UPDATE: Relocating the home folder to a USB flash drive is a much better option. Found that folders don’t ln -s very nicely. Editing fstab and referencing the drive by UUID is the more elegant solution. Added bonus, can power down, plug into a PC and update the games more easily.
I’ve been playing with RetroPie this weekend on a Raspberry Pi 3. Using iBuffalo controllers I purchased from Amazon. The micro SD card I am using is only 8GB, however all the guides I’ve seen list a difficult method for installing games to an external USB drive. RetroPie simply runs a Linux distribution, and as such has access to all types of fun file tools. In this case, the easiest one I’ve found is to use symbolic links to the external drive. This takes a little bit of work setting up ssh access and some command line kung-fu, but it is basic stuff. Retropie expects to find the files for each system in ~/RetroPie/roms/{systemname}. By default the first external drive is mounted at /media/usb0/. If we take this information we can “ln -s /media/usb0/{systemname}/* ~/RetroPie/roms/{systemname}/”. As far as the operating system is concerned, it will check the default folder and treat the files as if they were where they belonged. All my games are already sorted by system so I just have to link each file to the default folders.
Added bonus, it’s also possible to install Kodi in RetroPie, making this an all in one system for retro gaming and media playback.
While attempting to assist someone with getting apps loaded onto a Android TV Stick, I ran into a slight problem. A parental control pin was enabled, and I had no way of immediately getting in touch with the person. In app configuring couldn’t be done without the pin, since the app wouldn’t launch without asking. After some hunting to try to locate where the system stores whether the app has launched before, I had an idea. Go in through adb, and try launching from the shell. Lo and behold it worked, but still wouldn’t launch afterwards from the gui. Doesn’t matter to me as the owner knows the PIN code. I got what I needed to do done, and confirmed everything was working. If anyone is interested the appropriate code to launch it through adbFire was located here. A little massaging was needed since we already had an adb shell through adbFire, and voilà. The app runs without a pin code. Not an elegant solution since we need adb access to allow it to run every time without the PIN, but it’s functional for my needs. As far as massaging the command, it was as simple as dropping “adb shell” from the beginning.
It’s been a long time since an update has been posted here, however this will hopefully become a weekly thing. Today, as it is the beginning of a new year, I am going to be pulling out a piece of neglected (at least in my life) tech. I’ve had my RaspberryPi3 since shortly after its release, however never set anything up on it more than RetroPie since all my Pi2s are running media center’s and I have a dedicated PC running my MythTV setup. That will soon change since i feel this board should have the needed horsepower to do something fun. Already it has been run as a RetroPie system, however I am currently missing controllers (They vanished). Maybe a portable game console would be a great addition to my collection, but I feel it should look good too. The 7″ lcd screen I have works well with it, but i feel I am missing some necessary hardware to make it pop. Maybe a 3-D printer is in my future for a custom printed case to hold it all together. Keep watching this space for updates, which should be coming more frequently.
Update: the company has reversed it’s choice and now will allow third party bulbs. Hooray for consumer choice!
So, just came across this beautiful piece that seems slightly anti-consumer to me. Will companies ever learn that modifying core functionality only serve to upset their most vocal cheerleaders, the early adopters.
This change seems to be masquerading under the banner of “Quality Controls”. I firmly believe that if you have bought and paid for a device, the functionality you paid for should exist going forward. Worse still is that these devices use open standards, but are still being blocked. This is akin to buying a new laptop, and then being told that it won’t work with your existing network due to the router not being made by the same manufacturer. Open standards allow smaller companies to compete without the massive overhead that proprietary protocols require, and they help ensure interoperability between multiple brands. Forcing consumers to purchase the consumables from a single manufacturer or approved manufacturer removes a consumers choice. A better option for device makers is to ensure that their product is the best it can be, at an affordable price, and refuse to rely on artificial means to lock consumers to your brand.
A bit of background first…. When it comes to media center software, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been running Kodi since it was XBox Media Center. If I search hard enough, I’m sure I can find an XBox laying around here somewhere that still has the software on it. That being said, I should have known better than to embark on my current quest to run a MythTV backend on a Raspberry Pi B+, on the same network as a OpenElec install on the same network. First up, I need a TV tuner. Some research later, but not very good research, I settled on this little guy. This turned into an epic fail since I live in the US, and the DVB-T adapter, while having many useful features as a Software Defined Radio dongle (SDR), it is completely useless as a TV tuner stateside. Oh well, it will eventually be turned into a ADS-B receiver to track flights overhead, or maybe grabbing NOAA weather satellite images out of thin air. At 11$, it’s not too big a mistake, and it has other applications. Continue reading The things I do to myself.→
Occasionally I end up getting bored. On these days I play with the quadcopter. Today this did not end well as I ended up breaking a motor after getting stuck in the tree, but not before successfully making it between the roof and railing.