Adafruit Arcade Bonnet review/report

mojoatomic

The product in question :-)
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3422
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1152

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated in anyway with Adafruit, and I don't have a dog in the hunt for this review.

I've used many interfaces over the course of several years and spent WAY more money than reasonable to find a personal truth... NOTHING beats GPIO for fast control on the PI. I got so tired of jacking around with IPAC2's and other hardware and being let down looking for an easy to implement solution.

GPIO isn't that hard to implement, really - but this product makes it trivial. Really. There are two scripts available (it's all in the product page, complete with instillation instructions) - and they work brilliantly. First script sets up the controls, second script sets up audio and volume control from the arcade bonnet - and it's audio is superior in every way measurable.

It's cheap. It works extremely well. It takes all of 5 minutes to setup.

As a side note - you'll also want to order the JST connectors from Adafruit as they are not included. Also, there is a small amount of soldering required for the board. On the JST connectors - they come with .11 quick connects, wich work great for some arcade switches, but not for traditional cherry type switches on classic arcades. I cut spliced the connectors from a jamma harness and now they work perfectly.

Happy gaming!

mojoatomic

you know... I probably posted this in the wrong section...

caver01

@mojoatomic It happens. A moderator might move it.

I too like the idea of using GPIO inputs, especially if you have few enough buttons etc. I own (and love) an older version of the IPAC4 and use it on a 4-player cocktail cabinet, yet despite the 50+ inputs it has, I still use a handful of GPIO inputs too!

One of the questions I have is about the audio. I am digging through the install details to find answers, but to cut to the chase, when I use USB audio for example, I cannot control volume with the controller "PCM" which is the default. As a result, the system throws errors here and there when it is trying to save volume, or set volume and what not. With my USB interface configured to work, it appears as "headphones" or something like that, so any commands issued to control "PCM" fail, because it's not called that anymore.

My question, finally, is this: What do you see when you go into the RetroPie Audio config and and try to adjust volume? I am not talking about the Emulation Station slider, I am talking about the text-mode mixer screen. Is it PCM there? Master? Headphones? What?

<EDIT> I might have found my answer here.

mojoatomic

@caver01 As you found, I just use alsamixer from the command line - works great. Generally, I just access it via ssh from my phone and make the adjustment.