Emulation Station crashed!

Smythius

My emulation station is constantly crashing at random. often times when I quit emulation station to run something from the command line like a scraper or configuration file or just browsing from my ROMs list. I'm still setting up the Pie and have been getting constant crashes while not even running any emulators. I recently installed the BGM script but haven't even finished setting that up. I get an error message that says check your rom file/folder permissions or make sure my gpu_split is set high enough and/or to switch back to carbon theme. I dunno how to adjust the gpu_split correctly and haven't messed with any RAM or overclock settings. It's all stock just a safe shutdown script, bezel project, and few additional emulators have been added to the build. I have a large library (1500+ games) and used Skraper to get a thumbnail, image, video, and marquee for almost every game. Can someone shed some light as to what might be causing the crashes, and what settings I might adjust so that the gpu_split is a better fit for my setup?

RP3 model b v1.2 from 2015, not sure if its a B or B+
retropie-4.5.1-rpi2_rpi3 image used
theme used: Pixel-Metadata
128GB SD card only about 1/2 full
Controller: 8bitdo NES30 and keyboard (Also need help getting controller to connect via BT so it's not drawing power being plugged in all the time)
5.2v 3A power supply (I still get low voltage messages)

Clyde

If you're getting low voltage messages, the power supply would be my first suspect to check. I strongly recommend the official power supply from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Every other attempt to fix this may be wasted time if just the power isn't stable enough.

Another way to check for a messed up setup would be to try a brand new Retropie image from the official website and just put some roms on it for testing. A stock (and not overclocked) Raspberry Pi with the stock Retropie image shouldn't show such problems, so if they remain with the new image, the hardware (power, heat, damaged Raspi) should be the cause.

Apropos, if you overclocked your Pi, do the problems remain if you reset it to stock values?

mitu

The message you're seing the generic message shown when ES crashes - it gives a few suggestions of what it might be wrong. Since you say you get crashes in other programs, this means it's a general problem and not related to Emulationstation in particular.
The /boot/config.txt contains the configuration for the GPU memory split, you can pot the contents here to see if it's correct, but if you used the RetroPie image that configuration is already added.
As @Clyde suggested, you should really get a proper power supply - there are a lot of issues caused by using a under-powered supply. If you still get crashes after that, then you can try and diagnose if there's a hardware error at fault - memory/cpu/etc.

MaMikee

As an aside to quality power: I found I got constant messages from most USB power supplies when fed through the micro USB connector. Cable didn't matter.

Once I started feeding the same supplies in through connector J8 these problems went away.

USB power is convenient but not efficient.

Smythius

@Clyde @mitu @MaMikee thx for all the advice. Looks like I'll order a new power supply and report back after. I also want to mention I use a NESPi+ case w/ safe shutdown switch. with or w/o fan it still seems to have the voltage issues. Could under-rated wires inside the case be contributing to the low power as well? (I'd need to solder a thicker gauge wire then the one provided w/ case.)

Smythius

@Clyde said in Emulation Station crashed!:

Raspberry Pi Foundation

On a side note. do you know of a good place to get a 3.5mm to RCA Composite AV Cable that works with the RP3? I have ordered two cables so far and neither output the display properly. (the shorter the better < or = 3ft)

Clyde

@Smythius said in Emulation Station crashed!:

Could under-rated wires inside the case be contributing to the low power as well?

I don't know, can you connect the power supply without those cables and test it like this?

On a side note. do you know of a good place to get a 3.5mm to RCA Composite AV Cable that works with the RP3?

Alas, I don't know that either, because I didn't need such a cable in my household, yet. The value of such tips also depend very much on where you live. I live in Germany; since it's 9 a.m. here and you posted about 5 hours before me, I doubt that you do, too. ;)