Pi Zero 2 released

ParadoxGBB

Hey all,

Looking to maybe get one with a GPi Retroflag case, had a few questions for those willing to humor me (thanks in advance!):

About how much time do you get on a reasonable emulator, say NES, via the AAs? Anyone try rechargeables?
The case appears to not have an open port for HDMI out, but it looks like you could drill a hole up the top to do so and run the script to toggle between the displays. Has anyone tried this? Or suggest a different case?
Someone mentioned no HW video decoding on this board, has anyone attempted to run Kodi 8.7 (hopefully Matrix one of these days) on this through HDMI? Can you get 720p?

My dream device would be to have a handheld on a plane. It looks like this would be perfect because you could even power it with a USB bank if you needed to. And then, be able to check into a hotel room, plug this device into the TV's HDMI, and connect home via Plex, controlling it with my phone.

I have a Pi3 with a GameHat but while it can do the latter scenario OK, the handheld part is a bit too clunky for my preferences and it's not really that easy to travel with, although it was a fun experiment. This looks much better and not too underpowered.

Thanks again!

mitu

@paradoxgbb said in Pi Zero 2 released:

Someone mentioned no HW video decoding on this board, has anyone attempted to run Kodi 8.7 (hopefully Matrix one of these days) on this through HDMI? Can you get 720p?

That's not true. It's basically the Pi3B in a smaller package, even the Pi0 has HW video decoding (MPEG4).

ParadoxGBB

@mitu Apologies, didn't mean to spread misinformation! If that's the case Kodi should be ok based on my experiences on my Pi3B.

jpwhiting

@retropieuser555 with the following I get some sound, but it's very buzzy, i.e. it's not really routed through the gpi case somehow in /boot/config.txt:

# dtoverlay=pwm-audio-pi-zero^M

dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac

What does the recalbox beta image have in /boot/config.txt ? does audio work on that?

I found that here by the way: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/raspberry-pi-zero-2-powers-null-2-retropie-gaming-handheld

mitu

@jpwhiting see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/31555/no-sound-retroflag-gpi-case-with-pi-zero-w-2-solved/ for using the new Zero with the GPICase.

jpwhiting

@mitu Thanks, that helped. Still getting some buzzing though during game play in all emulators I've tried so far. Sound effects come through ok, but music is very quiet and the buzzing overwhelms it.

retropieuser555

@jpwhiting his info about the display is interesting, as it'd be nice to find a solution to not being stuck on the legacy driver on the gpi case. As it was the only reason the original pi zero couldn't play the source port of mario 64 it played fine on a hdmi putput

Unknown

So happy to hear the zero got an upgrade. I have wanted to build a handheld for a long time, but the zero just wasn't quite enough power for it to be worth it. Until now!

Brunnis

Started experimenting with RetroPie on my Zero 2. Installed the latest weekly image (from Oct 29) and then used the RetroPie-Setup script to update it (including operating system packages). Everything seems to work fine, including audio.

By the way, there's no easy way of using FKMS or KMS video drivers with RetroPie on this hardware, right? It seems the old BRCM stack is still the default on pre-Pi 4 hardware and trying to use FKMS or KMS results in EmulationStation not starting (which isn't too surprising, of course).

mitu

@brunnis said in Pi Zero 2 released:

By the way, there's no easy way of using FKMS or KMS video drivers with RetroPie on this hardware, right?

You can do that, but you'll have to re-install from source every package, since we don't provide KMS enabled binaries. Of course, depending on the choice (fkms/kms driver), some packages will not be available (splashscreen, audio, emulators that depend on the BRCM stack, etc.). You might as well do that on a Pi3, since it has more RAM, and transfer back the image.

Brunnis

@mitu said in Pi Zero 2 released:

You can do that, but you'll have to re-install from source every package, since we don't provide KMS enabled binaries. Of course, depending on the choice (fkms/kms driver), some packages will not be available (splashscreen, audio, emulators that depend on the BRCM stack, etc.). You might as well do that on a Pi3, since it has more RAM, and transfer back the image.

Right, that was simple enough. Thanks! Just recompiled EmulationStation and it now starts up fine.

thomasca

@mitu I utilized the config.txt from that thread, but still can't get audio over the headphone jack or speaker to work yet. I'm still get a no sound device error when starting games.

mitu

@thomasca Not sure what topic you're referring to - may start a separate topic and add more info.

Brunnis

Got RetroArch working with KMS as well, by recompiling. Now, the more troublesome part will be to try to get the GPI Case display working under KMS. I don't know if anyone has done it. Found this recent thread on the Raspberry Pi forums, which offers some pointers, but no conclusion:

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=322556

If anyone knows of any more useful resources (or anyone that has done this before), I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.

retropieuser555

@brunnis yeah I couldn't understand it. It's clearly possible I just can't figure out how to recompile that device tree files without getting errors. The good though is if one person figures it out is the gpi case is uniform and we can all just use the same dts file

Brunnis

@retropieuser555 Ahh, that was your thread! Bummer that you didn't get it working. I'll see if I can give it a shot, but my main enemy these days is that I often have too little time available to deep dive on stuff like this.

thomasca

@mitu Sorry, I was talking about the link you provided to the separate thread with a version of config.txt that fixed sound.

I forgot to copy over dpi24.dbto to the overlay folder though. After I did that, it started working.

Brunnis

I've been testing my Zero 2 with a few SNES games and I am a bit suprised of the poor performance in Star Fox. I know it's a SuperFX game, but performance seems to be worse than I remember it from back around 2016-2017 when I was testing a lot with my Pi 3. Running RetroPie on a 1080p display using either FKMS or KMS, the Star Fox intro scene when the Arwing fly through the tunnel gives very noticeable audio crackling. Even overclocking the Zero 2 to the same clock frequency as the Pi 3, i.e. 1.2 GHz, does not fully solve the problem. Combining the overclock with lowering the resolution to 720p does seem to get it to run at 60 FPS without issues.

This makes me wonder though... Does anyone know if anything has changed in the past few years that affected performance in any significant way? In my old Pi 3 testing, I could run at 1080p and no overclocking and it would handle Star Fox perfectly fine. Even with threaded video disabled and using the KMS video driver. Do you have any ideas, @mitu or @dankcushions ?

All testing done on snes9x2010, by the way.

EDIT: It seems it will work without audio crackling at 1.2 GHz, 1080p with threaded video enabled. As I mentioned above, I believe threaded video could be disabled in this game a few years ago.

dankcushions

@brunnis i've no idea i'm afraid - haven't played it and don't have a pi3 anymore :( @Darksavior may know - I believe they mentioned this game before.

whilst the zero 2 is sort of a slightly downclocked pi3, i wonder if the cache/memory etc are clocked the same? would be curious to know all the various frequencies it reports. core/memory overclocks often gave good results with the pi3 so it could be crucial.

Brunnis

@dankcushions Thanks. I know at least the core clock is the same as the Pi 3 (400 MHz). Need to check the V3D default, but I did try setting it to 500 MHz and it did not improve the situation. The reviews I've read indicate memory performance is more or less the same as the Pi 3.

There could of course be lots of things affecting performance over the years. There's RetroArch itself, the emulator and even firmware/kernel/driver changes. Would be interesting to try some older builds on my Pi 3. Not sure I'm willing to really deep dive into this, though. Might just have to accept that things have changed. 😛