Category Archives: programming

Jan 22

X-Arcade Tankstick Unboxing

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Hey all,

My new Tankstick arrived today, courtesy of XGaming.com. They have asked me to test it and get it running on the Raspberry Pi. I only had a couple minutes to play with it, but I made a little unboxing video for everyone:

Size comparison of the Pi versus a Tankstick:

tankstick
This thing has some heft to it!  With the few minutes I got to use it, I notice why some users of the Raspberry Pi are having difficulties making it work right.  It’s nothing wrong with the device, but with the way some of the software interprets the inputs.  I have a couple of hunches and ideas on how to fix it, which I hope to get to within the next week.

PiMAME 0.5 is also coming along nicely.  I’m reverting back to the 0.3 stack and just adding some minor modifications.  That should be released on Friday.

-Shea

Jan 18

Friday Post: Advance .debs

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Hey all,

New Debs!

I have the latest AdvanceMENU, AdvanceMESS, and AdvanceMAME versions compiled and turned into .debs for your installing pleasure.

  1. Files:
    1. AdvanceMAME 1.2
    2. AdvanceMENU 2.6
    3. AdvanceMESS 0.102
  2. To install, run these commands:
    1. sudo dpkg --force-overwrite -i advancemame_1.2-1_armhf.deb
    2. sudo dpkg --force-overwrite -i advancemenu_2.6-1_armhf.deb
    3. sudo dpkg --force-overwrite -i advancemess_0.102.0.1-1_armhf.deb

The reason dpkg requires force install is because the Advance* projects compile a lot of the same helper binaries, like advj and advc.  When dpkg tries to install the next package, it sees it has already installed something with the same name, and freaks out.

Doing a force install tells it to overwrite and continue, making everything work.  I don’t recommend using force install for everyday installs, but I know it works for these.

X Gaming X-Arcade Stick

I was very surprised when I was contacted by X Gaming this week.  They are sending me one of their really cool looking X Arcade tank sticks to test out with the Raspberry Pi and various emulators.  A couple people have posted on the Raspberry Pi forums and on my blog asking if this stick works, so hopefully I will have an answer for everyone very soon.

I’m looking forward to everyone’s feedback on the new .deb files.  Let me know if something is messed up, doesn’t install for you, or is just wonky.  Also let me know if it does work, because that’s good to hear as well 🙂

Have a great weekend!

-Shea

Jan 11

Friday Post: Happy Birthday To Me!!

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Happy Friday Everyone!!!

Happy Birthday To Me

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I am looking forward to celebrating with a ton of friends.  I feel like the past year has been amazing to me.  Great job, great coworkers, great fiancee, great projects, everything is going great 😉

I am looking forward to what this year is going to bring me.

Monoprice IPS Monitors

CES ended this week, and with it came a lot of announcements.  Monoprice, the amazing company that brings you 99cent HDMI cables, is coming out with their own branded 27″ IPS Monitor. The monitor uses the same panels that Apple and Dell uses, and has a resolution of 2560×1440.  For less than $400!  I’m saving my pennies for this monitor.

Python for Kids

(Full Disclosure: I’m currently technically reviewing a different book from No Starch Press)

At PyCon 2012 I met up with No Starch Press.  They were showing off their new book, “Python for Kids”.  This week a review copy came in the mail.  I have only skimmed through it, but I am liking what I see.  Don’t let the title deceive you, while it is written in a large and easy to read format, the book is aimed at everyone.  I hope to have a full review in the coming weeks.

PiMAME

PiMAME 0.4 is coming VERY soon.  I’m shooting for late Sunday, depending on how hungover I am after my birthday party.  I posted on Reddit and the Raspberry Pi forums that I am looking for help.  If anyone is interested in helping out on the project, send me an email, a comment, a contact-me message, smoke signal, etc.  Just let me know.

That’s all for this week!

Have a great weekend.

-Shea

Jan 06

Pleasant Surprise, New version of AdvanceMAME was released

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Hey All,

I received a pleasant surprise this weekend.  A new version of AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMENU was released by the author.  I am currently compiling it and testing it out.  It is still based on MAME 0.106.

This is going to push back the PiMAME 0.4 release as I want to incorporate these new binaries into it.

You can find the sources here: http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/index.html

Jan 04

Friday Post: First post of 2013!

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Hey all,

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2013 🙂

On Monday Element14 will have more Raspberry Pi’s in stock.  Get your credit cards ready.  I will also be taking my first graduate course that same day.  I am very happy and looking forward to working on my masters degree.

