How to use Pi 4 for gaming without keyboard or a mouse

squirrelraccoon

Hello, everyone,

I have recently purchased Raspberry Pi 4 and installed Retro Pie and have all my games sorted now.

All tutorials say that you will require a mouse and a keyboard to set it up, but none explain how to remove the keyboard and mouse afterwards.

I want to use the Raspberry Pi 4 for gaming only and would like to pack the keyboard and mouse away.

I tried setting Emulationstation on autoboot but the roms did not load, I always had to have the terminal open.

Any help would be highly appreciated. I am very new at this.
Thanks!

sirhenrythe5th

@squirrelraccoon i use Retropie since a couple of years (started with the first one) and only had to use a keyboard for setups, copying or modifications of the system.
If i just want ro play games i never had a keyboard or mouse to be attached (ok, for ScummVM or DosBOX maybe...).
How did you excatly install retropie on your Pi?
By writing the official image on a SD-Card?
This is an all-in-one-wonder-package and can be used without keyboard/mouse right from the start after the controller is configured once.

Clyde

@squirrelraccoon Please give us the information that's asked for in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

squirrelraccoon

Thanks for your reply @sirhenrythe5th

Firstly I uploaded the operating system with Belena etcher to my memory card.

I downloaded retro pie via terminal using the following:

sudo git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup

So now every time I turn on my Raspberry Pi 4 I have to open terminal and type in Emulationstation and only then I can go on with my controller.

I apologise if I am breaking any rules, I am very new at this and could not find a solution anywhere and am genuinely seeking help.

I will be mainly playing Sega, Nintendo and Playstation1 games.

Any advice is highly appreciated.

dankcushions

@squirrelraccoon what operating system?

documentation on manually installing retropie in top of raspbian/raspberry pi OS, including automatically launching ES, is available here

however, i would always recommend starting from the official image, which has that done for you: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

squirrelraccoon

@dankcushions It's Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)

Are you saying that I need to re-install Retro Pie so I can use it without the keyboard and mouse?

Is the terminal command sudo git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup not a correct way to install it?

Everything seems to be running fine, I just want to set it up so it opens directly into Retro Pie.

mitu

@squirrelraccoon said in How to use Pi 4 for gaming without keyboard or a mouse:

Everything seems to be running fine, I just want to set it up so it opens directly into Retro Pie.

Take another read at the installation document - as @dankcushions said, starting automatically with EmulationStation is covered in the document.

squirrelraccoon

@mitu I am trying but if it is so simple why can't you tell me what am I missing? I am looking for help!

squirrelraccoon

Thank you all, as I suspected the answer was simple and there was no need to reinstall anything.

If anyone else has this question, all I had to do was go in Retro Pie settings: In retropie setup script - Configuration / tools - autostart and everything works nicely.

Please remember that there are a lot of people who have no experience in any of this, I did not mean to break any rules and apologise if the answer was too obvious but it was not the case for me and I could not find it on my own.

All sorted now, thank you!

dankcushions

@squirrelraccoon that same instruction is under the heading “Boot to EmulationStation” in the link i provided. glad it’s sorted but the help was given :)

Clyde

@squirrelraccoon Good to hear that you've solved your problem.

Nobody here (of consequence) will hold your inexperience against you. It's just that most beginners' answers are already covered in the very comprehensive documentation of this site. In your case, the link that @dankcushions gave you leads to a page with a section called "Boot to EmulationStation“ which for its part links to the FAQ with exactly the instructions you ultimately needed.

A typical approach of many veterans not only in this community is to help others at helping themselves by pointing them in the right direction, but at the same time expecting them to do the (usually manageble) learning by themselves.

Just trying to calm the waves a little. Welcome to this forum, and have fun with RetroPie. 😁

(@dankcushions beat me about his link while I was typing this.)