If you want to install and setup RetroArch on the Raspberry Pi (TM) together with various emulator cores, all needed libraries for the SNESDev controller interface, and a graphical front end you can now go to https://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-Setup. There you will find an easy-to-use script that installs all essential packages for retro gaming on the Raspberry. I call it RetroPie script.
In a previous post, I described my idea of a universal console with the Raspberry Pi. I presented, what I called, the SNESDev-RPi, which is an SNES-controller interface for the Raspberry Pi. A core element of this interface is a SNES-adapter PCB that I recently designed and that does nothing more than providing all needed connections between the GPIO pins and two SNES connectors. In this post I describe the details for assembling the SNES-adapter that I showed in the previous post. Furthermore, I show how a single SNES socket can be directly connected to the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi.
You already might have heard of the Raspberry Pi. It is a credit-card sized PC from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and is going into mass production and distribution these days. There is a huge demand for “the Pi” and the first orders are limited to one per person. A few weeks ago I got my Pi delivered and started working on what I would describe as “universal console”. In this post I describe my initial thoughts about this project and present an adapter that allows you to use SNES controllers as input devices for the Raspberry Pi.
In my last post, I described a minimum configuration for an ATMEGA microcontroller, which is also used in the earlier Arduino boards, and I also explained how to program that microcontroller with an ISP. Here, I present a small all-purpose board that contains exactly that minimum configuration together with an USB-B connector. The USB connector has two purposes: First, it provides the 5V voltage as power source for the board. And, second, it is fully connected to the microcontroller, so that it can be used in combination, for example, with the V-USB library. At the end of this article I show an example for this board that implements a virtual keyboard. The board provides two programming interfaces: You can either use a 6-pin ISP, or a FTDI programmer to get your code on the microcontroller. And the last thing that I want to mention before we go deeper into the details, is that all parts of this boards (which are not so many) are through-hole parts. This means that you can easily solder the whole board without the need for costly equipment or professional soldering skills. Everything needs a name. Because they are tasty and I somehow thought of them at that moment, the board is called “Pancake“.