A really simple gaming system, and very cool to play around with. It's a bit costly, but worth the effort.
First, let start with some bill of material:
- Raspberry Pi B+ . I got my from RS component, 36 SGD with free shipping. . You can use alternative model, such as RPi 2 B (60SGD) or RPi A (32 SGD) . I did make another with RPi 2 B, and got a lot of trouble with supplying power for both monitor and RPi 2 ( I did not measure, but the screen would probably take 1+ A, and together with RPi2 1A, it exceed my powerbank 2A supply). RPi A is not fully compatible with the screen i used ( you need to supply with your own HDMI and supply from the board 5V rail. It's simple, but not worth the effort compare with fully compatible B+).
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- Raspberry Pi B+ . I got my from RS component, 36 SGD with free shipping. . You can use alternative model, such as RPi 2 B (60SGD) or RPi A (32 SGD) . I did make another with RPi 2 B, and got a lot of trouble with supplying power for both monitor and RPi 2 ( I did not measure, but the screen would probably take 1+ A, and together with RPi2 1A, it exceed my powerbank 2A supply). RPi A is not fully compatible with the screen i used ( you need to supply with your own HDMI and supply from the board 5V rail. It's simple, but not worth the effort compare with fully compatible B+).
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- Monitor: I got a 5inch HDMI touch screen from Aliexpress. . I got mine () come with the premade HDMI jack to joint the RPi with the LCD. It fits neatly and securely. Screen specs is 60fps, 840x480 with resistive touch screen. I am not really fond of the the resistive touch myself, but tried it anyway with Wheezy distro for fun. For this build, i don't use the touch screen function at all. FREE SHIPPING, but you gotta wait for about a month for it to get to your mail box
- micro SD card (>4gb, but take 16 for all the rom you like). You can get it anywhere literally, and it's so cheap nowadays it doesn't even matter anymore. I got my from Challengers Singapore for less than 10 SGD for 16gb class 10 samsung card.
- powerbank. I got my 10400mAh from Xiaomi Singapore years ago for 14sgd, and got the cardboard box as shipping box . 2 bird, 1 stone. You can make your own battery (i got some really cheap LiPo 2200mAh 3.7V from xiaomi also fo 1$ each), but it's hard to get more than 5V 1A out of them without a lot of hacking. So nope. You can also by the higher capacity (16000mAh) for 30 sgd (from the specs, it would somewhat be enough for RPi 2 + the screen, so it worth a try).
- cardboard to keep things together.
- A generic USB gamepad or any gamepad with USB port - PS3, XBox (need to do extra set up, but it's fairly easy anyway).
- Cable Tie : I am not really a fan of permanently fixing anything anywhere, so small 2mm cable tie is really handy in tying everything to the system.
- Speaker: My suggestion would be to buy a generic USB powered speaker and jack it into the RPi. However, I had a speaker (1$ from Sim Lim tower ) lying around, so I solder it to a 3.5mm jack, but it into a box and call it a day. It's not loud, but enough to play when I'm lonely.
- Extra stuff you might want to have : micro SD / SD card reader to load the distro, a keyboard to do the configuration. If you have spare monitor with HDMI cable, it will make the configuration much easier.
- micro SD card (>4gb, but take 16 for all the rom you like). You can get it anywhere literally, and it's so cheap nowadays it doesn't even matter anymore. I got my from Challengers Singapore for less than 10 SGD for 16gb class 10 samsung card.
- powerbank. I got my 10400mAh from Xiaomi Singapore years ago for 14sgd, and got the cardboard box as shipping box . 2 bird, 1 stone. You can make your own battery (i got some really cheap LiPo 2200mAh 3.7V from xiaomi also fo 1$ each), but it's hard to get more than 5V 1A out of them without a lot of hacking. So nope. You can also by the higher capacity (16000mAh) for 30 sgd (from the specs, it would somewhat be enough for RPi 2 + the screen, so it worth a try).
