Tutorial 3: Monku R1 / R2 - ODROID-C1+ / C2 Retro Gaming Console Build Part 3: Final Touches
-
Author: Brian A. Ree
Part 1 of this tutorial which details the hardware configuration can be found here.
Part 2 of this tutorial which details the hardware configuration can be found here.
Sections
0: Tools and Parts
- This tutorial doesn't require any new parts or tools we'll just be configuring the console
you've already built, adjusting things to really make it shine.
1: Introduction and Tutorial Goals
Hello and welcome to the last tutorial in this series. Hats off to you for making it this far.
We hope you've learned a lot if any of this was new to you. This review will show you in detail how to polish off your
Monku Retro 1 (ODROID-C1+) or Monku Retro 2 (ODROID-C2) video game console. We'll be optimizing MATE, the Linux desktop environment,
connecting our custom control button, setting up retroarch in kiosk mode, and boot.ini configuration. Ok let's dive in!
2: Finalizing MATE ... Almost
The first thing we're going to do in this part is get rid of that pesky authentication prompt that pops up when you
try and open a browser for the first time after logging in. ALERT: This is not a high security setup, we are purposely
lowering the security level here to make it easier to use as a game console and web browsing set top box. Go to the following
menu location Applications -> Accessories -> Passwords and Keys and you should see a window popup similar to the one depicted below.
ALERT: If at any time you are prompted for a login when working with the terminal use the password, odroid.
Locate the Login entry in the list on the left hand side of the window. If the authentication popup I mentioned references a different
Password keychain then find that entry in the list on the left hand side of the window. Follow the steps below to unlock the target keychain.
1. Right click on the target entry and select Change Password.
2. You will be prompted to enter the old password, type in odroid and click Continue.
3. You'll now be prompted to enter a new password, leave both fields blank and click Continue.
4. Another dialog will popup and ask you if it's ok to allow the keychain to be unlocked, click Continue.
5. Close out of all the dialogs and close the Password and Keys window, we're all set.
Next thing we'll do with the MATE environment is configure the panels and widgets a bit. You can do whatever you like
here, I'll just show you how I configure things and why. First off we're expecting to interface with this system,
at least some of the time, with a gamepad. It works great but it's not a mouse, also we're not really going to be
doing any rigorous Linux computing so there are a few things we don't need. The second benefit to this configuration
step is that is does lower the memory overhead a little.
Follow these instructions to remove the bottom panel. We will be adding controls to the top panel to offset some of the
functionality loss but we won't be adding in the desktop selection widget. It's just a bit of overkill for our needs.
Again if you want it, it won't harm anything to keep it. Follow these instructions to clean up the panels and widgets just a bit.
1. Go to the bottom panel and right click on it, select Delete This Panel, then click Delete again when prompted.
2. Go to the top right hand side of the screen and right click the power button, select Remove From Panel.
What we're going to do is add some of the widgets back to the top panel making the top panel a more centralized point of control.
This makes using the gamepad to control things much much easier. Your desktop should look like the screen shot below.
Since we got rid of our open window selection buttons when we deleted the bottom panel let's add a new widget to the top panel
that does the same thing but is better suited for a gamepad since it requires less cursor movement to utilize. Right click on the top panel
and select Add to Panel. Scroll down the list of options until you see the entry depicted below and then click Add.
We have a few more steps to get through here regarding the tray apps and the date and time configuration
but we're almost done. Your desktop should now look something like this.
Next let's click on the Date and Time string in the top right corner. A calendar drop down should appear.
Expand the Locations section and click the Edit button. Configure the General tab as depicted
below or as you see fit.
Let's add some location information so the time will be correct when we have an internet connection and sync with ntp, network time protocol.
Click on the Locations tab then click the Add button.
Start typing the nearest major city into the Location Name text box. If it doesn't work try another major city
or try the city representative of your time zone, for instance mine is New York. Select a location from the list that
pops up. Mine would be Central Park, NY. Click Ok once you've found something suitable.
Now you will see a location entry in the locations list as depicted below.
Just a few more things left to do here. If you right click the battery icon in the top right try. Select
the Preferences option. Click on the General tab and toggle Never display an icon. If you
have a EN or UK string in the system tray right click on it and select Preferences. On the General
tab uncheck Show icon on system try. We won't really be worring about switching the keyboard language. If you need this you can
turn both system try icon back on by using the System -> Control Center menu option and clicking on Power Management
and iBus Preferences respectively. The screen shots below show the forms we just discussed.
