Category Archives: raspberrypi

Feb 15

Friday Post: Pebble

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Hey All,

I want to start this by saying I LOVE Kickstarter.  I have funded many projects, most have succeeded  some have been delayed, some are still in the will it succeed or will it fail phase.  I really like the Kickstarter model.  It’s not a store.  It’s a risk vs reward for the backers, and a way to make the creators dreams come true.  I plan on putting the DeskCade on Kickstarter very soon(tm).

Today I am going to talk about the Pebble Smartwatch.  I backed this many months ago, and it’s an ambitious project.  It was the first Kickstarter project to reach 10 million dollars.  I received my Pebble last Sunday, and I would like to write some initial thoughts on it.

TL;DR Cliffs Notes:  It’s got potential, with a firmware update it will be awesome, but it’s just not there yet.

My out of the box experience with the Pebble sucked.  I was using an iPhone 4S with iOS 5 because they said it was supported.  Well it isn’t 100% supported on iOS 5.  The app gets stuck trying to talk to the Pebble, and the firmware update that’s available hangs.  iOS 5 will send a notification when you get a call, but no notifications on texts or e-mail.

The next day I updated to iOS 6, and lo and behold, everything worked.  For about 2 hours.  When I sit down at my work desk, I usually take off my watch to code.  When I stepped away for a bit, nothing worked anymore.  I had to re sync the Bluetooth connection, turn off notifications and then re-enable them for it to work again.  And then I walked away again and it happened again.  It’s a frustrating issue that I know will be fixed in a firmware release.  It has too for this product to be successful.  I has to just work..

One other software gripe:  Please put a battery indicator and a charging indicator somewhere on the screen.

Onto the good:

The build quality is amazing!  Even though it’s only plastic, it feels solid and tough.  The screen is very easy to read.  The battery life so far has been great.  The charger has a very Apple Magsafe connector feel to it.  You place the charger on the side of the pebble and the magnets pull it into position.  As a watch, it’s great.

Conclusion:

This is going to be a great product.  I have no doubt.  Once they get the kinks out of it on the software side, I’m never going to take it off.  I’ve seen it work.  It has the potential to be a paradigm shift in wearable computers with it’s SDK.  I have high hopes for the creators.  I want to be able to back more of their ideas.

——————————-

On a side note, PiMAME 0.6 is in the works.  I’m hoping to release it next week.  Te latest edition of Raspbian came out last week.  I tried moving over to that, but it’s still slower than the older release of Raspbian I’m using.  It also seems to require a bigger SD card as it’s just hitting the 2GB limit.

I’m going to continue using the older Raspbian, I’m putting in a start-up menu so you can access frequently accessed items, and I’m working on making the image smaller so there aren’t as many issues with temperamental SD cards.

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Shea

Feb 07

PiMAME, AdvanceMAME, and AdvanceMENU Tankstick Configuration

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edit: Added dual stick configuration to advmame.rc

Hey all,

Here is a working config for the XGaming X-Arcade Tankstick!  The base of this comes from the very helpful site: http://www.raspberry.cat/20130203/pimame-i-x-arcade/

The first step is to edit /etc/rc.local and include this line before “exit 0”: Continue reading →

Jan 30

Video of XArcade Stick Working with the Raspberry Pi

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Hey All,

Real quick, just wanted to show a very rough video of me using the XArcade Tankstick on the Raspberry Pi.  I have the Trackball, Buttons  and Joysticks all working.  Gridlee has issues with it (has to have custom inputs set) but Street Fighter 2 and Missile Command worked “out-of-the-box”.  I had to make a minor edit to the AdvanceMENU configuration file, but it looks like its working nicely.

I’m going to try a fresh re-install of PiMAME and try to recreate the results.  I’m hoping to have a guide for this very soon ™.

-Shea

Jan 25

Friday Post: Little Boards

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Hey all,

I’ve been anxiously awaiting some voltage regulator boards I ordered from eBay for the past 2 weeks.  It seems they all came from China and all got here within a day or two of each other.  It’s kinda neat to see how each came packaged differently, through different mail systems, but yet all arrived safely on the other side of the planet.

Photo Jan 25, 9 41 31 PM

 

Photo Jan 25, 9 41 58 PM

 

My DigiSpark mini Arduino board came in as well.  This was a kickstarter based project from DigiStump that puts a whole Arduino with USB connector into a 1 square inch of space.

Photo Jan 25, 9 42 29 PM

It seems that the PiMAME 0.5 beta release is going well.  I advise everyone running it to expand the filesystem before uploading any games.  To do this, exit out of AdvMENU, then type sudo raspi-config on the command line.  Press enter and run the Expand Filesystem tool so you will have the usable space of your SD Card.  PiMAME was built to run on a 2GB SD Card, but only has 8MB of usable space be default.

Have a good weekend!

-Shea

 

Jan 23

PiMAME 0.5 Beta Release

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Hey all,

This is just for testing purposes, but if you like to live on the cutting edge, I’m making available the beta/pre-release/testing release of PiMAME 0.5!

It’s based off the PiMAME 0.3 image, with the Uploader file size limit set to 200MB, and the Snapshot artwork in AdvMENU.

Let me know if you have any issues with it!

-Shea

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 14

PiMAME 0.4

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Update:  I have received numerous reports that this version is much slower than the previous one.  I am reverting back to the previous Raspbian for PiMAME 0.5.  That should fix the speed issues.  The new release will be up this week.  Thank you for all the feedback.

Hey All,

I am pleased to announce PiMAME 0.4 is now available for download.

PiMAME is now built around the 2012-12-16 version of Raspbian.
AdvanceMAME 1.2 and AdvanceMENU 2.6  are installed.
PulseAudio has been removed.
Snapshots of supported games are loaded and will appear in AdvanceMENU.
The ROM uploader file size limit has been increased from 2MB to 200MB.

I recommend users exit out of AdvanceMENU at some point and run:

sudo raspi-config

Overclocking the Pi from raspi-config greatly increases the performance of AdvanceMAME.  You are also able to expand the filesystem to fill up the rest of your SD Card.

I am looking forward to all questions, comments, and suggestions!  Have a great week.

-Shea

Download PiMAME

 

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