Given that the picade xhat is using up all the gpio pins has anyone found a good way to light up the top bezzel of the picade?
I thought it would be a good next project, and a fun way to customize it, what would be the best way to do this and how have others done this would love to see your ideas or suggestions.
4 posts - 2 participants
Hey all.
I’ve seen a few posts regarding cooling on picade with the xhat fitted (I have the new 10" version with PI4B).
Some are very good but people seem to be hesitant. You shouldnt be.
My process was:
Buy an extended header (11mm version):
Buy a fan shim:
Buy a standoff set (I connected two together on each corner):
This standoff set may be better although I’d brought the one above:
Simply pop off the xhat. Put the fan shim on and then use the extended header and standoff set to raise the hight of the hat.
You could use a lower header and use a single standoff screw but I wanted mine to go higher for the best airflow/cooling.
You may find that at the back it will pull down slightly depending on how tight you turn the screws from the top but it works just fine and is stable. You could always use some small plastic spacers under the hat / loosen off the standoff set at the back if you buy the shorter ones.
In my setup I have just secured 3 of the 4 corners of the hat with the standoff set and it is rock solid. This is due to the fan shim corner that gets in the way of the screw. You could always snip the side of the board off if you reallly wanted to secure all 4 corners but there is not much point.
Finally, because the xhat power input is now higher, I had to make the hole on the back of the picade for the power slightly larger above. I used a stanley knife for this and just filled in the new exposed wood with a black sharpie pen. :-)
Anyway. I find pictures are always handy when it comes to this stuff. Hopfully these work:
The picade is as cool as a cucumber under a moderate 2Ghz overclock at all times.
FYI - The fan is always on when the machine is turned on, but very quiet so this isnt an issue for me. Just dont install the shim drivers as I understand it can cause a conflict with the picade hat.
In addition to this. I found some handy things for custom images.
If you find your picade reboots if powered from the HAT on custom images please see my reply in thread: Pihat keeps rebooting picade - #16 by Fazza
If you’d like to get sound working on picade boot splash screens:
Edit the asplashscreen.sh located (usually) in Opt/retropie/supplementary/splashscreen/
Find the line omxplayer --no-osd -o both -b --layer 10000 “$line”
and change it for omxplayer --no-osd -o alsa -b --layer 10000 “$line”
Your line may look different but the ‘both’ to ‘alsa’ change is the important bit just change that.
I hope this helps people googling this topic.
Regards,
Fazza
4 posts - 2 participants
I’ve got an ‘original’ headless Picade from a few years ago. Works fine.
A year ago now I tried to help a mate build a 2p unit. I bought both Picade-X USB-C Main Hat and the USB Extra player Hat (which seems to have miraculously disappeared now from the store EDIT I ‘lie’ you can still get it, it just wasn’t there under Picade search), Pi 4, Looms, the lot from Pimoroni.
Even though I’d done this many times before could I get it working in 2p mode? Nope. It either only see’s the GPIO Hat or the USB Hat, neither at the same time. Best I ever managed, with hacking, was P1 controlled ‘both’ P1/P2 and P2 just controlled P2…so not exactly useful.
I asked Pimoroni for help to replicate/diagnose but, after a while, they stopped responding. I’ve been getting help from an expert and yet it’s still going nowhere. It’s simply one or the other.
I have no doubt I can use Bluetooth controllers etc but, having gone to the expense of building a 2p unit and all the trimmings we expect to obviously be able to use, err, 2p at the same time.
I see, at least one other person having this same issue on here from last yr. Anyone, at all, actually got it working and can show me what they did? Otherwise I’m thinking it’s return time for faulty whatever and useless purchases.
Getting less happy with Pimoroni as time goes on.
DW
1 post - 1 participant
Does anybody have this on PDF?
Or, if not, is anybody willing to send me theirs when not needed anymore?
2 posts - 2 participants
Been messing about with the picade xhat and its hack header and experimenting with the pin outs to power and run a small number of neo pixels, looking at the pinout diagram for the xhat i figured i could use GPIO Pin 14 and change the python code that runs the neo pixel data from the default pin 18 and let it know its using GPIO pin 14.
Ive been following the neopixel guide and the site says that you must plug data into GPIO10, GPIO12, GPIO18 or GPIO21 for neopixels to work? these are all being used by the picade xhat at the moment.
Has anyone used the hack header for neo pixels and got it to work cant seem to find any examples or guides for this online or am i best just getting a pico board to power my Neo pixels and and ignoring the hack header.
10 posts - 2 participants
Hi Guys,
I need a bit of help as I am at my wit’s end.
Just got a Picade 8" screen and set it up last night, fresh raspberry pi 4 8Gb and a new 64Gb sd with retropie on it, I even went with a fanshim for cooling.