Just two little things left in this part and we'll be moving onto the custom control button and scripts!
Move the mouse to the top panel and right click on it. Select Add to Panel then scroll down until you see
the Show Desktop option as shown below. Do the same thing for the Trash option also shown below.
Use the center mouse button, or the mouse wheel button if you have that instead, to move the widget icons
on the top panel. Let's drag these two new widgets a little closer to the System menu. Also separate them
a little bit. Nice! Now we're ready to start adding custom scripts. These scripts will automatically start retroarch
on boot, and start antimicro when retroarch closes returning mouse control to the gamepad. We'll also be setting up
some magic with the custom control button. Your desktop should look like the one depicted below.
3: Scripts and Custom Control Button
In this part we're going to setup some custom scripts to control the software we installed and configured.
This will bring the experience up from a Linux desktop experience to more of a game console experience.
Download the script bundle for your device below and then copy and paste it into the install_zips
folder you created in the second tutorial. It is located in the odroid user's home directory.
- Monku R1 / C1+ Scripts
- Monku R2 / C2 Scripts
Once you have downloaded and copied the zip file into the install_zips folder, right click on it and select
Extract Here. Eleven files should appear in a sub directory, open it and select them all and copy them into the odroid user's home
directory. The odroid user's home directory is the default location of the file browser, you can also access it from a link
on the desktop or from the left hand side of the file browser where the folder shortcuts are listed.
Let's make sure these scripts have the correct permissions and can be executed. Open up a terminal,
Applications -> System Tools -> MATE Terminal, and run the following commands.
sudo chmod 755 power_btn power_btn_test pwrbuttonsvc.service restart_now shutdown_now start_am start_antimicro start_auto start_pwr start_ra stop_auto
sudo chmod +x power_btn power_btn_test pwrbuttonsvc.service restart_now shutdown_now start_am start_antimicro start_auto start_pwr start_ra stop_auto
Now close the terminal and go to System -> Control Center in the menus. Find and select the Startup Applications
option. You should see something similar to what's depicted below.
Click the Add button and fill out the form as depicted below, I'll put the exact text here also.
Name: Start RetroArch
Path: /home/odroid/start_ra
Description: Launches RetroArch on startup.
Now, we also want to start a special AntiMicro script. So let's do the same thing for that script, also shown below.
Again I'll list the values used here.
Name: Start AntiMicro
Path: /home/odroid/start_am
Description: Launches AntiMicro on startup.
Shutdown the device, System -> Shut Down. Then use the hardware reset button to turn it back on.
You should see retroarch launch automatically as shown below. Now if you close retroarch and wait about 5 seconds
you should see antimicro popup into the system tray and restore gamepad control of the device, also shown below.
Things are shaping up nicely now. Our beautiful ODROID is looking more and more like a great retro gaming console.
Let's finally add custom control button support. Before we plug it into the system we should test it. Go to the terminal,
Applications -> System Tools -> MATE Terminal and type sudo ./power_btn_test then hit enter. ALERT: You may get a GPIO
pin export error if you run it twice in a row, you can ignore this the test will still work. You should see a series of 1's scroll across the
terminal if you are using a C2, zero's for a C1+. Hold down the custom control button and see what happens. ALERT: Make sure you don't hit the hardware reset button
by accident or else you'll have to wait for a reboot. You should see something like what's depicted below.
For the C1+ the 0's and 1's are flipped, just the way I happened to set it up, the image above shows the C2 test.
If you don't get the same results, turn off the device, separate your case - remember we decided not to close it -
and double check your jumper positions on the GPIO header. If it is working then awesome! Try holding the button for different
periods of time. It will print out to the terminal what script would run for that duration. Below is a listing of the functionality we'll setup.
Software Button Functions:
- 02 Second Hold: Software reset.
- 04 Second Hold: Software shutdown.
- 06 Second Hold: Turn off game kiosk mode.
- 08 Second Hold: Change to 1024x768x32bpp resolution and reboot.
- 10 Second Hold: Change to 720px32bpp resolution and reboot.
Alright now that we've tested the custom control button's functionality let's add it to the system as a service.
Now from time to time and depending on the SD card and a few other things the device may act up.
This software control button is really useful for forcing it to cleanly reboot in a safe and controlled way.
Open up a terminal and run the following commands. These will register, start, and flag our service to start automatically
on boot. Open up a terminal, Applications -> System Tools -> MATE Terminal, and run the following commands.
