kodi & emulationstation back to back

[mdx]

Hi,

I'd like to share a /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh configuration from some time back that enabled running kodi & emulationstation back to back. Since I've switched to systemd since and I haven't used it in a while, it's included as is.

The idea was if a joypad is plugged in, launch emulationstation after kodi quits, otherwise just quit to console. Quitting emulationstation with a joypad plugged in would bring up kodi.

The problems here as I recall was ensuring the console remains viewable after the depth and resolution changes by kodi, hence the depth tricks before launching emulationstation:

The script requires cec-utils & fbset packages installed.

# la /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 732 Apr 25  2020 /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh
# cat /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh 
export VT_SHELL_PID=$$
while :; do
  ORIGINAL_DEPTH=$(fbset | head -3 | tail -1 | cut -d " " -f 10)
  kodi-standalone
  if [ -c /dev/input/js0 -o -c /dev/input/event0 ]; then
    echo as | cec-client -s -d 1 >/dev/null &
    tvservice -p
    sleep 5
    fbset -depth 8 >/dev/null 2>&1
    fbset -depth $ORIGINAL_DEPTH >/dev/null 2>&1
    emulationstation
  else
    break
  fi
done
kill -9 $VT_SHELL_PID

# We will be closing Kodi programmatically to launch EmulationStation, but we won't want the shell to exit
#while :; do
#  sleep 60
#done
#kodi-standalone #auto
#emulationstation #auto