- cardboard to keep things together.
- A generic USB gamepad or any gamepad with USB port - PS3, XBox (need to do extra set up, but it's fairly easy anyway).
- Cable Tie : I am not really a fan of permanently fixing anything anywhere, so small 2mm cable tie is really handy in tying everything to the system.
- Speaker: My suggestion would be to buy a generic USB powered speaker and jack it into the RPi. However, I had a speaker (1$ from Sim Lim tower ) lying around, so I solder it to a 3.5mm jack, but it into a box and call it a day. It's not loud, but enough to play when I'm lonely.
- Extra stuff you might want to have : micro SD / SD card reader to load the distro, a keyboard to do the configuration. If you have spare monitor with HDMI cable, it will make the configuration much easier.
INTO THE MAKING
1. Prepare the RetroPie:
1.1 Download your respective raspberry pie from this. RPi2 and RPi B+ use different roms, so please choose the right one.
http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/retropie-downloads/
Unzip the file, and go to the next step
1.2 Load the ROM to your raspberry pi and make it bootable: if it is not your first time, please skip this part. If it is, read on
1.2.1 Download SD Formatter, and format your microSD card using this tool
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
1.2.2 Download Win32DiskImager and use this tool to load the ROM in 1.1 to the formatted SD card in 1.2
1.2.3 Hook up your Raspberry Pi with another monitor through HDMI and keyboard. Put the loaded microsd card in, and power up by microUSB port. It w ill automatically run and boot in retropi, and ready to be played. If you don't want to make it portable but only a game station, you can stop at this step.
2. Some modification for the small screen:
2.1. Open the terminal in retropie : you can press F4 while the retropie is running.
2.2. When in termal, type
sudo nano /boot/config.txt
to get you to config the booting.
2.3. Change the config.txt with the following:
# uncomment if hdmi display is not detected and composite is being output
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (here we are forcing 800x480!)
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=1
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt 800 480 60 6 0 0 0
start_file=start_x.elf
fixup_file=fixup_x.elf
#gpu_mem=128
(Optional) To rotate the screen (easier to get the power from the bottom than from the top),
display_rotate = 2
Save the whole thing and exit by press Ctrl + X (save as the same file name).
2.4. Now you can plug in the screen, and it should load as it is on big screen.
3.0 Touch up on software:
3.1 Plug in your USB gamepad to the Raspberry Pi. If you haven't config your button, you should do it now. If you have already done so, you can press START (as previously configured) and reconfig it to your USB gamepad.
3.2. Expand your memory: In the very first installation, Retropie will only use about 1GB on the SD card. You should expand the memory to the rest of the card. Go to RetroPie > Raspberry Pi Configuration tool Raspi-Config . You can also go to terminal and type
sudo raspi-config
Choose the first option Expand filesystem , and follow up. Reboot. You have all the card now inused.
4.0 Finalize the hardware:
4.1 Hook up powerbankd, controller, monitor, RPi and speaker all together to make sure everything works before tying them to the box.
4.2 The cardboard can be easy punch through by a screw driver. Punch the hole as you deem fit to tie the system in. You might want to use my layout in the first picture.
4.3. Tie everything to the cardboard box. Make sure everything fit physically and you can close the box. You might want to repositioning them as you deem fit
4.4. Get a small cable to tie the lid and the box together (as 1st picture). It keeps the screen in position while you are gaming.
4.5 Dress up the box if you want to.
5.0 LOAD THE GAME ROM:
5.1. You can download game ROM literally everywhere from the internet.
5.2. There are 2 ways to put ROM inside the Pie, either through LAN ( I am not familiar with this) or through USB stick. I am more familiar with the later, so I will only do in the later method
5.3 Use your PC to create a folder name retropie in your USB stick
5.4 Plug it out and plug in the the system with retropie ON. It will automatically create a directory of config and roms for you.
