Why do people buy ready-made kits?

PokeEngineer

Wow, I just turned my back for a second and look what happened... That escalated quickly.

markyh444

@pokeengineer did anybody get killed with a trident though?

PokeEngineer

@markyh444 said in Why do people buy ready-made kits?:

@pokeengineer did anybody get killed with a trident though?

@Damonmath apparently, because he got banned.

BillyH

Wow... This thread sure blew up since I read it yesterday.

Now that I have an account here set up since I wanted to ask some stuff, I can weigh in on the original topic and help bring this back on track.

My Pi 'light' kit (Pi3B, 5V2.5A power supply, case and three passive heat sinks in different sizes) hopefully comes in tomorrow or Saturday at the latest, and I'll then spend Sunday setting everything up, together with my brother-in-law, who is more of a tinkerer than I am and hasn't experimented with a Pi yet.

I had serious thoughts about getting a Pi and downloading RetroPie close to a year ago, but the whole tinkering stuff kept me back.

I'm lazy. I want to put in a cartridge or disk and be ready to go, not spend hours looking at code to see what needs fixing. I'm a console gamer for that reason, among others.

I wouldn't buy a preset Pi-RetroPie but I understand the appeal, like I understand the appeal of the SNES Mini or modding a PS1 to play all games, even though I'm not into either of those. It's easy to have something that can immediately do a lot without questions asked.

I'm hoping the eventual experience wih RetroPie will be a positive one for me, with not too much tinkering once everything is set up. Though I do like the thought of making an arcade cabinet once me and my wife live in a bigger place, but that's more handiwork than coding.

jonnykesh

@billyh It will because you will have built it yourself rather than paying some scam-artist $500 for the privilege. And you will have people here willing to help because that's what they do.
This guy just came to have a moan about being ripped off like it was the RetroPie guys that were responsible!

BillyH

@jonnykesh Very true, though I was more talking in general about my fear of having to tinker with the code when things don't work in regards to the original post in this topic from a while ago, not connected to the dude who took over the topic.

I don't even understand why someone would pay that much for a Pi set-up, there are fine laptops cheaper than that and the entire idea behind Pi seems to be DIY. I'm pretty sure that for $500, there are much better ways to get emulation on television. Like buying a controller for my laptop and casting to the television. And after that, going on a holiday with the remaining $400.

jonnykesh

@billyh I like your style.
"Tinkering with the code" is not a scary prospect. In fact it is a learning experience. All you are doing is editing a text file. You have been doing it for years if you have been using computers. You just had a nice graphical interface in the way.
All I will say is don't panic, don't be overwhelmed and don't just jab random things in there. If you aren't sure, just ask.
The people on this forum are more than willing to go out of their way to help people. You just have to show that that you at least tried and to post all the info needed without people having to drag it out of you!

BillyH

@jonnykesh I'll add that I'm not completely new to coding. Basically all my work for my mathematics degree (which I finished close to a decade ago) was written in LaTeX, which introduced me to the feeling "I know what I want to achieve and what command line should technically work but I still get errors after an hour of trying", and I've done some light programming, both for courses and later for work, like SQL, Mathematica, Matlab or IIB.

I'm definitely not a natural at it though, and I don't get the same kick out of it like my brother-in-law does or like many people on this forum do. Which is fine, we do not all need to like the same things, but it did create a bit of a threshold for me to get over to commit to the Pi. It also means I probably won't tinker with the settings too much once I have everything set up and working properly.

It's great that there's an active community here though. I think working together is preferable over using an answer found through Google and hoping for the best.

jonnykesh

@billyh No one is trying to get you to commit, this isn't a cult. All you have to be is willing to read and learn. Any idiot can type stuff into a computer but if it doesn't work they'll never know where they went wrong. The default settings in RetroPie are there for a reason, they work for the vast majority of people. Don't forget the devs use this software or they wouldn't bother.
Two years ago I had never touched Linux, now that is all I use on my PCs and I have 4 Pis running doing various things around my home. You'll enjoy it, or you won't. Don't feel bad if you don't. You can still play some cool games!

BillyH

@jonnykesh for fear of taking this thread even further off topic: what kind of stuff do you make them do?

I guess I'm a bit unimaginative when it comes to stuff like this.

jonnykesh

@billyh 2 media players incl RetroPie, a pihole, and an experimental one, at the minute it has Alexa for Pi on it.

quicksilver

@damonmath said in Why do people buy ready-made kits?:

Grabbing ROMs and loading up that little GEM is the full extent I'm willing to go to play video games.

The funny thing is he literally could have done just that if he had just loaded retropie on his SD card himself. In my opinion retropie is as easy or complicated as you want it to be. The stock image comes with all the common emulators pre-loaded with a very functional UI. Literally add roms and start playing. Tried to point the irony out to him but apparently that subtlety was lost on him.

markwkidd

The OP definitely got sour with no reason, but their point was they wanted to buy an integrated arcade kit with joysticks, buttons, a cabinet, etc. that was preconfigured to work with RetroPie. Even if you've got a couple of cabinet builds under your belt that is a much more significant time and effort commitment than just loading RP on a card and diving in.

BillyH

@jonnykesh Didn't think I'd ever have to Google something called 'PiHole'... Sounds interesting though. Does that Hole start up automatically when you plug the Pi in? Is such a thing manageable next to RetroPie on the same Pi?

Unless I misunderstood some texts on this site, a Pi is always "on" when plugged in unless you create an off-switch yourself. Would a Pi then have a "sleep mode" where it doesn't try to send any info to my television and just work on PiHole? It feels weird to constantly leave a computer on to me, though I guess I could always unplug it when we go to sleep and plug it back in when the first one of us gets back from work.

