookup a mouse and keyboard to your Pi. Just plugin a controller and boot it up and it will walk you through configuration that can all be done via the controller. Hopefully mine will be here today so I can start playing around with it.

OK. I watched a Retro youtube video and it showed Kodi so I wasn't sure if it was a mod. Mine isn't arriving until next week so let us know how it goes.

I'm new to it as well. It doesn't come with Kodi installed, but you can add it to RetroPie. However, this solution isn't too user-friendly for my family. I believe I am going to try and dual boot RetroPie and OpenElec using Berryboot and have it default to turning on OpenElec upon boot.

Wishful thinking. After a quick google search your solution sounds a bit cleaner.

astralplaydoh wrote:

I'm new to it as well. It doesn't come with Kodi installed, but you can add it to RetroPie. However, this solution isn't too user-friendly for my family. I believe I am going to try and dual boot RetroPie and OpenElec using Berryboot and have it default to turning on OpenElec upon boot.

This was so easy. Berryboot makes everything simple.

Nice! I haven't done mine yet. I think I'll do it tonight. When you installed BerryBoot...did you have to download the other images and put it on the card as well. Or did it just have options to install it from the Berryboot start up?

Well I have given up on getting my SD card from Amazon (will be getting a refund on that) so I picked up a 16 gig one at Best Buy last night. It was dead simple getting everything up and working. The various options in the emulators are a little difficult to grok at first but after a bit of playing around I have things working pretty well. They do need to figure out some sort of on screen keyboard though because you do have to hook one up to connect to Wifi if you have a password on your network and also to enter names when you are downloading data for the ROMs if it can't find it based on the ROM name. Also I have given up on transferring stuff to it via Wifi because my Mac is constantly losing the connection to the Pi. I think I have spend more time playing with the shaders trying to get the games to look better than I have actually playing at this point.

astralplaydoh wrote:

Nice! I haven't done mine yet. I think I'll do it tonight. When you installed BerryBoot...did you have to download the other images and put it on the card as well. Or did it just have options to install it from the Berryboot start up?

You just copy over the berryboot files to a fat32 formatted SD card (it didn't work with exFAT). When you first boot it up in the PI it will format the card and let you pick what OS you want to download & install. After that you can pick additional OSes and choose a default. Keyboard and mouse detected off the bat. Really simple.

Thanks! I finally got around to loading up Berryboot. It was super simple. My Pi is now rocking both OpenElec/Kodi and RetroPie. Yay!

I'm thinking of hosting a regular retro Arcade night. Let's play some Double Dragon, Simpsons, Xmen, and Dungeons and Dragons!

Nice! Forgot about Xmen when I was brainstorming arcade games I used to love. So many memories. Don't forget Golden Axe and Ninja Turtles!

I also loaded the Ubuntu and Raspbian images. Ubuntu looks like a modern OS but is a little sluggish so I'll probably stick with Raspbian as the internet browsing OS to leave on there. I just enabled SSH on Retropie so I could transfer files easily over SFTP. Didn't have any problems connecting and transferring ROMs. I am having a little trouble getting the Saturn emulator to show up though.

Also, if you are looking for a non-keyboard way to control KODI, there are plenty of phone apps and many are free.

I did the SSH and even set up the Samba share so I can just copy and paste roms and video files. Are you using any remotes or anything? I've been wondering what to use. I'd love to find something that can control my tv and the Pi.

I'm just going to stick with the iPhone app for KODI. I did run into this article in my searching though:

http://www.htpcbeginner.com/simple-c...

EDIT: could have swore I hit edit and not quote....

You know, Berryboot, Retropie and OpenElec/Kodi look simple enough that even I could do it, and I've never successfully installed linux on anything. I'll want/need a media solution soon, too. I've held off for a long time since I hadn't seen (looked for) any videos on getting it set up.

What's a realistic budget for a HT setup with a 2TB HDD (I have an old unused USB 2.0 HDD enclosure)? a quick estimate brought me to $155 including:
R Pi 3: $35
Case: $8
Mirco USB Power supply: $10
HDMI cable: $7
16 gb Micro SD card: $8
2 TB HDD: $70
mini keyboard (any better suggestions?): $17

Added costs: Ethernet cabling, interface devices. I would need a simple remote style input device for other people on top of the mini keyboard.

