Programmable?

mediamogul

Have you checked "/tmp/runcommand.log"? It might give some insight.

diegzumillo

Just did. Nothing unusual there though.

edit: I just made a tiny itty bitty progress. I noticed some text flashed at the screen when I launched a game. I was under the impression anything printed to the terminal would appear on my ssh screen, but no. So I tried snapping a picture (only took me like 50 tries) and discovered it wasn't finding the py file! but only when launching a game. So this sh must be called from some other directory. So I added a pwn command, and 50 pictures later I got the result: it's being called from the supplementary/emulationstation/ directory. Putting the py file there works! I launch a game and my LED lits up.

Now to follow the trail. There are two files there that could be calling runcommands. The emulationstation.sh is way too simple and doesn't seem to be it. Then there's a emulationstation file without extension that seems to be some kind of complex file. It's not readable or editable, so there isn't much that can be done there.

diegzumillo

SUCCESS!! It works!!

Oh boy, I was losing hope on this. OK, so here's how I solved this: I figured this runcommand had to be called by everything, every emulator, port etc, would call runcommand. But I didn't realize immediately that they were calling it with arguments specifying everything. It just so happens that argument $3 is the system. So all I have to do is add the line

sudo python mydumbassscript.py $3 &

and do whatever I want with this information there. Quick note: There might be a more elegant way of doing this but I put the script at the opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/ because that's where the call always comes from apparently. Ideally I would specify a path but I can't seem to make that work.

Anyway, I'm happy this is kinda working! :)

edit: added "&" at the end of the line to make it run in the background.

mediamogul

@diegzumillo

Fantastic diegzumillo, very cool! It's interesting to think of all the possibilities this technique could lead to.

tipoto

It's funny because using a similar approach, I actually created a LED system that can lite 16 RGB LEDs along with 6 regular LEDs (monochrome), I can decide which LED is ON/OFF and which color to display, everything works on a per game basis (similar to a LEDBlinky system)
I built this system when I was first using a RPI2 with retropie, now I use another board but I kept the exact same system to drive the LEDs.
My ARM board is connected to an arduino which has an RGB module plugged onto it, everything is driven by a python script which takes care of the communication.
I can control everything on a per game basis because I also recreated my own system to adjust the games settings (I almost never used runcommand.sh with my Pi2) and so I have included specific settings to control the LEDs in the system.

An example of information sent to the arduino to change the LEDs status: GRPY**********WW001111
wich means:

G: rgb LED#1 -> GREEN
R: rgb LED#2 -> RED
P: rgb LED#3 -> PURPLE
Y: rgb LED#4 -> YELLOW
**********: rgb LED#5 to #14 -> OFF
WW: rgb LED#15 and #16 -> WHITE
00: regular LED#1 and #2 -> OFF
1111: regular LED#3 to #6 -> ON

diegzumillo

Thanks, Mediamogul. I really appreciate your help and all other's in this topic, DxFx and dankcushions too. If you hadn't kept nudging me in the right direction I wouldn't have figured any of this out.

I have a couple more things I'd like to do along the same lines but I think that was the hardest part. Mainly I want to also be able to tell when the system is booting and when the player saved/loaded. Save and load I might even do directly through button press, without messing with retropie logic. We'll see. I'll move on to installing a screen for a few days and come back to this side of the project later.

DxFx, that's some sophisticated way of solving it!

mediamogul

@diegzumillo said in Programmable?:

Thanks, Mediamogul.

Thank you, sir. I hope to make good use out of techniques discussed here and it was great fun watching this project fall into place.

darthpaul

There might be a more elegant way of doing this but I put the script at the opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/ because that's where the call always comes from apparently. Ideally I would specify a path but I can't seem to make that work.

Excellent job, I have been watching this topic hoping for your success because I too would like to do something like this, light a certain LED depending on the console chosen. Does it matter where you put the python script, could I just put it in the home/pi folder?

diegzumillo

I "matters", but only in my non elegant way. Ideally you should call the py script with a full address. It really should be easy to do! I tried once, it didn't recognize the path and gave up because I'm lazy. Without the path, the script should be at opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/

darthpaul

Thanks for the quick response, then that is where it will go.

darthpaul

I have a question, where did place the call to the python scrip in runcommand.sh?

diegzumillo

I don't think there's a specific place you need to put it. Just outside any function should do. Did you try to put it somewhere and it failed?

darthpaul

I first tried putting it at the very end, right before exit and the light came on after I exited the game not when I started it. I then placed the call near the beginning, right before the first if statement and now the light comes on when I start a game.

DxFx

I just recently updated my Raspbian desktop image to the latest version since I saw it was available and decided to tackle getting the PiGlow up and running on the Pi3 and it was a total success! Setting it up was a breeze, however I didn't follow the tutorial I posted verbatim. Instead I followed most of what is provided here: https://github.com/Boeeerb/PiGlow For the sake of posterity here's what I did:

First I enabled I2c interface in raspi-config. Next do sudo apt-get install python-smbus python-psutils -y (psutils isn't really necessary I don't think but is used for an example to display cpu usage) After that use sudo nano /etc/modules to open the modules file. Make sure to add the following:
i2c-dev
i2c-bcm2708

Ctrl + x and y to exit save. Now do a reboot. After rebooting go back to the command line and create the directory for PiGlow and then change to it so:

mkdir piglow
cd piglow

Get the PiGlow module:
wget https://raw.github.com/Boeeerb/PiGlow/master/piglow.py

Download the test script:
wget https://raw.github.com/Boeeerb/PiGlow/master/Examples/test.py

Now just run sudo python test.py and if everything goes smoothly you can insert brightness values from 0 to 255 for each led color.

Sorry if this was an unnecessary explanation but I hope it might help anyone else who wants to do something like this with the PiGlow. Now I just need to make up some scripts and put them in the appropriate place in Retropie.

DxFx

Thank You @diegzumillo for your time and effort in figuring out how to make it possible. Thank you @mediamogul @dankcushions @tipoto and @darthpaul as well!

kcc406

@DxFx does this mean that the PiGlow is programmable to change the lights when different emulators open?

DxFx

@kcc406 It should. There's 3 sets of leds for each color and 6 colors in all (white, blue, green, yellow, orange, red) so that's a total of 18 leds. What I was thinking was for a certain brand/company use a certain color. (Red for Nintendo, blue for Sega etc.)

kcc406

@DxFx I am sorry i dont think i was clear about my question,

I was wondering if the PiGlow would only light up the correct buttons that are only used for the certain emulator?

example; when i run NES it would light up only a,b,start,select, and the joystick, then with SNES it would do A,B,X,Y, start,select, and the joystick

kcc406

@DxFx I am sorry i dont think i was clear about my question,

I was wondering if the PiGlow would only light up the correct buttons that are only used for the certain emulator?

example; when i run NES it would light up only a,b,start,select, and the joystick, then with SNES it would do A,B,X,Y, start,select, and the joystick

kcc406

@tipoto iI was reading you post and i was wondering if you could help me on this, or let me know if its even possible, I have a pi3 with an ipac i/o wil the roms running off a HDD, and would like to run leds on a emulator bases and it looks like your script will work but i am not sure where you loaded then in to and i am not sure if your code will would with my ipac.