Reboot using Powerblock

[LeatherOtter]

So i just ordered a PowerBlock and i'm wondering about its behavior, ie: If i were to switch it off and on again quickly will the scripts Reboot my Pi or does it hang strangely? I'm thinking of using a normally closed momentary switch to trigger reboots. Also I cant seem to find a circuit diagram that shows what the different pins on the circuit board are for I think that parts of the petrock site may be down.

I'm just learning how to write scripts for the raspberry pi in general id be happy with being pointed in the right direction for the rebooting solution.

Thanks in advance

[GtBFilms]

@LeatherOtter I've not tried this, but I imagine it will reboot, but not exactly quickly.

With the pi on, as soon as you press the button, the Powerblock invokes the shutdown script, and the screen immediately goes black. After about a minute (I think this depends on how many ROMS you have and whether save game state/metadata update is on) the pi safely shuts down and then the power is cut.

If the button has come back on in the meantime, the pi just starts right back up again.

What I have done is shutdown from the Emulation Station menu - that shuts down the pi safely as well, but in that scenario, the latching button on the PowerBlock is still set to ON, the whole thing shuts down and immediately reboots again, with no cutting of the power.

So I think your normally closed momentary button would probably work, although you'd need another latching button for when you actually did want a proper power down. Also the reboot isn't exactly fast, you'd be looking at a couple of minutes or so from pressing the reset button to it safely shutting down and then coming back up again.

Considering that, I'm not sure why you would need a reboot button, you may as well power down and power back up manually with the normal latching button? If the pi is totally crashed and unresponsive (thankfully rare) then your Powerblock isn't going to be running any safe shutdown scripts anyway, you're going to have to risk it and pull the plug!

[Brandonshire]

I know this is an old thread but I'm just getting into RetroPie (and Raspberry Pi's in general!)

@LeatherOtter Out of curiosity, did this end up working the way you expected? If so, I'm thinking the Powerblock might be a very easy way to modify my just arrived Retrflag NESPi case to make the power and reset buttons functional as expected. The Power button would just shut it down, and the reset button (which just momentarily cuts power) would cause a restart.