Video Support Causing RetroPie To Freeze

Cyberonix

I'm completely new to RetroPie and at a loss with a problem I'm encountering. I apologize if this is long-winded. I've created a base install which up until recently has been stable. This is a 4.4 install from the official source with a minor tweak. I've added code to enable a lighted on / off switch (which is not currently hooked up). ROMS were added and the system seemed to work great. I could scroll through the list of ROMS and launch at random without problem. Once I was satisfied I made a backup image. One thing I should mention is that all ROMS are run from a USB thumb drive that's auto-mounted each time the RetroPie is started. I did not set this up manually. I simply enabled the USB ROM service in the setup, let my Pi create the necessary directories and then copied the ROMS to their appropriate places.

Now I'd like to go beyond the basic theme and add video, game info, etc. so I installed Steven Selph's scraper. I chose the NES and only the NES to start. The scrape was successful and it added an images directory and a gamelist.xml file to my NES rom folder. I started Emulation Station and scrolled to the NES section. I very briefly scrolled up and down the list and everything seemed to work great. The next day I wanted to test it thoroughly. I started the Pi and the first thing I noticed is during boot I now get one error that says "Failed to start usbmount@dev-sda.service". However when Emulation Station starts all my ROMS are there so it is being mounted somehow. I don't know if this is related to my problem or not but I don't remember seeing it in the past. The problem I'm having is once inside Emulation Station when I scroll to the NES section and start navigating ROMS my Pi either stops accepting input and the screen gets garbled (not frozen because the garble changes if you let it keep running) or it just seems to lock up completely (nothing's garbled but won't accept any input).

Some research suggested the image might be corrupt so I restored my good image. As an experiment rather than installing and running the scraper I just copied the images directory and gamelist.xml file to the NES roms directory. The first time I ran Emulation Station I got the default layout which was text only centered in the screen. After a reboot the layout changed to show more detail. However the same problem happens as I start scrolling. Oddly enough this time the first video would never display but the others would. I can only scroll through a few ROMS before the Pi locks again.

I have tried this using two different SD cards and the results are the same.

My setup:
Stock Raspberry Pi 3
RetroPie 4.4 OS
Mini USB keyboard
128 GB Sandisk thumb drive formatted for FAT32
Unlabeled power supply rated at DC 5V 2500 mA
All videos, box art, and game information reside on the thumb drive in the appropriate rom directory.

I'm lost. Any help would be appreciated.

dankcushions

Unlabeled power supply rated at DC 5V 2500 mA

this would be my prime suspect. do you ever see a lightning bolt symbol, or thermometer symbol?

Cyberonix

@dankcushions I don't remember see either of those but I'm not sure where I'd look for it. I should mention that these lockups happened even if I've just turned on the Pi and started scrolling.

Cyberonix

@dankcushions Also can you recommend a good power supply?

DougA

@cyberonix the one from the raspberry pi website is certainly good. I have had no issues with Canakit’s one either.

pjft

If the videos are the issue, you may want to turn on OMX Player Support in the other settings and see if it works.

I will also give you some comments from my own experience, that are potentially not relevant but worth mentioning. It might be that your USB drive is causing these lockdowns - do you notice its light blinking a lot or even staying constantly on when these "freezes" happen?

I have had great experiences with several 64GB thumb drives, but I had two Lexar 128GB thumb drives that have never worked reliably and cause the exact same issues, mostly freezing because of USB I/O. This would cause an endless circle of problems because shutting off the Pi would result in bad sectors in the drive.

In my case, I'd wait for a few mins and eventually it'd resume working, but it was clearly not ideal so I stopped using those.

Unsure if related, but thought I'd share these two pointers.

Cyberonix

@douga Thank you. I'll check those out.

Cyberonix

@pjft First I'll have to make sure I've turned on OMX support. The USB drive unfortunately doesn't have an indicator light so I don't have any way to tell if it's frequently active.

I'm wondering if the videos can be run from the SD card itself even though the ROMS are on the USB drive just as a test. Is it as simple as copying the images an gamelist.xml files to the appropriate folder on the SD card?

pjft

@cyberonix They certainly can, but I wouldn't rush and do it without confirming that that's the actual issue.

Cyberonix

I wanted to post an update.

The failure to mount USB drive issue was unrelated to the video glitch and freeze issue. Oddly enough this issue was isolated to one location. When the pie is plugged into a multi-outlet strip where I work it always gives the mount error message. When plugged in at home I never see it. I'm not sure if that's something that would resolve itself with a better power supply or if it's just something that happens depending on how clean the power source is.
The freezes seem to be caused by me not making changes in the settings. When I originally picked a video enable theme I didn't change anything else. After changing "UI Settings \ Gamelist View Style" to Video and "Other Settings \ Use OMX Player (HW Accelerated)" to On I no longer see the issue. I haven't done extensive testing yet but so far so good.

Thank you for the help and suggestions.

pjft

@cyberonix Glad to hear that turning on OMX Player seems to have fixed or mitigated things.

In regards to power issues and the pi, it is indeed a curious little thing. It may be caused by current fluctuations or something else - honestly that's not my area of expertise. Still, I suppose it's good you managed to narrow it down to something actionable!

zerojay

Hi, I used to have this exact same issue with my Pi 3 and the reason for it was the power supply. Sometimes, I found that if I rebooted once or twice, things stablized and I didn't get the freezing anymore but it would be a roll of the dice if it stayed good after another reboot. I swapped out power supplies and I had far fewer issues.

Cyberonix

@zerojay Thanks. I actually ordered one of the Canakit power supplies earlier today!

zerojay

I also had the same thing happen on my Odroid Xu4 even with the best power supply while using an external hard drive. Turns out the real issue was that the power where I was living at the time just sucked.