I now have a USB gamepad and I’m going to work on getting that setup.  I’m currently working on PiMAME 0.4 and hope to have it released this weekend.  I am incorporating as many fixes and improvements as I can.  I really appreciate your feedback.

In other Pi news, teh_orph has posted new information about his XWindows accelerated drivers for the Pi.  I am looking forward to trying them out.  They are FAR from finished, but this is a great step forward.

Have a great weekend!

-Shea

Dec 31

Raspberry Pi Powered SNES

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Hey All,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  This is what I assume to be the last post of 2012.  Might as well end it with a bang 🙂

A fellow member of FamiLAB (Orlando’s Hackerspace) has made a great write-up of his Raspberry Pi powered SNES.

I have been watching Ted (Waterbury) work on this project for the past few months, and the work is nothing short of incredible.

I hope everyone has a great new year.  May 2013 bring you joy, happiness, and success.

-Shea

 

Dec 21

Friday Post: PiMAME bandwidth and DeskCade photoshoot!

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Happy Friday All!!!!

I am off work until the New Year!!  I think I’m going to sleep until Sunday 🙂

First things first.  Happy Holidays and an early Happy New Year to all my readers.  All of you have been awesome.  Thank you for all the comments.

PiMAME Updates

I have used up over 100GB of bandwidth in a week.  That’s AWESOME.  I have never used so much bandwidth ever, yet alone in a week.  Luckily I have generous bandwidth allotments between my two hosts, so hopefully I won’t have to scramble for mirrors again.

Expect PiMAME updates over the weekend.  I am doing a lot to it.  The next update should be great.

Photoshoot

We had a secret santa in my department, and my co-worker was given a really cool light box since he is a freelance photographer.  He did a little photo shoot of my DeskCade units.

-Shea

Dec 18

PiMAME quick fixes and information

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Hey all,

I’ve been getting tons of feedback about PiMAME.  Thank you for all the comments and suggestions.  There have been a few issues/questions that have popped up, hopefully the tips below helps you out.

Here is a quick fix for the AdvanceMENU sound issue:

  1. ssh into your Raspberry Pi.
  2. exit out of AdvanceMENU by pressing Escape.
  3. at the console, type: nano +99 .advance/advmenu.rc
  4. edit the sound_background lines to look like below:
    1. sound_background_begin none
    2. sound_background_end none
    3. sound_background_loop none
    4. sound_background_loop_dir none
    5. sound_background_start none
    6. sound_background_stop none
  5. press control-x to exit, it will ask you to save, press “y” to confirm.
  6. Reboot your Pi and it should be good to go.

Adding games:

Your game files should go in the /home/pi/roms/ directory.  I cannot help you find games for MAME.

Stopping AdvanceMENU from starting at bootup:

If you want AdvanceMENU to not start at bootup edit /home/pi/.profile and remove advmenu from the bottom of the script.

Logging In:

The username and password are the default Raspbian ones.

  1. User: pi
  2. Password: raspberry
Dec 14

Friday Post: PiMAME Image and other neat things

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Hey All,

Hope you all like this:

PiMAME

Download Here

This is a fully configured Raspberry Pi image that auto boots into AdvanceMENU and runs your MAME games for you.  It includes a copy of a Free MAME ROM so you can see it working right from the start.  SSH is already enabled, memory split is setup, and everything is updated.

Once you have it flashed to your SD Card, I recommend running “sudo raspi-config” and expanding the file system, otherwise you will only have a few megs of space left to use.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

Raspberry Pi Radio

http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry_Pi_Into_an_FM_Transmitter

With one wire and a simple program, you can turn your Raspberry Pi into an FM Transmitter that plays on FM 100.0MHz.

 

Nov 30

Friday Post: Push It!

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Hey all,

This has been a LONG week.  Wednesday we pushed to production our new code base that we had been working on all semester.  This is an internal productivity app that is used by everyone in our department, so it’s kind of a big deal.  It was exhausting.  Did some long shifts back to back to make sure it was pushed after hours, and that I was available during all working hours in case of any large issues.

We only had a couple major bugs show up that we missed in testing, and as usual, search is hard.  I am thinking about migrating our search system to Whoosh or Solr next week as a proof of concept.

Now that this has been taken care of, I have a lot more time on my hands to work on my own projects.  That means more compiling and more debs to come.  I had an epiphany about getting something to work, so I’m going to try it this weekend.

On an AWESOME note, My Fix It Felix Jr. DeskCade arrived at Disney Studios.  I was sent these pictures of Rich Moore, Director of Wreck It Ralph, playing with it!