getting/sending active game data

HugoS

Hi im new to retropie and want to start to build a arcade machine.
i have seen some nice 16x16 led panels and i was wondering if i can control them by retropie itself or by something like mqtt.
The intention is for example to show a pacman video on a 16x16 led panel when pacman is played on the retropie.
So i need to send the name of the active game to a arduino or raspberry pi somehow.
Is there anyone who can help me or have an example on how to do this?

Kind regards,
Hugo

Folly

@hugos

I never done this myself.

It looks like you need to create a few scripts for that in /opt/retropie/configs/all :

It is described in the docs for the runcommand.sh here :
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Docs/blob/master/docs/Runcommand.md

The variables $1 $2 $3 $4 are passed to that script, if it exists.
You can then make commands that will pass specific stuff to your arduino.

This is a pixelcade example :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/22195/pixelcade-an-rgb-led-matrix-marquee-that-changes-to-match-the-game

HugoS

@folly
Thanks that looks really good.
I'm going to try it one of these days.

mitu

You can send commands to your led panel also from EmulationStation's event system, which was expanded recently to support more entry points - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/EmulationStation/#scripting.
There have been a few integration using this method:

As long as you have the commands to control your panel, you can create scripts to send those commands based on EmulationStation's state and operations.