EDIT: fixed to remove quote tags.
and in response to the comments since the time I started typing this a few hrs ago before getting distracted:

As for phone apps, I tried the xmbc app a few years back and got really annoyed that it had to reconnect every time the screen turned off, using wifi to connect, so gave up on using that, and never explored further. Does the Kodi app reconnect better / automatically now?

mrtomaytohead wrote:

As for phone apps, I tried the xmbc app a few years back and got really annoyed that it had to reconnect every time the screen turned off, using wifi to connect, so gave up on using that, and never explored further. Does the Kodi app reconnect better / automatically now?

I'm still in the toy zone with raspberry PI and haven't moved onto using it as a tool so I haven't run into usage problems yet. Will have to check with the remote app.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

You know, Berryboot, Retropie and OpenElec/Kodi look simple enough that even I could do it, and I've never successfully installed linux on anything. I'll want/need a media solution soon, too. I've held off for a long time since I hadn't seen (looked for) any videos on getting it set up.

What's a realistic budget for a HT setup with a 2TB HDD (I have an old unused USB 2.0 HDD enclosure)? a quick estimate brought me to $155 including:
R Pi 3: $35
Case: $8
Mirco USB Power supply: $10
HDMI cable: $7
16 gb Micro SD card: $8
2 TB HDD: $70
mini keyboard (any better suggestions?): $17

Added costs: Ethernet cabling, interface devices. I would need a simple remote style input device for other people on top of the mini keyboard.

EDIT: fixed to remove quote tags.
and in response to the comments since the time I started typing this a few hrs ago before getting distracted:

As for phone apps, I tried the xmbc app a few years back and got really annoyed that it had to reconnect every time the screen turned off, using wifi to connect, so gave up on using that, and never explored further. Does the Kodi app reconnect better / automatically now?

A bit more expensive but you might look at the Logitech K400 Plus or K400 if you would rather have a closer to full-sized keyboard. I would have gotten one years ago if they had the mac keyboard layout (since my HTPC is a Mac).

Rykin wrote:

A bit more expensive but you might look at the Logitech K400 Plus or K400 if you would rather have a closer to full-sized keyboard. I would have gotten one years ago if they had the mac keyboard layout (since my HTPC is a Mac).

Thanks. Looks like they're $26 at Amazon, or just under $40 for the newer 410 model, which I haven't figured out the differences yet.

Anyone know how to set the retropie MAME controls back to default? I messed them up pretty bad.

If you have any interest in operating systems as a thing, you can download a free version of RiscOS for any version of the Pi. That comes from the Acorn line of computers (which eventually spawned the ARM CPU line, which is so prevalent in the mobile market today), and works pretty well.

It's got some really clever ideas, particularly around the mouse buttons. Left button is normal click like you'd expect, middle button is "menu", which pops up a context-sensitive menu relating to almost anything, and right-button is "adjust"... which does something different than left button, based on context. Usually, it seems to be the opposite thing; left click on a scroll arrow and the window scrolls in that direction, but right-click and it scrolls away. When you've got one of the popup menus open, right-clicks let you adjust several things on the menu at once without closing it, and then a final left click commits all the changes at once.

The windowing system is rather different, as well; the idea of focus and being on top are separate ideas. This was how the Amiga did it, once upon a time; the window with focus could be under other windows, which can let you do some fairly clever stuff, like park a source window on top, and then a target window underneath, so that you can type into the second while being able to see the first. There's a separate button for adjusting depth order; left click pushes the window down a level, right click brings it up a level. Left click/drag on the title bar both moves it and brings it to front; right click/drag moves it without bringing it forward. Just really interesting stuff.

It's a cooperative multitasking environment, and it appears that you can take over the hardware completely if you wish. That's not really possible with Linux; the kernel is always running, and unless you're up in kernel space, you're never in full control. It appears that RiscOS will allow you to control every processor cycle if you want to.

The major downside I can see: you have to pay if you want a real development environment. IIRC, it's 50 Euros, and I have no idea how good it actually is. They don't seem interested in giving you a copy of GCC, at least not through their web store, they seem to want to sell you their compiler. It's not a ridiculous price if the software is good, but who knows? And it's just weird to not have a free C compiler in 2016. All I see that are easy and free are BBC BASIC and some kind of Lua compiler.

The overall look is decent, although I couldn't see how to adjust the overscan... it was driving my TV with large black borders. I tried to figure out how to edit config.txt to configure the bootloader to do that, but the CLI is is deeply weird, not at all like DOS or Unix. You type commands sequentially, but that's almost the only point in common with something like bash. The 'dir' command changes directories, the 'cat' command lists a directory (like the Apple 2's "catalog"), 'lex' gives you a long-form directory listing, and so on. Very very different.

