Tag Archives: pi

Dec 21

Friday Post: PiMAME bandwidth and DeskCade photoshoot!

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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
Nov 23

Friday Post: Happy beginning of the holidays!

Posted on by

Hello All,

Happy beginning of the holidays.  Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday… To all my friends here in the US, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I spent some great time with my family.  To all my friends in other countries, I hope you are having a wonderful week 🙂

Raspberry Pi Camera

The Raspberry Pi Foundation today released the first video of the Raspberry Pi Camera.  It looks like it’s going to be an awesome piece of kit.  $25, 1080p video, 5MP pictures.  I cannot wait to order one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8N7kgtL0-Ts#!

Wii U

So I was able to purchase a Wii U Deluxe set during Black Friday.  I was not expecting to come home with one.  I was really just driving around looking at the lines.  Toys ‘R Us had opened at 8, it was 8:20, and the line was short, so I decided to go in.  I went to the back of the store, where the electronics section was, and asked if they had any Wii U’s in stock.  I was completely shocked to be given a ticket for a deluxe model.  My fiancee didn’t believe it either.  2 hours later (yay, waiting in line to pay) and I’ve got this thing hooked up.

The first thing it needed to do was download a huge update.  It took about 2 hours to download and install. After that, it was smooth sailing.  The system is awesome.  The gamepad is not just a gimmick, it works amazingly well.  It acts as a universal remote for my TV and my Cable box.  It’s much faster to browse the  cable guide using the Dpad than using the remote itself.  Netflix is better on the Wii U than on the Xbox 360.  To be able to select from the queue on the gamepad, watch it on the TV, or press a button and switch the stream straight to the game pad is so cool.  It’s seamless.

Nintendoland is this consoles version of Wii Sports and Wii Play combined.  You can use the Gamepad to play the games in single player mode, but to use 2 player you need to use Wiimotes.  It’s nice they kept backwards compatibility.  The ninja minigame is a lot of fun.

I also purchased New Super Mario Bros. U.  The game is gorgeous in hi-def.  The multiplayer mode can be a relationship killer though.  Just warning you!  The game plays like all the other NSMB games, but that’s a good thing.  It’s great fun 🙂

Spark Fun Free Shipping

For Cybermonday,  Spark Fun will be doing free shipping!  Happy Hacking!

Megacynics DeskCade

To anyone who hasn’t read the webcomic Megacynics, you should start.  It’s a great comic, Ash and Steve are cool people.  I recently made a DeskCade for them.  This time I tried it out of Acrylic.  It took less time, but cost a bit more in raw material.  I’m really happy with the look of it though.  I have to find a better materials supplier.

Ornaments

I’ve also started making some ornaments on the laser cutter.  I’m thinking of starting an Etsy store for them.  I’m taking requests, so leave a comment!

 

Take care all!

Nov 01

Better AdvanceMAME debs with Sound!

Posted on by

Hey All,

I have an updated set of AdvanceMAME debs.  This time there is sound, and a lot of the stupid tricks I had to do to compile have been resolved.  It ended up being a libsdl issue and an older version of GCC.

Please uninstall the older .deb by entering this command:

You should now be set to run AdvanceMAME with sound!

If you want to compile AdvanceMAME yourself, make sure you install libsdl1.2-dev and gcc-4.7. After that make sure to do export CC=gcc-4.7 and export CXX=g++-4.7 on the command line.  Then type ./configure, then make.

 

Oct 29

AdvanceMAME .deb

Posted on by

UPDATE:  Debs with Sound now available here

Hey All,

It’s been a long time coming.  Between work, prototyping, other complications I present the AdvanceMAME  Debian package.

I was able to get past the issue with AdvanceMAME compiling on Raspbian. It’s the sh2 processor for the Saturn, so I had to disable that. After that, it compiles.

I have the src code up on github if anyone wants to check out the changes I had to make.