@markwkidd actually the OP is @chubsta and they just wanted an innocent discussion, @Damonmath hijacked the thread a few days ago. He started using the term 'arcade kit' halfway through when you used the term but what he had bought, it seems like, was just a standard Pi with RetroPie and ROMs pre-installed, likely with some sort of case but probably nothing too elaborate. At least, that's how it reads to me, don't think he would've gone straight to complaining about the quality of N64 emulation if he had bought an arcade cabinet.

Clyde

@billyh said in Why do people buy ready-made kits?:

Unless I misunderstood some texts on this site, a Pi is always "on" when plugged in unless you create an off-switch yourself. Would a Pi then have a "sleep mode" where it doesn't try to send any info to my television and just work on PiHole? It feels weird to constantly leave a computer on to me, though I guess I could always unplug it when we go to sleep and plug it back in when the first one of us gets back from work.

Yes, the Pi doesn't unpower completely after a shutdown. There are different addon boards or cable adapters available to remedy this, but I've settled for a simple power cord with a manual switch.

I don't understand your question about PiHole. Care to elaborate?

BillyH

@clyde said in Why do people buy ready-made kits?:

I don't understand your question about PiHole. Care to elaborate?

What I meant was this:
Say PiHole and RetroPie can work satisfactory next to each other on the same Pi (which I don't know if that would actually work). This means that I would need to keep the Pi turned on even if I'm not using RetroPie.

What I was wondering was this: when I'm not using RetroPie, could I then place the Pi in some form of power saving mode, where it doesn't try to push a screen to the television, and just works on PiHole? Kind of like how PS4 has a 'rest' mode in which it doesn't communicate with the television, but can still download games, and doesn't use as much power as when you would leave the console completely on to finish a download.

darklordenron

I see it as you have a few different subsets of people. Those who love tinkering full time and HAVE the time, and those who don't want to bother and like experiencing more in life and just want to play some games. Then, you have those who, when they do have time, perhaps want to tinker with it too. You also have people who tinker for a living and the last thing they want to do when they get home is more tinkering.

I fall into the "I'll tinker if I have to, but these days I'd rather be doing something else or actively playing a game instead of messing about." So, I bought a sort of premade kit that came with a power supply and a case and everything that I needed because

I wanted to get up and running quickly so as to...play games on it.
It was cheaper than sourcing everything separately by about ten or twenty bucks.
I can always add to it later or get a new case or something.

After being involved in IT for over a decade, the last thing I want is to mess with things to GET it working after a long day. (Unfortunately, I'm tinkering trying to solve controller issues at the moment though..) In the end, I would have messed with it anyway to learn about it. After playing my games for a few weeks, anyways.

Clyde

@billyh said in Why do people buy ready-made kits?:

What I was wondering was this: when I'm not using RetroPie, could I then place the Pi in some form of power saving mode, where it doesn't try to push a screen to the television, and just works on PiHole? Kind of like how PS4 has a 'rest' mode in which it doesn't communicate with the television, but can still download games, and doesn't use as much power as when you would leave the console completely on to finish a download.

I don't know pi-hole at all, but as I understand its website, it doesn't need a desktop environment (DE). If it does, see these instructions to install the Pixel desktop on Retropie. You could then just use Pixel's power management to disable the monitor if it isn't needed. However, even an invisible running DE should consume more power than no DE.

So, if pi-hole doesn't need a DE, you could just switch off the HDMI output after exiting from Emulation Station with this command:

/opt/vc/bin/tvservice -o

This command should turn HDMI back on with the preferred (-p) settings:

/opt/vc/bin/tvservice -p

To see all options, just enter /opt/vc/bin/tvservice alone.

Attention: On my Retropie, turning the monitor back on doesn't restore the command line screen, but nevertheless it's there awaiting commands. So I can just enter exitblindly and Emulation Station loads up visibly. If I then quit ES again, the command line screen is back, too. :) Judging from a quick web search, tvservice seems to have different "side effects", maybe depending on the monitor model.

phantomthrill

My opinion on the matter is that both sides are right. If you don't want to spend the time building something but want to use it, that is completely up to you, however others very much like many of y ou have stated love to build things. I started messing with computers at age 5 when my parents would take me to the store and I'd go into the electronics part and mess with the early ugly green desktop programs. However as I got older and fell in love with Windows 3.1, STILL THE BEST O/S in my opinion as far as Microsoft goes, I couldn't help but want to learn how files were installed, how do you move files, how do you make this thing work before and even after you did something so simple as install memory. Who remembers the parity vs. non-parity days huh? I'm glad we don't have that any more. Recently though, I was working with Daphne trying for a week to figure out how to get the picade controller to work. After doing what we all do, "research," I found and put the pieces together of how to make it work. Every time I do something like that I feel more accomplished and smarter and go gee maybe I'm not as stupid as I think I was, am or whatever. I may not get paid to work on computers or pi's but I love doing it for the shear purpose of staying sharp and learning new things. For me, that is the pay-off. Learning new things, doing other projects like hyperspin and reading technical language a whole lot. I could see some people's head exploding after five minutes with a technical explanation, but I welcome the challenge to let it bother me until I get the job done. Thank you everyone for providing help and answers in this forum, and thank you to all of you who support this community.

ruthless4u

Sorry to dredge up an old topic,( especially as a noob) but searching the web trying to learn more about retro pie and emulating games it came up. I'm looking into trying retro pie out, but am about as computer illiterate as you can get it seems. So I can see why someone like myself would buy a ready made kit. I like to be able to fix things myself, but the more I try and read on retro pie the more lost I get. So I'll be honest, ready made is tempting, but I want to do it the right way as well, if that makes sense. Heck I don't even understand how to start, and with limited time it's more frustrating lol.

If I decide to try it will be posting a lot of questions in support I imagine, will see what happens after I do more reading.