I was eventually able to dig around and find the config.txt file, which took a surprising amount of learning time, but it's not all nicely commented like in Raspbian, so I just said to myself, "I could make this work, but since I'd have to pay for a compiler, and it's a toy otherwise.... eh, why bother?" And shut it down, and put the Linux SD card back in.

Very interesting to see the alternate take on what an OS could be. And it runs real fast, even on a Pi 1. It comes from when every CPU cycle counted, and they aren't wasting any. A Raspberry Pi 1 is a super-luxury dream machine in comparison to what RiscOS was meant to run on.

I'm about half-way through building a Smart Calendar for my kitchen using a Raspberry Pi. I was hoping to use a Pi Zero, but I don't have one and all of the adapters and such would cost me almost as much as a Raspberry Pi 3 would. I'll post an update when I'm done.

astralplaydoh wrote:

I'm about half-way through building a Smart Calendar for my kitchen using a Raspberry Pi. I was hoping to use a Pi Zero, but I don't have one and all of the adapters and such would cost me almost as much as a Raspberry Pi 3 would. I'll post an update when I'm done.

Like probably many people, I've had this idea for a while, too, but never put it together. I have a Rev. B Pi 2 currently in service as an iptables machine. I'd like to get a decent widescreen display, mount it, and create a status board for family calendar, weather, etc. Maybe interesting news feeds as conversation starters, in lieu of network news (which we don't watch anyway).

Will be interested in how you do this.

I'm mostly following this instructable here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Rasp...

and modifying it quite a bit. Here is a screenshot of the current display:

IMAGE(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/13568900_10154367667377899_9129708058296192690_o.jpg)

1. It has an image banner that can be changed out.
2. Date and time. (I need to change the look of this)
2. Our family Google Calendar (empty at the moment).
3. The weather for our area.
4. Links to our Instagram account and rotates pictures every few seconds.
5. A local and national news feeder.
6. A quote of the day on the bottom.

I need to create a nice frame for the monitor and load it onto my Pi. I'm also looking at possibly setting up a motion sensor so that it only turns on when someone is near it.

A similar project, called "Magic Mirror". There's a GitHub repo for it, too.

That's a nice setup, astralplaydoh.

astralplaydoh wrote:

I'm mostly following this instructable here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Rasp...

...

This calls for working laptop screens which will be removed from said laptops. Unfortunately I only have about four of these.

I've been looking for a project that I can work on with at least my 11-year-old, who wants to build things, if not his older brother, who's not quite as interested in it. This seems perfect, given

  • I want to have a status board like this for family information, help us stay informed and organized.
  • I want to build something to make use of some limited Python and a bit more bash/Linux experience.
  • I want to build something with my boys, for everyone's benefit.
  • I'd like to try out some real-world programming but feel intimidated to start from scratch.
  • I'd like to put my RasPi to better use, though this project may actually require getting a new one.

Excite!

Edit: I can do a list now!

Honestly, it's 1000% easier to just use an lcd/led monitor instead of using a laptop screen. I think the original author went that route because they had a spare laptop.

astralplaydoh wrote:

Honestly, it's 1000% easier to just use an lcd/led monitor instead of using a laptop screen. I think the original author went that route because they had a spare laptop.

I don't have any spare monitors but had thought about picking up something off eBay or from someone getting rid of stuff. I do, though, have plenty of laptops that are basically useless in any practical sense. So I guess I'm in a similar boat.

I'd love to see some pictures when you get things up and running. I'm off to pick up some crown molding to make a frame for my monitor.

Finally bought a Pi and all the accessories I think I'll need along with an external USB HDD to make a media center. I figure this will also come in handy on vacation next month, since it's small enough I can take it with us and plug in to the TV there for the kids to watch stuff.

muraii wrote:
astralplaydoh wrote:

Honestly, it's 1000% easier to just use an lcd/led monitor instead of using a laptop screen. I think the original author went that route because they had a spare laptop.

I don't have any spare monitors but had thought about picking up something off eBay or from someone getting rid of stuff. I do, though, have plenty of laptops that are basically useless in any practical sense. So I guess I'm in a similar boat.

I did a variation on the same project (displays google calendar, household to-do list, date/time and weather) and we ended up running on on my sons ipad (basically when the ipad is docked it is out in the main living area displaying the webpage). Screen real estate wise it's not perfect but it's handy to be able to interact with the page directly (adjust appointments etc.)

The most surprising part of the whole project was how much my wife likes it and how quickly we came to rely on it. My son left his ipad at his grandparents a few days ago and I think we were more upset than he was.