entertainment-wave-2021

This is entertertainment-wave-2021 or as I use to call it, just Wave (because it needed a name anyway). The main goal is to turn your RaspberryPi into a retro media center, able to play videos, music and games.

This is a work-in-progress hobbyist project with no warranties and a lot of improvement possibilities. I will be happy to receive contributions in the form of Pull Requests or Issues on GitHub.

You can find more info about the project on Reddit and YouTube.

Licensing

Feel free to use this code with no warranties. Although I have no responsibilities about misusing the project, it is a great practice to keep the author's information on the source code (MaironW is fine).

If you think this project is really worth funding, please contact me. It is always great to have resources for more projects.

Base Installation

The following steps were executed on a Raspberry Pi 4, with RaspiOS installed first and RetroPie installed over the OS. I will just provide the basic steps for my configuration, although other Linux setups should be able to run it with the correct tweaks. Plase create an Issue if you got any problems during the process.

• Install Qt5 and QtQuick

sudo apt-get update;
sudo apt-get install qt5-default;
sudo apt-get install qt5-qmake;
sudo apt-get install qml-module-qtquick-controls;

• Install VCR_OSD_MONO Font

sudo cp fonts/VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf /usr/share/fonts/

• Copy script and playlist folder from source directory to build dir

cp -r wave/script wave/playlist build-wave-Desktop-Debug/

Here you can already run ./wave and see the menu screen.

Directories

By default, I've mounted my USB stick on /media/usb_device with folders mtv and vhs. If you use the same path, everything should work fine.

However, if your media is stored on another directory, it would be a good idea to change/remove the line 4 on /utils/bootrun.sh as well as change the path on files MTV.qml and VHS.qml.

After the change on the QML files, go to build-wave-Desktop-Debug/ and run make to compile the application.

Note: this is just an ugly workaround. My goal is to make this step easier in the future without the needing of changing source code and recompiling.

Spotify-tui and Spotifyd

Please, follow the installation steps on the repositories for Spotify-tui and Spotifyd.

Configure the CRT resolution

I used this Reddit post as reference.

The main RetroPie core configurations and shaders are from the Sakitoshi repository. The most important aspect of this configuration is that Overscan is disabled by default on the Raspi configuration file, so each emulation core will crop the screen by itself. Keep that in mind for now.

The b0xspread repository contains the vmodes_watcher.py, a script which waits for the Emulation Cores to load before changing the resolution to 240p. This will make sure that only the games will run on 240p, while other applications on the Pi will run on 480i.

Configure boot

I prefer to use the boot script on my home directory, but that is optional.

cp utils/bootrun.sh ~/

Then you must need to edit the ~/.profile file so the boot script will run as soon as the Pi is logged in. Add the following lines to the end of the file:

# startup routine

if test -t 0 -a -t 1
then
  bash bootrun.sh
fi

You should also set the Pi to auto login.

Configure Openbox to launch Wave by default

If you are using RaspiOS, the window manager Openbox should be already installed on your machine.

Add the following to the file ~/.config/openbox/autostart:

# Set screen resolution for CRT TV
./home/pi/set_xrandr

# Run wave in kiosk mode
cd entertainment-wave-2021/build-wave-Desktop-Debug/
./wave

Install and Configure XTerm as the main console

You may already have noticed that using the default console for the Raspi is becoming difficult because of Overscan.

Because Spotify-tui relies on the terminal, it was better to use a standalone terminal, configured according to my screen.

sudo apt-get install xterm

And then add to the file ~/.Xresources:

xterm*faceName: 'Monospace'
xterm*faceSize: 11
xterm*internalBorder: 58

To launch the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T, edit the file ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml:

<keyboard>
...
<!-- Launch Terminal -->
<keybind key="C-A-t">
  <action name="Execute">
    <command>xterm -fullscreen</command>
  </action>
</keybind>
...
</keyboard>

How to use

Wave Menu

• Directional keys up and down: navigate through menu
• Enter: select option
• Backspace: return to last menu screen

Cable

On MyRetroTVs you can press H to see the command list. The ones I found more useful are:

• P: to toggle Playlist mode. If not in Playlist mode, the same video will play in loop until you chose to change it
• F: change the screen focus. Press a few times to get fullscreen
• Space: Play/Pause button

I am running the scripts on Firefox, so I can exit it with Alt+F4 or Ctrl+Shift+W.

MTV/VHS

When playing videos though the MTV/VHS menu, they run on mpv. So the mpv documentation and commands are all valid. The ones I found more useful are:

• Q: quit
• Enter: go to next video (on Shuffle mode)
• W and E: adjust Overscan
• Space: Play/Pause button

Emulationstation

On Emulationstation you can operate with your keyboard and also your gamepad controller. You can refer to the RetroPie documentation to understand how to configure your inputs.

When selecting Exit Emulationstation, you will go back to the Wave menu.

Radio

You can follow the Spotify-tui documentation for how to operate the application. Because it is running on a XTerm instance, pressing Ctrl+C will let you exit.