[TUTO] Installing Recalbox on the 8-B Craft "RASPIBOY"

[screech]

First what is the Raspiboy :

It's a respectfull licence project on kickstarter (pretty hard to find a project like this one so I need to say it ^^)

An Handled PI0 Retrogaming KIT

more detail here :
http://www.8bcraft.com/discover-raspiboy-kit/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E12CRrtb6po

So first created for Retropie does it work with Recalbox ?
Answer : YES VERY WELL ^^

And this is a quick tuto on how to install it :

• Burn the 4.1 img to the µSD (you can download it soon ^^ )

• Edit the Config.txt on the µSD : config.txt

• Plug a Wifi Key on USB and start

• Config your WIFI on Recalbox "Network" Menu

• Go to the Recalbox share from your computer (\\RECALBOX)

• Navigate to \\RECALBOX\share\system

• Edit "recalbox.conf"

• Look for the "global.videomode" setting (near the end) and set it to "default"

• Immediately reboot your Recalbox by pressing select -> shutdown recalbox

And voila

[voljega]

@screech Thank you for the tuto !

If i remember correctly you were the first one to speak about here and my one and only qestion is still the same :
"HDMI output : you can connect RaspiBoy to your big TV and video automatically switch from RaspiBoy to your TV!"

Does this feature work on Recalbox ?

[screech]

arg ^^ I don't have mini hdmi cable to test

I'll try to find one somewhere and try to test

(But What I think : It work when you start your PI, but not in "hotplug" mode)

[voljega]

@screech That would be enough .... but I'm not sure it will work like that because of the config.txt which may require changes n start up wether hdmi cable is connected or not

[screech]

do you think something like a "Script" is possible ?

(But first I need to find a d**n minihdmi cable ^^)

[voljega]

@screech yeah we already spoke about that in another subject witsh @substring, it seemed feasible to have like two saved copies of config.txt copied over the config.txt at startup depending on the connection of the cable or not, but it was just a discussion

[lackyluuk]

@screech you are doing great work
I was watching this project too. Is it still available on kickstarter?
Can you give some experience? How is it? I am thinking to get one as well

[Substring]

I should, someday, check how hdmi hotplug works, and how composite takes over if the hdmi discovery failed ... So much to do, as always ...

[bazola]

Hi screech, is your screen blurry in émulationstation and in-game?
I only tried with retropie so far but it looks like the pi is not sending a 320x240 signal to the screen, so there is some downscale and it looks horrible.
Can you please show a capture of a game running on your raspiboy?

I made a capture:

Up is raspiboy, down is Gcw zer0

[dh04000]

@bazola

Double check your config file, and see if overscan is enabled in the recalbox menu. Something I changed made my screen super sharp after my initial attempt made a blurry screen.

Also, try rebooting, maybe the emulator started weird. I'm not 100% sure what fixed my system after that weird blurry first boot.

[dh04000]

@Substring Can we add a section to the wiki for hardware specific guides for popular hardware, like this one? The minty pi 2 is another popular one if anyone could figure out how to make it work.

@screech Can you write this guide when complete as a wiki page? Make sure to add Substring's suggestion of adding sdtv_progressive_scan=1 to the config.txt file.

[Substring]

@dh04000 Write a wiki page for a hickstarter that won't be available again ? Technically, yes, but that's up to the community to translate and maintain it.

[dh04000]

@substring The raspiboy is going to still be produced after the kickstarter via 8bcraft. He's taking preorders for the September/October batch now.

[screech]

@dh04000 have you tested with and without sdtv_progressive_scan=1 ?
I can see no difference personnaly.

Evene more, I can't find where I see it, but I think this sdtv_progressive_scan=1 is just a temporary command for test and was replaced by sdtv_mode=16
(Need to look for that in the very long issue talking about it ^^)

And yes why not a wikipage, at least not only for the Raspiboy, but for all 240P screen (I think the problem is the same on every 240p Screen )

EDIT :
Found it : https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/683#issuecomment-283471444

I've pushed this change to rpi-update with a slight change.
sdtv_progressive_scan is no more.
You should add 16 onto sdtv_mode if you want progressive/240p output.
That fits slightly more cleanly with how the firmware handles sdtv_mode.

Examples:

sdtv_mode=16 # progressive NTSC
sdtv_mode=0x10 # progressive NTSC (using hex notation)
sdtv_mode=18 # progressive PAL
sdtv_mode=0x12 # progressive PAL (using hex notation)

[bazola]

So, is it ok to add sdtv_mode=16 in config.txt?

[screech]

To use the stdv_mode=16 you need the last PI firmware. So it's ok with a 4.1 (not available for now, but soon ) or you need to update the firmware (don't know if it's possible on a 4.0x, remember RPI-Update won't work on recalbox)

you can try it won't break anything, at worst it just don't work ^^

[bazola]

I'll wait for 4.1 then ^^

[dh04000]

@screech I'm on 4.01 still. sdtv_progressive_scan=1 in my config.txt after reboot made my screen blurry, like it was alternating the rendering the same frame slightly off center each frame. It was a weird kinda blurry. More blurry is some lines of the screen than other lines.

[screech]

Maybe I read it wrong
What I understand from the Issue :
sdtv_progressive_scan=1 was put in february on a "custom firmware" to test
sdtv_progressive_scan=1 was removed and replaced by sdtv_mode=16 on Mars and pushed to the RPI-Update Github by popcornmix...
not sure 4.01 are compiled between Feb and Mars 2017... (and with a test firmware ?)

But Maybe I'm totally wrong ^^ As a French guy I can misunderstand ^^

The only one who can tell are the Dev guys Maybe @Substring ?

[Substring]

Can't find anything on the net that is reliable and official regarding the value to add in the config.txt to set progressive mode. Looks like http://filthypants.blogspot.fr/2017/03/raspberry-pi-240p-composite-output.html can be fairly trusted as it is the blog of HunterK, one of the core devs of Retroarch.

So yes, adding 0x10 (=16) to the desired sdtv_mode would set progressive. I wonder how would the Brazilian PAL look ...
So NTSC progressive = 16, PAL progressive = 18