Is a second display for the Marquee possible?

stanti · 2020-07-08T00:51:25+00:00

Hi all, I’ve started upon building my own arcade machine. I came across Pixelcade’s LED marquee which got me looking into if it was possible to have the mar...

UncleSlim

Atari

I tried v33 (just to test out the Mega Bezels reflection shaders, which do not work on my hardware) before i knew this was possible, so i didn’t spend so much time on it. i will look at it again.

UncleSlim

It seems like i am back on track. It was a resolution issue. changed the resolution from 1920×1080 to 1920×1200 and did the same on all the .info files and now it all looks good again.

Next step dual screen test :)

checksum

I looked at what pixelcade does and it is similar to my solution.
They use script game-select.sh and system-select.sh of emulationstation to make a post (HTTP) to their device.
My solution is using the same script to generate a JSON file and make it available under the new emulationstation HTTP server + some web page to use it.

Now for good marquees, I found some on coin-ops distribution but it take 1.8gb on the SD cart.

Atari

checksum Considering the Pixelcade installation takes up around 1.5GB I don’t think that’s too huge a burden.

jthemad

checksum hi checkasum! Does your script use the ‘marquee’ artwork previously scraped for every game? Or have I to download something else? Thanks

UncleSlim

jthemad If you look at the wikipage, you have the option to download a “samples pack” then you can see the naming and see if it matches your own.

UncleSlim

I am unable to get this to work 100%.

The only thing working for me is the system-selected script. but nothing seems to happen with game-start & game-selected.

When i look in the log on the Marquee side i can see “Connection received” every time I go through the systems. but there is no activity inside the different systems or when i start up a game.

I have been through the wiki guide at least 20 times by now, just to make sure that i haven’t forgot something.

Another thing to add to the wiki :

Install Raspbian OS on the Raspberry Pi to act as the marquee (referred to as Marquee from now on).

should be

Install Raspbian OS Lite on the Raspberry Pi to act as the marquee (referred to as Marquee from now on).

pdapice

UncleSlim

good catch on the “lite”

if game start and game selected are not working (assuming you have the atwork paths setup properly) then it could be an issue with an out of place double quote or escaped quote.

if you can add a line to the marquee.sh to log what it is receiving or even just echo to console it might be helpful in troubleshooting. pasting the script here left a few artifacts and fragments in the scripts. i tried to look them over manually to see if everything was in the proper place but i may have missed something. i will check again

UncleSlim

pdapice

Artwork paths are in place (used the sample pack from the wiki to be 100% sure)

I have close to zero knowledge in scripting, so if you could compare the wiki with your working files, it would be awesome.

pdapice

jthemad not yet. I wanted to run this on a mini PC and was able to get it to work somewhat but the problem was that any time i displayed artwork on the marquee, it would take the “focus” away from the controller. so if i selected a game, it would display the artwork and then the controllers would no longer respond unless i force quit the artwork, then everything would return to normal. this was only an issue with emulation station though. if i launched a game, the artwork would display fine and the game would work as normal.

I may revisit this again when i have some extra time - but so far i have been unable to figure out how to get around this.

pdapice

UncleSlim ok, i found and corrected 2 typos in the gamestart/game selected portion of the scripts. please try them now and see if it solves the issue

UncleSlim

pdapice

That did the trick .. now it’s working.

Thanks :)

EDIT : The hires part isn’t working for me. placed a bombjack.jpg in the hires folder, but nothing happens :/

PhoeniXnr1

Great to see there still progress in this. I finally have it working at my cabinet. The marquee gets shown on both screens now when a game starts or when a game is closed. Is there a way to force this only on the “Marquee” display?

pdapice

UncleSlim do other high res images work?

keep in mind that the hires artwork is for mame only and the filename must match the rom name exactly, and the path should be /home/pi/Marquee/hires/bombjack.jpg

UncleSlim

pdapice Yes, the path is correct, i will try with some other jpgs and see if it works, or else i can live without it :)

smcgann99

checksum Did you take this any further ?

Did you try setting up a browser on pi zero - I’m not sure if it would be powerfull enough ?

This has a LOT of potential for a custom marquee setup, I would still prefer a 2 monitor solution on the Pi4, but have had no luck getting anything to display on 2nd monitor in v35 😦

Do you think it would be feasable to run a kiosk broswer on the 2nd hdmi port of Pi4, or would that kill performance of Batocera ?

jeffjonez

I’m interested in the second HDMI solution for marquees, but I have a (venerable dual core) PC.
I’m still rereading this thread until it makes some kind of sense, but I’m hoping this applies to my situation too?
If not, please nudge me in the right direction, or gently crush my dreams please. :)

Atari

Easiest way is to just have two computers. One for handling Batocera with a script sending a HTTP request detailing which game is currently being selected, and the second computer interpreting that request and displaying the appropriate image on its connected screen. ie. Pixelcade.

Any other method and you’ll have to first integrate dual-monitor support in Batocera (not supported, you’ll need to learn the insides out of Batocera) and then either integrate a program to display the marquees or use the framebuffer directly to do so.

anekfor

I can see that Batocera 33 will get support for Pixelcade Arcade Marquee display, but i guess that doesn’t work on a normal LCD Screen, since the Pixelcade communicates over USB.. .

Atari

anekfor Technically, it communicates over network, the USB connection hosts an ethernet connection. You’re literally hosting a web-server on Batocera to handle this, which is contained in the Java runtime environment.

« Previous Page