retropie and waveshare 32b?

glennlake

@rog585 First I would forget about the waveshare website. Go to the RetroPie website and download the proper image for your Pi. Then make sure your install works and you can play a few games using a normal monitor. Now power down your Pi and install your 3.5 Pitft screen on the GPIO pins of your Pi. Now go to the Adafruit webpage I listed and follow the setup they spell out. Again, the best way is to ssh into your RetroPie and copy and past from their page onto the command line. It eliminates the chance of typos. If you left the HDMI monitor connected you will see an image but it will be distorted.

rog585

@glennlake Will try, I was using the waveshare for existing drivers for screen. but by the sound of it the adafruit does everything.

Will report back.

Thanks

glennlake

@rog585 Yes. I went that route when I first tried to use that screen. Adafruit just updated their setup this June and it makes it much simpler. Good luck! :-}

rog585

@glennlake still noting, i have downloaded this image from the main download section retropie-4.0-beta2-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz

Still a white screen, will try again later. I run through the full setup with no errors, just when i boot the pi i get a white screen and hdmi input says no input found?

glennlake

@rog585 Are you able to get RetroPie to start normally before you start the install of the Pitft screen?

rog585

Yes i can install a keyboard etc. Then i run the lines in the command line from the adafruit, reboot and nothing just a white screen.

glennlake

@rog585 Well, i'm at a loss at this time for what may be the problem but I will keep thinking about this. I know I really messed myself up a few times by not having the GPIO pins shifted by one pin. I went round and round until I saw this.

rog585

@glennlake So the unit needs to be one pin to the left?

glennlake

@rog585 No, the pins must be lined up straight. But what I did by mistake is, I plugged in the screen to the Pi off by a pin and nothing worked.

rog585

ahhh i have just done that and the pi didn't boot up. I'm going to re image another sd card with retropi and try again. Thanks for all you guidance, really appreciate your time.

glennlake

@rog585 OK sounds good. I would make sure your RetroPie boots and works fine before I try the Pitft screen. Divide and conquer troubleshooting.

rog585

Still no luck, I have tried it again and updated the retropie image before i ran the adafruit script. Can any one help?

glennlake

@rog585 I copied this from the Adafruit site. Sometime you can miss something on the webpage. http://pastebin.com/whMCbDAb I had a thought. Could the screen be bad?

rog585

Will give it another go, the screen is good. It works with the image given from waveshare. Just when i do anything with it without the waveshare image it is just a white screen.

rog585

If you have a 3.5 inch waveshare screen use the below code, it works and now i have a mini screen working with Retropie

git clone https://github.com/swkim01/waveshare-dtoverlays.git
sudo cp waveshare-dtoverlays/waveshare35a-overlay.dtb /boot/overlays/

Note! If you're running the latest Retropie with linux 4.4 kernel or newer (check in terminal uname -a), use the following instead;
git clone https://github.com/swkim01/waveshare-dtoverlays.git
sudo cp waveshare-dtoverlays/waveshare35a-overlay.dtb /boot/overlays/waveshare35a.dtbo

now edit your config.txt
sudo nano /boot/config.txt
and add these two lines to the very bottom;
dtparam=spi=on
dtoverlay=waveshare35a
ctrl+x then y then enter

sudo reboot

again quit ES drop to command line, check the existence of your new tft display by typing;
ls /dev/fb*

you should see dev/fb0 /dev/fb1
/dev/fb1 is your tft

if you don't see /dev/fb1 you've messed up and need to start over
if all is good, now we get retropie output to your tft;

sudo apt-get install cmake
git clone https://github.com/tasanakorn/rpi-fbcp
cd rpi-fbcp/
mkdir build
cd build/
cmake ..
make
sudo install fbcp /usr/local/bin/fbcp

now to launch fbcp automatically we need to add;
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
Before, the final “exit 0” line, add the following:
/usr/local/bin/fbcp &
ctrl+x then y then enter

sudo reboot

rog585

@senkun do you know how to increase the frames per second to make it run smoother?

glennlake

@rog585 Glad to see you got your screen working. I got burned using the Waveshare drivers when I first started to setup my screen and so I didn't recommend that. I don't know about their setup for but for the Adafruit setup you will find in the /boot/config.txt this line " dtoverlay=pitft35r,rotate=90,speed=64000000,fps=30". The "fps" is for the frames per second. I can't say the same is in your setup but it's worth a look. If you change it just be sure to backup your settings first now that it's working.

rog585

@glennlake its the same, as you suggested. its sooo jumpy though i have tried different speeds and fps but not great. This i will turn it into a digital photo frame for work. Have sine bought a 3.2 screen as the feedback was better. Thanks for all your help.

senkun

@rog585

lol did you type all that or did you just cut and paste all that from my guide right on top?

senkun

@rog585 said in retropie and waveshare 32b?:

@senkun do you know how to increase the frames per second to make it run smoother?

Nope. Limitation of bandwidth on SPI. 3.5" and 4" screens will have tearing and lag, they are 480x320 compared to the 3.2" screen with 320x240. So they're struggling to push double the pixels. If you need a larger screen for gaming, most people just go composite or HDMI. There are a lot of cheap nobrand composite 4.3" screens you can try, or use the 5" or 7" HDMI screens from waveshare.

Using the guide I wrote above, second post on this thread, you can get waveshare 3.2", 3.5" and 4" TFT screens working.

If you're using their 3.5" or 4" screens, substitute these lines:

git clone https://github.com/swkim01/waveshare-dtoverlays.git
sudo cp waveshare-dtoverlays/waveshare35a-overlay.dtb /boot/overlays/

But if your linux kernel is 4.4 or newer, use this instead:

sudo cp waveshare-dtoverlays/waveshare35a-overlay.dtb /boot/overlays/waveshare35a.dtbo