Coin Operated "wake up" button for classroom use

[Piercery]

So I am a high school teacher, teaching video game design. I've built an arcade cabinet with the RP4 that has a bunch of SNES and N64 games on it. When the arcade is not touched for 2 minutes, the screensaver mode comes on and plays trailers for all of the games on the system.

The Need: I would like to be able to give out tokens in my class for incentives that would make the arcade playable for a set duration of time (or even just until it enters screensaver mode again)

Possible solution: I know that typically, the coin acceptor is set up to press the "select" button when a coin is inserted. What I was wondering is, is there a way to make only a specific button capable of waking up the arcade from the screensaver?

Ideal world, like I said, would be making it a specific time allotment for each press of the button. But even just having the screensaver work as a lock screen would be a start.

Also, I've attached some pics of the arcade just for context (and because I'm proud of it)

Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks, guys!

[mitu]

Nice unit !

Possible solution: I know that typically, the coin acceptor is set up to press the "select" button when a coin is inserted. What I was wondering is, is there a way to make only a specific button capable of waking up the arcade from the screensaver?

You could leverage the scripting available in EmulationStation and run a script when the screensaver starts (disabling the input). Enabling the inputs would work only when the coin acceptor script runs, but I'm not sure if there's a script attached to it or it's just a simple input (in which case this approach won't work).

[Piercery]

@mitu Hey thank you!

I appreciate the idea! Unfortunately, I'm fairly certain that the coin acceptor works only as a simple input. Idk if maybe I can try setting it up to a specific button press that is not bined to any of the buttons up top? But I would still need to be able to tell the system to disable controls "until XYZ button is pressed". My scripting abilities are also pretty novice when it comes to emulation station. So if anything comes to mind on how to make this work, any resources would be greatly appreciated as well!

Thanks, again! Appreciate the feedback!

[mitu]

Oh, I forgot to add the link to the scripting docs - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/EmulationStation/#scripting.

[Lolonois]

From the distance some ideas:
Never tried to replace the ~/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg while ES is runnning with a empty one or at least all button bindings removed (leaving only the Joystick-stubs) when the screensaver starts.

For unlocking the ES you could run triggerhappy [1] and run a script that does the reverse from above. This script could also launch another script which runs x minutes (e.g. see man sleep on the Pi terminal), after inserting the token/coin to block the input again.

AFAIK there is no option to show an overlay how much time is remaining when a emulator/game is running.

HTH

[1] https://github.com/wertarbyte/triggerhappy

PS: Awesome build, very clean finish (esp. I like the glowing LED bottom light). You may consider posting it in the "Projects and Themes" section for some Retro karma. :)

[Piercery]

@mitu Thank you for this! Very helpful!

[Piercery]

@lolonois This is all great info! Now I just need to see if I have the skills to implement it all! But thank you so much for the help!

And thanks! I'll be sure to add it to the "Projects and Themes"!

Thanks again for the ideas! Script stuff is definitely over my head but this all at least gives me a jumping off point to know what i'm trying to do!