Programmable?

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.