ALERT: Resist the urge to test the 06, 08, 10 second functions. We don't want to mess with boot.ini just yet.
sudo sudo cp pwrbuttonsvc.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo cp ./power_btn /usr/bin/power_btn_test
sudo systemctl start pwrbuttonsvc
sudo systemctl enable pwrbuttonsvc
If you ever need to stop the service you can use this command, but don't run it now.
sudo systemctl stop pwrbuttonsvc
Ok are you ready? Hold the custom control button for 4 seconds and a tiny bit extra. You can practice on the test script we
ran above. The system should shutdown really fast, and if you got the count right it shouldn't boot up. If you held it for 2 seconds and a
tiny bit extra it would have done the same thing but then come back up from the reboot.
4: Finalizing MATE ... Really This Time
I hope you're really enjoying everything so far. It's really very cool to finally connect the button and make that
literally a part of the operating system. We have a little bit more work to do with MATE but it'll go by quick ...
promise. So right click the top panel and select Add to Panel, scroll down through the list of options until you find
the Shut Down entry. Click Add and then use the middle mouse button or mouse wheel button to grab the new widget and
position it so that it is about an inch or so away from the open programs widget. By keeping all the controls in a tight group
we greatly enhance the user experience when controlling things with the gamepad.
Next up we're going to add two custom buttons to the top panel. Right click the panel and select Add to Panel,
choose the very first option Custom Application Launcher, depicted above. We'll add the stop button first and then the play button.
The form field values are listed below. Use the screen shots to navigate to the proper icon. You can see the path in the screen capture
near the top of the window.
Stop Button Values:
Type: Application
Name: Stop RetroArch
Command: /home/odroid/stop_auto
Comment: Stops RetroArch if running windowed. (Really just stops RetroArch and resets AntiMicro)
Start Button Values:
Type: Application
Name: Start RetroArch
Command: /home/odroid/start_auto
Comment: Starts RetroArch and AntiMicro scripts.
The screen shots below depict this step. Use them to help with finding the right icon if need be.
Now let's test the new controls. Close retroarch and any other open window. Click on the play button and you should see
retroarch popup. Click the stop button and retroarch will close, wait about 5 seconds, and you should see antimicro in the system
tray giving us back full gamepad control.
Wow wow. This is really cool. We've basically completely customized our ODROID go hardware and software to create a
retro gaming console with retroarch kiosk mode and also full Linux environment if needed. So cool! Next thing we'll do is
make retroarch run in fullscreen mode and adjust a few video settings. I won't go into advanced configuration here. This tutorial
is about as long as I like to make them so I'll push advacned retroarch and emulator errata to a small follow up tutorial.
Start retroarch, you can use the little widget you just made! Scroll right to the Drivers section find the Video
entry.
Apply the following settings listed below in the order they have been listed. The application may close and re-open
for some of the settings you change, that is normal.
Windowed Fullscreen Mode: Off
Show Window Decorations: Off
Threaded Video: On
Bilinear Filtering: Off
Start in Fullscreen Mode: On
Tip: Use the ESC to close retroarch when it is in fullscreen mode or use the keyboard/mouse to navigate to the Main Menu
section and select Quit RetroArch.
Hold your custom control button down for 2 seconds plus a tiny bit more and the system will reboot.
When it comes back up you should see a full retroarch screen as depicted below. Scroll over to your ROMs
with the gamepad and fire one up. Game on!
5: boot.ini
For this part the first thing we'll do is make a backup of the boot.ini file.
Open the boot icon on the desktop and copy boot.ini to boot.ini.orig.
We're also going to make two more copies one you'll name boot.ini.1024x768p32bppVga and one
you'll name boot.ini.1280x720p32bppHdmi. We'll get to editting them in just a bit. You should have something similar to what's
depicted below.
From my experience these video settings work really well. The VGA resolution of 1024x768 is supported on most
if not all recent computer screens and the resolution of 720p is supported on most if not all recent TVs.
While the ODROID C2 has noticeably more power we really don't need more than 720p to display 8bit and 16bit games.
Of course you can make your own choices here as you see fit. The idea is if we're pluggin our device into a TV we can hold the custom
control button for the proper amount of time and the device will reboot with the proper, memory efficient, HDMI resolution.
If we bring the device with us to work and we want to play some awesome games at lunch we can hold the custom control button
for the proper amount of time and the device will reboot with the proper VGA resolution.