Github: https://github.com/ssilverm/AdvanceMAME_RaspberryPi
Debs: http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/debs/advancemame_0.106.1-1_armhf.deb http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/debs/advancemame-raspberrypi_1-1_armhf.deb (with sound)

To install:

  1. sudo dpkg -i advancemame_0.106.1-1_armhf.deb
  2. Once it’s installed, just type advmame and it will create your configuration file.
  3. Roms go in ~/.advance/rom/
  4. Edit your advmame.rc for your display:
    1. For HDMI try:
      1. device_video_clock 5 – 50 / 15.62 / 50 ; 5 – 50 / 15.73 / 60
    2. For NTSC TVs try:
      1. device_video_clock 5 – 50 / 15.73 / 60
  5. to run a game: advmame gamename (ie advmame sf2)
  6. ENJOY!!!

 

Also, another goodie… My deskcade project is coming along incredibly well! I just got in these 18mm Sanwa buttons. They are awesome.

I hope everyone enjoys. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

-Shea

Oct 26

Friday Post: One step forward, two steps back

Posted on by

Hey all,

So I got MAME compiled.  The performance took a HUGE nosedive.  Whereas before SF2 was playing flawlessly, it now looks like a slideshow.  I’m going to work on it some more.  Sorry for the huge delay in these Debs.  I’m getting much closer!

I found some 18mm buttons for my DeskCade project.  I’m really excited with how that project is going.  Can’t wait for the buttons to arrive.

Time to let a compile run overnight again!

-Shea

Oct 25

AdvanceMAME compilations issues on Raspbian [SOLVED]

Posted on by

Hey all,

If anyone is having compilation issues of AdvanceMAME on Raspbian,  here is the relativly simple fix:

Change the line:

CONF_CFLAGS_OPT= -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-merge-constants -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused

to

CONF_CFLAGS_OPT= -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-merge-constants -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused

in your Makefile.

.Debs to be released shortly now that this is sorted!

Oct 19

Friday Post: New Pi and Deb Beta Users Wanted!

Posted on by

Happy Friday Everyone!

It’s been a fun week over here.  I was able to order my 512MB Raspberry Pi from Element 14, and it arrived on Wednesday.  Protip: Call Element 14 when they have stock and you will get it really really fast.

Some high quality shots below:

I’ve been working on my Mini Arcade Cabinet project, and I was able to source a mini joystick from P3America.com.  I’m going to be working on the cabinet this weekend, and will be incorporating this into it.

Now for the big news….I have created some .debs for you all to test!  The latest version of Raspbian has been giving me a lot of compiling errors.  What I have gotten done I would appreciate some of you to beta test for me.

The two debs available now are PCSX_ReARMed and Gngeo.  PCSX worked for me when I made the framebuffer larger in config.txt, and gngeo seems to be crashing or hanging randomly.  I’m hoping it works better for you all.  Please provide me with any and all feedback you have regarding these!

Oct 12

Friday Post: Mini Cab in Orlando Sentinel

Posted on by

Happy Friday Everyone!

I got an email this morning from the Orlando Sentinel that the interview with the Raspberry Pi foundation at FamiLAB was ready.  I have a small part in it, as you will see 🙂

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/videogallery/72853227/News/FLA360-Raspberry-Pi-Foundation-s-Eben-Upton

It has been an exciting two weeks, busy, but exciting.  I have not had time to work on emulation at the moment.  I have a long list of priorities to get done, but I’m working hard on things for the Raspberry Pi every day!

Also tonight I am going to see the Mythbusters Behind The Myths Tour! Should be a fun time.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Oct 03

Preview: Raspberry Pi Arcade Cabinet

Posted on by

EDIT:  Now with Video!

Been working on this for a bit.  I now have limited access to a Laser Cutter.  This mini Raspberry Pi Arcade Machine I made is so cool.  The initial SVG came from here: http://www.ponoko.com/design-your-own/products/arcade-cabinet-enclosure-7231.  I had to modify the holes for the slab of wood I was using and the screen size for my 2″ adafruit display.

Enjoy!