This week just flew by. It feels like it’s still Wednesday. Maker Faire Orlando has come and gone, and I have to say, it was incredible. I was manning my booth the entire time which always had a crowd but I was able to catch a 10 minute break to eat something and look around. There were so many cool displays, and so many interested people who were interested. By the end of the day my throat was sore and I had lost my voice. It was totally worth it.
I will say this, the X-Arcade Tank Stick is built like a tank. It got hit by hundreds of kids during the Maker Faire and it stood up to the challenge. I’m going to take it apart because I think the right joystick got a little banged up but it was still working.
Python in 24 Hours
Someone who I am very honored to call a friend has just released her new book! Katie Cunningham has just had her book, “Sam’s Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours“, published. I got mine in the mail today so I haven’t gotten a chance to go through it yet, but I have a feeling it will be great. Congratulations Katie!
Pokemon X and Y
Pokemon X and Y come out tomorrow. I love Pokemon, but I haven’t played one of the core series since Red and Blue (I know!). Most of my office is picking the new one up, so I figured it’s time to once again catch ’em all! Between work, grad school, and PiMAME, where I am going to find the time to play…
PiMAME
I upgrade PiMAME to use the newest version of Raspbian, and recompiled the kernel to have the Xin-Mo module fixes in place. I wanted to hold off on the release until I had more to add, but I think i’m going to do an image only release for this, since you can’t really just do a kernel upgrade with an install script. It will also include the PiMAME intro video.
Once that is released I am going to be working on totally revamping the main menu system and web interface. I have some cool things coming down the pipeline!
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!
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.
Squid has released another awesome emulator port for the Raspberry Pi. This time it’s Final Burn Alpha, which is a CPS1, CPS2, System 16, and NeoGeo emulator.
Marvel Vs. Capcom runs great on it. Expect this to be in PiMAME ASAP!
I got a few requests for a BerryBoot image of PiMAME. I followed the instructions and generated an image that should be compatible. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet since I don’t have a Pi with BerryBoot installed.