Tried to start it up this morning and got the “No Signal” as is usual so added “hdmi_forse_hotplug=1”.
Now the screen gets a signal, but the actual display will only show for a split second before goes back to a blank screen. I don’t mean the screen powers off or “No Signal” gets displayed, as the backlight is still on, it just goes blank, then after a random period will flash up again then disappear. I can see that the raspberry pi is working from this as between flashes I get:
a flash of boot up
A flash of a red screen
a flash of retro pie logo
a flash of emulation station boot up
and a flash of a blue screen with a grey box.
I don’t get all of these every time as the flashes are not at the same frequency each time.
I have tried every number of config.txt changes from “hdmi_group” and “hdmi_mode”, “hdmi_drive” boosting HDMI signal, disabling overscan and HDMI safe mode.
I have reseated the ribbon cable on the video driver to make sure was aligned, I have even removed the fan shim in case that was it, reseated the XHat and tried every connection, I have also tried two separate micro HDMI to HDMI cables in case something funny was going on.
The last thing I can really think of is checking with my tv to see if the pi will display on that and using a Bluray player on the screen to see if that will work without flicker.
I have searched the board here and other places for this issue but to no avail so I was hoping someone here or Pimaroni staff would be able to advise further.
Any help or advice at this point would be grateful.
5 posts - 2 participants
I have just built an 8 inch Picade with a pi4.
All working fine, however on the screen there are what can only be described as green flecks that move around the image. On some things there are also red ones. It’s very odd.
I tried to upload a pic but cannot as a new user. I’m just wondering if there is a setting I need to adjust or if the panel itself is faulty.
1 post - 1 participant
Hello,
I’m having trouble setting up my picade.
The code to install the software curl -sS https://get.pimoroni.com/picadehat | bash is not working, I’m getting an error with the SSL Certificate?
1 post - 1 participant
Hi all,
it seems that Taito is following Sega’s steps and is making a new mini cabinet modeled after the Egret II: The Egret II mini
For what I see, this new mini cabinet has at least two features that would be highly desirable for a future Picade v3.
What do you think about this?
1 post - 1 participant
Hi. First excuse me for my poor english. I’m french and it’s a little difficult for me to speak english properly.
I just received my new 8 arcade cabinet and i’m a little confused. It’s a pico 8 édition
First of all i didn’t think there was a pico édition with the 8 screen and i don’t know with tutorial follow.
Secondly, i don’t have instruction poster in the box? So is there any ways i can get a digital one ?
And finally i don’t have the cool rainbow draw around the screen, i just have a black piece on the two sides (see the picture)
Everything is normal, or i have a bad number ?
Thanks for your help
5 posts - 2 participants
Hello,
I’m a bit new to tech. I’m wondering if it is possible to connect any device to the picade screen, I have a project in mind using the PlayStation tv
2 posts - 2 participants
I am in the process of assembling my Picade with a Pi4 4Gb, and the instructions don’t mention cooling. Am I likely to need a heatsink and/or fan for RetroPie and this setup? (I’m new to RetroPie so I’m no sure how hot this thing will get while retro gaming.)
1 post - 1 participant
Hi. Installed plasma buttons. Installed bash script. Plasma only works with different setup of pins that are specified in manual (BTN7 → BTN8). Plasma LED sequencer times out while booting. The only way to launch plasma is to type ‘plasma’ in terminal. Then it stays and not returns with cursor. Killing process makes buttons stay lit, until turned off (rebooting keeps them lit up). plasmactl keeps asking whether plasma is running. Installed script, reinstalled. Changes service setting from 14:15 to 15:14 to 23:24. Nothing helps. Any ideas?
1 post - 1 participant
I recently put together a Picade with the USB-C Picade HAT and I’m not able to get anything to display on the screen. The screen just stays this blank white no matter what I do. I’m able to get the Pi to output video if I plug it into a different screen, and this screen refuses to work even when I plug something else into it and power it separately, so it definitely appears to be the screen that’s at fault.
I’m hoping it’s something simple, because I’d really rather not dismantle the entire thing to get the screen out. I tried reseating the ribbon cable but no luck. Is the ribbon cable supposed to go in above or below the black connector clip?
Furthermore, the plasma buttons are not lighting up at all. I’ve run the Picade HAT and plasma installers (while the Pi was connected to a separate display) but the lights never come up. When I try to switch it to a different animation using plasmactl, it says that tmp/plasma does not exist. When I try running the command plasma, it gives me a Python error saying the module RPi could not be found.
Any help on these problems would be appreciated.
