Using a button switch to open close emulationstation
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Hello all.
Firstly I'll explain my setup and then I'll go onto what I want to achieve to see if any of you brill people can help me.
I have a raspberry pi 3 loaded with the latest retropie image and all upto date.
I then mount my external hard drive and also install plex media server onto it and use it that way.
How I operate it is the awkrawd way though.
When I switch it on I exit emulation station to go back to text console and leave it on 24/7 to keep the plex media server running, I do it this way as I notice a significant decrease in temperature doing it this way rather than also leaving emulation station running 24/7.
Then when I want to play some retro gaming I ssh into the pi from my phone and hit sudo reboot, then emulation station will reload after that.
After I'm finished I then press start and exit emulation station back to text console.
My pi is all hidden in the back of my tv cabinet with a 92mm fan on top of the case (amd waith coolers are a perfect fit for the one nine design case, they basically clip on)
So what I want to achieve is to fit a momentary push switch inside my cupboard, push the button and emulationstaion loads, then when I push and hold say for 2 seconds it then closes emulation station back to text console.
Would this at all be possible and if so where would I start.
Thanks in advance -
I don't see how Emulationstation running would affect the additional load on the PI if you enable power saving in Emulationstation. I leave ES running 24/7 and the CPU load is zero.
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I have never tried power saving to be honest but without it es will be the program with the highest cpu load when I check with top command.
Without es running and just plex server running in the background temps sit in mid 30s with es running temps sit early 40s. Although I must add my pi never goes out the 40s even when I've been gaming for hours the highest I've seen it is 48c I think that's because of the 92mm fan I use, but I've done it that way as I want it to last withough having to set it all up again lol.
I'll try the power saving option see what that does.
May I ask what that does.
Thanks
Rob -
The power saving reduces the EmulationStation's CPU usage during idle times. The options are described by the author in the original pull request: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/pull/172.
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@mitu
Cheers
Thanks for that info :) I'll give it a try and see if that makes the difference.
Does it put just es into power saver or the actual pi
Thanks -
@robmcc83 why wouldnt you just type exit instead of waiting for sudo reboot to take forever to get back to emulationstation?
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@robmcc83 why would you ever have to set it up again? Backup the sd card to a .img on your computer.
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@edmaul69 said in Using a button switch to open close emulationstation:
@robmcc83 why wouldnt you just type exit instead of waiting for sudo reboot to take forever to get back to emulationstation?
Don't quite no what you mean by this one.
If I was to just type exit my ssh app would just exit me out of my ssh session. -
@edmaul69 said in Using a button switch to open close emulationstation:
@robmcc83 why would you ever have to set it up again? Backup the sd card to a .img on your computer.
I don't bother backing up any of my pi's
I back up content that is on them regular but I've had nothing but problems when restoring .img files that are old backups onto new sd cards.
I have a magic mirror that ive had a couple of years and on 2 occasions tried to restore a backup .img file to a new sd card. On both occasions packages were so far out of date it caused me more issues than just starting from scratch.
Also had a retropie one refuse, this was due to a external hard drive failing and the pi would not boot withough the hard drive connected.
I bought a new drive but couldn't use my old .img backup to restore sd card as that was set to mount the failed hard drive aswell.
So with the hassle I've had I just choose not to. Plus no harm in reinstalling a fresh upto date version if and when a sd card fails or I bugger something up lol. -
@robmcc83 oh yeah I forgot that an ssh app does that. Just type emulationstation.
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@robmcc83 said in Using a button switch to open close emulationstation:
If I was to just type exit my ssh app would just exit me out of my ssh session.
You can type
nohup emulationstation &from the SSH prompt and ES would still be running when you logout from the session. Just to add to @edmaul69's advice. -
We'll the power saving features seem to be doing the job. I've been monitoring for the last 24 hours checking temps cpu usage etc and putting power saving onto default, emulation station appears to be not using a lot of cpu anymore when I check with the top command so with that in mind I'll just keep in running all the time.
Thanks for the help guys :)
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