Syncing button leds with gameplay

Folly

Interesting question !

I did some searching and found this old topic :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/22407/read-out-game-state-for-led-control-for-making-start-coin-buttons-to-blink
This however will not reveal much but it actually says that some games will output some data and that it's possible.
Another search gave me this :
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/issues/5998
Which will lead us to the mame command line docs :
https://docs.mamedev.org/commandline/commandline-all.html#mame-commandline-output
So I tested this with galaga with my own runcommand and added -output console like this (with verbose disabled) :

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame\;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade -output console -c -ui_active -statename arcade/"galaga"   "galaga"

And when coins are inserted the leds will be blinking in the console/log and stop after pressing start like this :

led0 = 0
led0 = 1
led0 = 0
led0 = 1
led0 = 0

So now we need to figure out how to extract this information and pass it to a gpio.
-output network can also be used.
Perhaps it's easier to read out if we know how this works.

Btw. I used the latest mame0258

hopwon

@Folly Awesome stuff thanks! I'll try the -network and I hope that gives me the output I need. This is really helpful as I have somewhere to start from now. Watch this space, I'll try this out this week and update later...

Folly

@hopwon

The mame network is on the localhost :
http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Outputting with curl did not work correctly but showed some response now and then :
(--http0.9 was needed to get it working)

curl --http0.9 http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Wget did more showing 1 led status but probably not enough :
(-nv is silent mode)

wget -nv -O -  http://127.0.0.1:8000/

I tried this program ( commenting out the serial and arduino stuff so it would start) :
https://github.com/KabukiFlux/MAME-outputs-lamp-to-Arduino
However it has an issue when mame stops it doesn't detect that.
It should go to try and reconnect.
I am not that good with python but if you are you could add your gpio stuff to it.

Folly

@hopwon

It seems LEDspicer is the way to go but it's very daunting :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/21573/ledspicer-led-animation-controller-for-linux
https://sourceforge.net/p/ledspicer/wiki/Deployment/

hopwon

@Folly I am using LEDSpicer and I want to get it working as discussed. LEDSpicer does have a PulseAudio plugin to make cool VUE Meter type animations etc but I am not using PulseAudio :)
So I need to make it work via maybe a program to watch a log file and when it see's "0" it runs a profile/animation to light the credit button.
Not the most elegant solution but I am not going to use a ton of this type of animation/interaction so just for one or two situations I think is fine

Folly

@hopwon

I configured with --enable-raspberrypi and compiled.
But the files are looked up in /usr/local.
So I copied the rules files and the config file to that prefix and added the user to the groups.
This command didn't seem to work :

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger

After that I am lost.

If you get it working let me know how you did it.

I was only able to extract the led info if I used -output console.
When using -output network and using wget, curl, netcat, telnet or socat I can't extract the data because it's refreshed on the same line.
Very tricky to find a simple solution ;-(

hopwon

@Folly
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger - missing sudo. I installed it as a Service, its just more convenient.
I will try tonight when I get home but does the command spit out error codes as we can use them...

Folly

@hopwon

It took me more than 4 hours to find a solution in bash readout the socket info correctly.
The problem is that every line send by mame ends with /r (carriage return) only.
Therefor no new line is written to the sdio and so the info cannot be grabbed to do something.
Have looked a numerous options like sed, awk etc but nothing worked.
With this I came a bit further, showing more lines and the \r :

netcat 0 8000|od -c

But piping it again did not work good enough.
Instead of netcat I found socat which will work somewhat the same and still had the same issue using it like this :

socat - TCP4:localhost:8000

Now I found this site :
https://superuser.com/questions/942217/how-do-i-interactively-type-r-n-terminated-query-in-netcat
Which explaines to use ,crnl at the end.
I figured I only try ,cr and that worked like this :

socat - TCP4:localhost:8000,cr

Now we can read the led info and do something with it :

socat - TCP4:localhost:8000,cr|while read line;do echo $line;done

echo $line can be replace by an if function to enable/disable leds on the gpio pins.

The socat command can be reduced using 0 for localhost like this :

socat - TCP4:0:8000,cr

Edit :
I have it running for 1 led :

socat - TCP4:localhost:8000,cr|while read line;do [[ $line == "led0 = 1" ]] && raspi-gpio set 4 op pn dh;[[ $line == "led0 = 0" ]] && raspi-gpio set 4 op pn dl ;done

Folly

@hopwon said in Syncing button leds with gameplay:

does the command spit out error codes as we can use them...