5.5 After about a minute, plug it out. Plug in your computer, load the ROM you download in 5.1 to the respective folder in retropie/roms/ *[game system] .
5.6. Plug out PC and in RetroPie again. It will automatically synchronize the rom in the USB drive to your system.
5.7. Reboot and enjoy
6.0 Some tips:
- To get out of the game, press START and SELECT together.
- You should take a look in
http://blog.petrockblock.com/
1. Prepare the RetroPie:
1.1 Download your respective raspberry pie from this. RPi2 and RPi B+ use different roms, so please choose the right one.
http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/retropie-downloads/
Unzip the file, and go to the next step
1.2 Load the ROM to your raspberry pi and make it bootable: if it is not your first time, please skip this part. If it is, read on
1.2.1 Download SD Formatter, and format your microSD card using this tool
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
1.2.2 Download Win32DiskImager and use this tool to load the ROM in 1.1 to the formatted SD card in 1.2
1.2.3 Hook up your Raspberry Pi with another monitor through HDMI and keyboard. Put the loaded microsd card in, and power up by microUSB port. It w ill automatically run and boot in retropi, and ready to be played. If you don't want to make it portable but only a game station, you can stop at this step.
2. Some modification for the small screen:
2.1. Open the terminal in retropie : you can press F4 while the retropie is running.
2.2. When in termal, type
sudo nano /boot/config.txt
to get you to config the booting.
2.3. Change the config.txt with the following:
# uncomment if hdmi display is not detected and composite is being output
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (here we are forcing 800x480!)
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=1
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt 800 480 60 6 0 0 0
start_file=start_x.elf
fixup_file=fixup_x.elf
#gpu_mem=128
(Optional) To rotate the screen (easier to get the power from the bottom than from the top),
display_rotate = 2
Save the whole thing and exit by press Ctrl + X (save as the same file name).
2.4. Now you can plug in the screen, and it should load as it is on big screen.
3.0 Touch up on software:
3.1 Plug in your USB gamepad to the Raspberry Pi. If you haven't config your button, you should do it now. If you have already done so, you can press START (as previously configured) and reconfig it to your USB gamepad.
3.2. Expand your memory: In the very first installation, Retropie will only use about 1GB on the SD card. You should expand the memory to the rest of the card. Go to RetroPie > Raspberry Pi Configuration tool Raspi-Config . You can also go to terminal and type
sudo raspi-config
Choose the first option Expand filesystem , and follow up. Reboot. You have all the card now inused.
4.0 Finalize the hardware:
4.1 Hook up powerbankd, controller, monitor, RPi and speaker all together to make sure everything works before tying them to the box.
4.2 The cardboard can be easy punch through by a screw driver. Punch the hole as you deem fit to tie the system in. You might want to use my layout in the first picture.
4.3. Tie everything to the cardboard box. Make sure everything fit physically and you can close the box. You might want to repositioning them as you deem fit
4.4. Get a small cable to tie the lid and the box together (as 1st picture). It keeps the screen in position while you are gaming.
4.5 Dress up the box if you want to.
5.0 LOAD THE GAME ROM:
5.1. You can download game ROM literally everywhere from the internet.
5.2. There are 2 ways to put ROM inside the Pie, either through LAN ( I am not familiar with this) or through USB stick. I am more familiar with the later, so I will only do in the later method
5.3 Use your PC to create a folder name retropie in your USB stick
5.4 Plug it out and plug in the the system with retropie ON. It will automatically create a directory of config and roms for you.
5.5 After about a minute, plug it out. Plug in your computer, load the ROM you download in 5.1 to the respective folder in retropie/roms/ *[game system] .
5.6. Plug out PC and in RetroPie again. It will automatically synchronize the rom in the USB drive to your system.
5.7. Reboot and enjoy
6.0 Some tips:
- To get out of the game, press START and SELECT together.
- You should take a look in
http://blog.petrockblock.com/