I have awesome news! My book, “Raspberry Pi Gaming” has been published this week. The eBook version is currently available on Amazon.com, and the hardcopy should be available next week.
So I’ve been playign with trying to do a boot image or a boot movie with the Raspberry Pi for a while now, and all the comments and tips keep going back to a tutorial on how to boot a static image. It works, but there are a lot of problems with it like failing gracefully and not returning the console window back if you aren’t booting to X. So I decided to come up with another way. This is based off the tutorial found here: http://www.edv-huber.com/index.php/problemloesungen/15-custom-splash-screen-for-raspberry-pi-raspbian and looks like this when finished:
Instead of using the program fbi, we will use omxplayer to playback a video file while the Raspberry Pi is booting in the background.
First off, you will want to copy the 15 to 20 second movie file to your Raspberry Pi device. Anything shorter and the video will end before it’s finished booting and you will continue to see the kernel messages. You can use any video file that omxplayer can play back, but I like .mov and .mp4 files.
You will need to edit your /boot/cmdline.txt file:
sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt
Add quiet to the end of the line. It will look something like this:
Press ctrl-x, type y to confirm save, then press enter to return to the command line.
Copy your video somewhere to the Raspberry Pi. I keep mine in /home/pi/ and call the video video.mov
You will now need to create a startup script that will run omxplayer at bootup. I have modified the script from the above link.
sudo nano /etc/init.d/asplashscreen
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: asplashscreen
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Start:
# Default-Start: S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Show custom splashscreen
# Description: Show custom splashscreen
### END INIT INFO
The next release of PiMAME will have a bootsplash intro video. The way I am having it work it will be easy for anyone to modify and replace the video with a custom one of their own.
I am hoping that we can get a collection of neat startup vids going!
This has been a fun week. Trying to fight of the germs going around now that everyone is settled into classes. This is usually when the colds start going around. A few coworkers are already coughing. I may need to put up a fort around my desk. On the plus side I am seeing Yellowcard this weekend!!!
The PyCon call for proposals deadline passed. I put in 2 talks and a poster session. I am volunteering this year as part of the program committee, and I am really excited about going. I hope one of my proposals makes it.
I caught all of the Pokemon NFC figures. Yeah, I have a problem. The Gamestop near me allowed me to bring in my Wii U and scan the Pokeballs before buying them so I could pick out the ones I needed to complete my collection. Some Gamestops really are awesome.
In exciting news, I saw the final pdf of my book, and it is being sent to the printer now!!! In a few days I’ll have the Amazon link to post.
The laser cutter at FamiLAB bit the dust. The controller board’s heatsink fell off causing a short and frying the board. I had some prototypes I wanted to cut so I ended up uploading my SVGs to Ponoko.com and getting them cut there. They quoted me $18 to print out a prototype DeskCade, which isn’t bad considering the amount of space I had left free on the material. I could probably have printed two for the same price if I spent more time rearranging the parts. On the plus side, they said it would take 10 days for cutting and 5 days for shipping. I ordered it on Thursday and it was shipping by Wednesday, so I’m really happy about that.
I can’t wait to see the quality of the parts!
PiMAME update should be soon. This will be include a custom kernel for the Xin-Mo controller.
Happy Friday! Long week. This week at work I learned how to deploy a Django app to an old Solaris server (Read: spent way too much time reading the error log because of incompatible SPARC modules). It was good though, because now I know of some really good debugging methods and have more Apache experience.
Xin-Mo Dual Controller and PiMAME
One of the louder feature requests for PiMAME is getting the Xin-Mo Arcade Encoder modules working. A link to a guide on how to patch the kernel and making a new module for the Xin-Mo was posted to the PiMAME forums. My Pi has spent the last night compiling the new kernel, and it seems to have worked. I will be posting a beta version of PiMAME for users to test with this new kernel and that should get these Xin-Mo encoders working right!
A few posts ago I mentioned that Linux New Media had published a Raspberry Pi Handbook and included a little blurb about PiMAME (yay!). They just announced that they are publishing a bimonthly magazine dedicated solely to the Raspberry Pi. The name could use some work, but I’m going to give it a chance. It’s called the Raspberry Pi Geek. Use code RPGOTHR10 to get 10% off.
I don’t have a problem, I can stop collecting these any time…
A new release of PiMAME is being uploaded. This time it’s 0.7.9, and the biggest edition is DGEN, a Sega Genesis emulator. PiSNES now supports 2 players, and the script was updated to not overwrite some of the config files. You can use the update.sh script right now to upgrade. I’ll update this post once the new image is on SourceForge.
Pokemon Rumble U
So, I’m a sucker for collectibles. Make little collectible figurines, add NFC, and let them interact with a video game, and I might as well just hand over my paycheck to the developer. I have so far kept myself away from Skylanders, and Disney Infinity, because I KNEW I would spend too much, but now Nintendo has come into the market with Pokemon Rumble U.
It’s an inexpensive Wii U game. Download only. It’s like a combination of Super Smash Bros., Mario Party, and bullet hell games.
There are 649 in game Pokemon to catch/befriend/see, but the real fun comes with these:
There are 18 different figurines to collect, and each one levels up as you play. When you bring them to a friends house, you can place the little figure on their wii u gamepad and it brings over all your stats and moves.
It’s using NFC tags inside the figure’s base to read and write this data, and if you hold it up to an Android phone with NFC, it will try and read the data. So far I have been unsuccessful getting a good data dump, but it would be neat if I could back up my figures stats and try moving them to blank tags.
PiMAME 0.7.8 is coming this weekend. The major enhancements are that NES emulation is supported through AdvMESS. I have also used the updated version of PiFBA which now has 2 player support.
I have one week until the Fall semester starts at UCF. Everyone in our department is rushing to make sure we are all ready, everything is updated, and everybody’s happy. I’m excited. I think this semester is going to be wonderful.
Leap Motion
Over the week I bought a Leap Motion device. Ever since I saw the preview of it, I was awe struck. This device has the ability to make a huge paradigm shift in the way we provide input and controls to our computer systems. It makes me even sadder to say that I returned it. I had such high hopes for the device, but, there were just too many things wrong on the software side.
The hardware is top notch. It just works. The software was crummy at best. It requires a lot of CPU power to run. I tried it on a Core 2 Duo, and the input lag was horrible. On a Core i5 it was fine, but I shouldn’t require that much CPU power just for an input device. The app store was also disappointing. There were a lot of apps available, but the vast majority cost money. The third party free mouse driver software wasn’t top notch. It made using the computer a chore. In reality, the software made it feel like a poor man’s kinect. 🙁 I am willing to give it a second chance, because the hardware is top notch. They just need the dev team to put some polish on the UX.
Raspberry Pi Pip-Boy
This is really cool. Panda from Hardware Libre posted this in the comments and on the PiMAME forums. This is a homemade Raspberry Pi Pip Boy.
Raspberry Pi Camera NoIR
So, last week at FamiLAB, Gordon Hollingworth, Director of Software at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, paid us a visit and talked to us about hardware, software, and a cool version of the Raspberry Pi camera that is being released.
It’s called the Pi NoIR, and it’s the Camera Board without the IR filter. Without the IR filter, you are able to capture part of the infrared spectrum, which you can test out by pointing your TV remote to the camera and pressing a button. What is invisible to your eye will show up on the camera sensor, and on your screen. A flashing beam of light coming from the remote control. There is a whole genre of IR photography, and this will allow you to get started in it.
That’s all for this week, I hope you all have a good weekend!