With the -d option it gives an error something about a device missing.
Have to look again when I get home.

hopwon

@Folly Just looking at my (default) runcommand output:

/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mame/mamearcade_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/1944.zip"

To integrate into this would probably mean recompiling with support for mame output features.
I see you are just launching mame with a different cli, default mame, if there is such a thing.
I think I am in above my head here!!
I might see what I can do with LEDSpicer. I have it working to the point that, when a game starts both start and credit flash until credit is pressed at which point it stays steady. Maybe a simple counter output to a file when the button is pressed and watched by a background process so that when it gets to 0 again, I can issue an Emitter command to make it flash again... just some draft thoughts!

Just looking into this:

LED Spicer Docs

Folly

@hopwon

Indeed I use mame standalone for this.
Could be that lr-mame supports it too but it needs adding the options.
Will look at it later.

Edit :
I used my script to produce lr-mame runcommands for arcade :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-lr-mame-and-mame-standalone
(used mamedev.sh, the other is not updated anymore, installed arcade from the category menu item)
This will produce configs and runcommands where we can add the -output network option :

lr-mame-basename = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch --config /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg --appendconfig /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg.basename -S /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade -s /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade -v -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mame/mamearcade_libretro.so 'mame  -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/lr-mame -c -ui_active -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/ '%BASENAME%''"
lr-mame-basename-network = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch --config /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg --appendconfig /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg.basename -S /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade -s /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade -v -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mame/mamearcade_libretro.so 'mame  -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/lr-mame -output network -c -ui_active -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/ '%BASENAME%''"

Manually added in the second !
Testing it reveals THAT THIS WORKS !!!! ;-)

Folly

@hopwon said in Syncing button leds with gameplay:

does the command spit out error codes as we can use them...

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ledspicerd -d
Program terminated by error: Empty devices section

gomisensei

@hopwon If no ones suggested it yet, advanceMame has a scripting system that can take actions on emulated external outputs such as Led's, and other hardware...

https://www.advancemame.it/doc-script here is the documentation for the scripting and outputs.

hopwon

@Folly The computer is telling the truth, you need to populate the /etc/ledspicerd.conf file :)

But this is fantastic, I will have a go at compiling and then give LR-mame a go. I looked at various scripting options last night and while I can create a counter which will increment every time the credit button is pressed, I could not find a way to decrement it, so I went to bed!

Folly

@hopwon

On which hardware do you run retropie ?
lr-mame can be installed from binary when using rpi.

Tell me, what script did you make to count the inserted coins and do you use a joystick or keyboard ?

mitu

@Folly said in Syncing button leds with gameplay:

On which hardware do you run retropie ?

First post:

... I am using LEDSpicer on RPI4.

hopwon

@Folly said in Syncing button leds with gameplay:

Tell me, what script did you make to count the inserted coins and do you use a joystick or keyboard ?

A bit nasty but:

I used inputseeker running in background to grep for a credit button being pressed on(6=P1, 7=P2 in my case) and when it successfully finds a 6 or 7 it increments a counter +1.
You can do it with awk also but I got tired and when to bed :)

hopwon

@Folly said in Syncing button leds with gameplay:

lr-mame can be installed from binary when using rpi.

Installing it now

Folly

@hopwon

I will look at ledspicer with inputseeker again.
Seem a really nice package but I have to take some time to dig into it.
Hopefully I will grasp it.

Folly

@hopwon

I uninstalled my previous install of LEDspice.

This I what I did :

cd ~/Downloads/LEDSpicer-development/
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --enable-raspberrypi 
make
sudo make install
sudo usermod -a -G users pi #replace user with your username
sudo usermod -a -G input pi #replace user with your username
sudo cp /usr/share/doc/ledspicer/examples/21-ledspicer.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo chmod 744 /etc/udev/rules.d/21-ledspicer.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger
sudo cp /usr/share/doc/ledspicer/examples/ledspicer.conf /etc
ledspicerd -v
ledspicerd -d
sudo ledspicerd -d #seems to be the way to go with RaspberryPi

Running with -d gives :
Program terminated by error: Empty devices section

Added the controller name in /etc/ledspicer.conf :

	<devices
		name="RaspberryPi"
    		boardId="1"
>
	</devices>

or

	<devices>
		name="RaspberryPi"
    		boardId="1"
	</devices>

Still no dice.

Any help would be appreciated.