2 posts - 2 participants
Hi there I want to connect a I2C LCD to picade X hat to display thermals. The only problem is it requires 5V and Hack Header I2C only serves 3V3. Anybody did that? Or can share some ideas how to properly power the LCD?
2 posts - 2 participants
I’m trying to switch over to using headphones in order to not annoy my wife at night time - please help this is a life or death situation. Ideally I’d like to be able to switch between the picade speaker and headphones via the menu but have failed to find such an option thus far.
I have a 10" Picade from last year with a Raspberry Pi 4 in it (Picade HAT I have is pictured below). I have audio working out of the speaker fine and can change the volume up and down (I wasn’t able to at first). The version of Retropie is 4.7.1 running on Buster with Emulation Station V2.9.6RP (all standard stuff of 4.7.1 I believe).
My sound settings in the main menu are: System Volume: 60%, Audio Card: Default, Audio Device: PCM, …, …, OMX Player Audio Device: Alsa. I have the headphones plugged into the Pi 4’s 3.5mm headphone jack and the picade speaker is attached to the Picade HAT. The Raspi-config audio settings do not work as presumably the Picade HATs audio drivers are used instead. I dont have an /home/pi/.asoundrc file that I’ve seen mentioned.
When I plug in my headphones I can hear the splash video through them and not the internal picade speaker. Once in emulation station proper the roles are reversed and I can hear all the sound come out of the internal speaker and not the headphones. I’m guessing this is because of the Picade HAT driver has been loaded in and switched over to.
From what I’ve read on the forums I gather I can change my \boot\config.txt to turn off the standard raspberry pi audio driver and use the Picade HAT’s audio driver with: dtparam=audio=off/on and (more pertinent to this question) vice versa. This is rather cumbersome, due to having to have a keyboard attached to the Picade or a PC connected and then enter a load of commands off the top of my head and a reboot. Surely there is a more direct route?
Anyway any help would be greatly appreciated.
3 posts - 2 participants
So what is this all about? I dislike all the built in shaders for Retroarch (which is what RetroPie is based off of) and I especially dislike them on the Picade as I’m so close to the screen and the screen is relatively low res. Essentially they all blur the image and/or introduce moire artifacts. Dont get me wrong some of the shaders on libretro amaze me in their complexity but I’m just not a fan.
I mean why try to emulate a CRT screen when you’re never going to get there, at least not on a low res screen (1080p and below).
There are some features I like from CRT’s, primarily the scanlines.
I have a Sony PVM, with a fully decked out MiSTer FPGA and original controllers and I love it but there are problems with such a setup such as vertical arcades, CRT’s weigh a ton and it’s a lot of work maintaining them - I’m still working up to recapping mine. Its just nice to have a fallback and its nice to have a Picade on your lap.
The thing is as you go up the PVM models and then onto the BVMs, Sony was trying to get as sharp an image as possible (ie as sharp scanlines as possible) and as straighter screen geometry possible. These are both what a Picade’s LCD screen excels at. What the Picade LCD does not excel at are resolutions that are not native and to a lesser extent brightness. We’ll come back to brightness later.
What do I want then? Something dead simple.
I just want to use an integer scaling and either ‘overscan’ or ‘underscan’ the image (to use CRT terminology) - whichever is subjectively preferable. I want this with simple whole pixel scanlines that are surrounded by black pixels.
So I created this shader that produces the above for all the different resolutions that the various cores and games use.
integer_scanlines.glsl:
#pragma parameter SCANLINE_WIDTH "Scanline Width" 1.0 0.0 8.0 1.0
#pragma parameter SCREEN_WIDTH "Screen Width" 1024.0 0.0 7680.0 1.0
#pragma parameter SCREEN_HEIGHT "Screen Height" 768.0 0.0 4320.0 1.0
#ifdef GL_ES
#define COMPAT_PRECISION mediump
precision mediump float;
#else
#define COMPAT_PRECISION
#endif
#ifdef PARAMETER_UNIFORM
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION float SCANLINE_WIDTH;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION float SCREEN_WIDTH;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION float SCREEN_HEIGHT;
#else
#define SCANLINE_WIDTH 1.0
#define SCREEN_WIDTH 1024.0
#define SCREEN_HEIGHT 768.0
#endif
// GLSL shader autogenerated by cg2glsl.py.
