Is there a dedicated music player for Retropie?

alaskajohn

@EVEGames Based on @nick44 's success, I have also installed the Fruitbox jukebox this evening and it is "mostly working" (launched from emulationstation and controlled via keyboard controls.)

I'm new to Retropie, but following the instructions on the github page was easy enough.
I had earlier setup Kodi as one of the Ports following instructions on this website, and so I had at least one example of how the Ports work, and was able to fumble my way into getting Fruitbox to work the same way.

I added about 20 mp3s and it did run through them on start, so I'm not sure about performance (or UI navigation) with a large music collection.

I have yet to get joystick support working (even thought I've set joystick enabled to "yes" in fruitbox.ini.

The docs also suggest it works with internet radio via a URL, which I am excited to try my radio stations from back "home".

The next step for me is to see if I can to do something better with playlists. I'm intrigued to know what @nick44 means by "I have set the playlists to be how I choose games".

But yeah, if you're just looking for a basic music player, it does the trick.

alaskajohn

Quick follow-up...

There are no issues with performance due to number of mp3s (data is cached in a local db).

Skins:

I found some of the skins to be poor performant. At least one was throwing GL errors.
Most skins are designed for arcade cabinet joystick movement. (See note below on "bad joystick movement)

The best skins for my arcade cabinet so far i "NumberOne" and "TouchOne". They both have good joystick UI and the information display is decent and the designs are not too "over the top". However:

The skin displays includes very few total number of songs.
The retro look (50s jukebox) doesn't go well with 80s/90s arcade theme (TouchOne is simpler than NumberOne).
The joystick "hover select" indicator is not transparent enough.

I think I'll take a stab at creating my own skin closer to a RetroPie asthetic based off TouchOne. If I do, I'll reply to this thread.

On "Bad Joystick Movement": I've yet to get the joystick working, but arrow key selection across the song list isn't quite right, even for the default skin. For example, pressing "right" might move you to the next column in one skin, but in another skin it would move to the next song pair (which may be visually below the first entry).

alaskajohn

Solved Joystick Issue.
In fruitbox, pressing tab on a keyboard allows editing buttons.
Or better yet, just modify the following values in your fruitbox.ini

[buttons]
Up = JOY_Y_LO
Down = JOY_Y_HI
Left = JOY_X_LO
Right = JOY_X_HI
Quit = BTN_TRIGGER
VolUp = BTN_TOP2
VolDown = BTN_BASE2
Select = BTN_BASE
Skip = BTN_TOP
Pause = BTN_THUMB2

and then later in the same file, ensure joystick is enabled.

[joystick]
  Enable = Yes

I'm pretty happy with progress on the theme so far. The aspect ratio better matches my cabinet, displays up to 36 songs at a time, and includes all the details that are important to me. I just need to think of a way to bring more of the "arcade whimsy" to the title cards.

But so far.. so good.