#if defined(VERTEX)
#if __VERSION__ >= 130
#define COMPAT_VARYING out
#define COMPAT_ATTRIBUTE in
#define COMPAT_TEXTURE texture
#else
#define COMPAT_VARYING varying
#define COMPAT_ATTRIBUTE attribute
#define COMPAT_TEXTURE texture2D
#endif
COMPAT_VARYING float _frame_rotation;
COMPAT_VARYING vec4 _color1;
struct output_dummy {
vec4 _color1;
};
struct input_dummy {
vec2 _video_size;
vec2 _texture_size;
vec2 _output_dummy_size;
float _frame_count;
float _frame_direction;
float _frame_rotation;
};
vec4 _oPosition1;
vec4 _r0005;
COMPAT_ATTRIBUTE vec4 VertexCoord;
COMPAT_ATTRIBUTE vec4 COLOR;
COMPAT_ATTRIBUTE vec4 TexCoord;
COMPAT_VARYING vec4 COL0;
COMPAT_VARYING vec4 TEX0;
COMPAT_VARYING float Scale;
uniform mat4 MVPMatrix;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION int FrameDirection;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION int FrameCount;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION vec2 OutputSize;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION vec2 TextureSize;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION vec2 InputSize;
void main()
{
vec4 _oColor;
vec2 _otexCoord;
_r0005 = VertexCoord.x*MVPMatrix[0];
_r0005 = _r0005 + VertexCoord.y*MVPMatrix[1];
_r0005 = _r0005 + VertexCoord.z*MVPMatrix[2];
_r0005 = _r0005 + VertexCoord.w*MVPMatrix[3];
_oPosition1 = _r0005;
_oColor = COLOR;
_otexCoord = TexCoord.xy;
gl_Position = _r0005;
COL0 = COLOR;
TEX0.xy = TexCoord.xy;
vec2 ScreenSize = max(OutputSize, vec2(SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT));
if((InputSize.x > ScreenSize.x) || (InputSize.y > ScreenSize.y))
{
Scale = 1.0;
}
else
{
float ScaleFactor = 2.0;
while(((InputSize.x * ScaleFactor) <= ScreenSize.x) && ((InputSize.y * ScaleFactor) <= ScreenSize.y))
{
ScaleFactor += 1.0;
}
Scale = ScaleFactor - 1.0;
}
}
#elif defined(FRAGMENT)
#if __VERSION__ >= 130
#define COMPAT_VARYING in
#define COMPAT_TEXTURE texture
out vec4 FragColor;
#else
#define COMPAT_VARYING varying
#define FragColor gl_FragColor
#define COMPAT_TEXTURE texture2D
#endif
COMPAT_VARYING float _frame_rotation;
COMPAT_VARYING vec4 _color;
struct output_dummy {
vec4 _color;
};
struct input_dummy {
vec2 _video_size;
vec2 _texture_size;
vec2 _output_dummy_size;
float _frame_count;
float _frame_direction;
float _frame_rotation;
};
uniform sampler2D Texture;
COMPAT_VARYING vec4 TEX0;
COMPAT_VARYING float Scale;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION int FrameDirection;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION int FrameCount;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION vec2 OutputSize;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION vec2 TextureSize;
uniform COMPAT_PRECISION vec2 InputSize;
float mod_integer(float a, float b)
{
float m = a - floor((a + 0.5) / b) * b;
return floor(m + 0.5);
}
void main()
{
output_dummy _OUT;
vec2 InPixels = (TEX0.xy * TextureSize) * vec2(Scale);
if(mod_integer(floor(InPixels.y), Scale) < SCANLINE_WIDTH)
{
_OUT._color = COMPAT_TEXTURE(Texture, TEX0.xy);
}
else
{
_OUT._color = vec4(0.0,0.0,0.0,1.0);
}
FragColor = _OUT._color;
return;
}
#endif
I’ll explain how to use this in a reply but it must be used with integer scaling and ideally in a darkened room to make up for the lack of brightness.
Here’s a close up picture of what it looks like in Street Fighter II with 3x integer scale in both directions:
2 posts - 1 participant
Hi,
I bought a couple of Picade consoles to be used in some of my university courses.
When I try to install the software with
curl https://get.pimoroni.com/picadehat | bash
I get this error message
This hardware is not supported, sorry!
Config files have been left untouched
My setup
What can I do?
2 posts - 2 participants
Where I can find the firmware history for Pimoroni Picade Controller Board - PIM110 ?
I have one that is years old, no idea what f/w load it has and I wanted to make sure it’s up to date.
It seems to be Arduino-based so there must be a Sketch or binary for it.
1 post - 1 participant
I hooked up my 8" Picade screen to the output from my Retrotink 2x mini because I had the idea of using this setup for an N64 handheld. However the image from the N64 isn’t in the center of the screen and looks a bit squished. I can’t seem to use the screens built-in settings to change this, because the second menu option which I think this kind of setting might be accessed under isn’t available.
Is there any way to access that option or maybe some other way of making such settings? Maybe a firmware flash?
1 post - 1 participant