Let's boot up our ODROID device and close retroarch by hitting escape on the keyboard or navigating to the exit option
using the controller. Open up a terminal, Applications -> System Tools -> MATE Terminal, and type the following command.
nano power_btn
Scroll down to the bottom of the file and edit the text such that it matches the image depicted below. Once you've adjusted the
file hit Ctrl+O to write the file, and Ctrl+X to close the nano. I'll post the text we're focusing on below.
elif [ $count -ge 8 ] && [ $count -lt 10 ] && [ $GPIO_VALUE -eq 1 ]; then
count=0
sudo cp /media/boot/boot.ini.1024x768p32bppVga /media/boot/boot.ini
sudo shutdown -r now
#killall retroarch
#cp /home/odroid/Scripts/retroarch.cfg.usb /home/odroid/.config/retroarch/
#/home/odroid/start_ra
elif [ $count -ge 10 ] && [ $GPIO_VALUE -eq 1 ]; then
count=0
sudo cp /media/boot/boot.ini.1280x720p32bppHdmi /media/boot/boot.ini
sudo shutdown -r now
#killall retroarch
#cp /home/odroid/Scripts/retroarch.cfg.hdmi /home/odroid/.config/retroarch/
#/home/odroid/start_ra
fi
ALERT: The C1+ will be slightly different than the text above. It uses [ $GPIO_VALUE -eq 0 ]
comparisons but we're really only interested in the file copy commands and commented out commands. But keep it in mind
that you shouldn't be changing anything else.
Next run the following command in the terminal to activate the script.
sudo cp ./power_btn /usr/bin/power_btn_test
Once that is done we'll be adjusting the copied boot.ini file you made to reflect the proper output and resolution.
There is a slight typo in this image, the lines that read sbin/shutdown -r now should read sudo shutdown -r now.
Essentially we're copying over the boot.ini file with a pre-configured version that is set to a certain screen resulution,
then we reboot the device. I'll cover the changes we need to make to each file for the C1+ and the C2, but I'll also provide a
download for them to make things a bit easier. We'll cover the C2 first.
Open a terminal and type in the following commands. We'll do the 1024x768 VGA mode first.
cd /media/boot/
nano boot.ini.1024x768p32bppVga
We want to set the video output to be 1024x768 VGA. Comment out the lines listed below. Make sure there are no
uncommented video output modes except the one we want.
# setenv display_autodetect "true"
# setenv m "1080p60hz" # Progressive 60Hz
Make sure the lines below are uncommented. If you make a mistake just restore the boot.ini.orig copy you made earlier.
Any Windows or Mac computer will see the boot partition of your ODROID's SD card because it is a Fat32 partition. You can use
that to fix your boot.ini if the device isn't booting up properly.
setenv m "1024x768p60hz"
setenv vout "vga"
Next we'll do the 720p HDMI mode. Open up a terminal and type the following commands.
cd /media/boot/
nano boot.ini.1280x720p32bppHdmi
We want to set the video output to be 720p HDMI. Comment out the lines listed below. Make sure there are no
uncommented video output modes except the one we want.
# setenv display_autodetect "true"
# setenv m "1080p60hz" # Progressive 60Hz
Make sure the line below is uncommented.
setenv m "720p60hz" # 60Hz
ALERT: Many computer screens don't support 720p if that is the case you'll likely end up booting into a blank screen.
Just wait a minute or two then use the custom control button to change the video mode to 1024x768. It takes a little getting
used to but once you get the hang of it you can switch modes fairly easily. Below is a screen shot of a Monku Retro 2 (ODROID-C2)
running in VGA mode on a computer screen after closing retroarch.
And here is the R2 running in 720p on a TV.
Like any good TV cooking show we have an already prepared dish to show you. For the C1+ use the guidelines above
along with the files provided below. The process is similar, the files provided indicate the changes you need to make.
Or you could just copy and paste them into your /media/boot directory, it's really up to you.
- Monku R1 / C1+ boot.ini
- Monku R2 / C2 boot.ini
6: Closing Things Up
Closing up the cse is pretty simple but I'll go over it real quick so you have a heads up. It's the worst finishing everything,
closing the case and tightening the outside screws before you remember to put in the inside screws, trust me. First thing you'll want to
do is organize your jumpers. They can get a bit crazy so I usualy curl and twist them up as depicted below.
I highly recommend cutting out the SD card door because it gives you so much benefit as far as easily being able to swap in and out
SD cards etc. I used a razor blade to scour all the little plastic tabs holding it on, there are four. Two close to the edge of the case
are easy and safe to cut into with a bit of pressure, I wouldn't use too much. After a little while, patience really helps here, you'll
cut through the two tabs near the edge of the case first. Then bend the door up to twist off the remaining tabs. Tip: Weaking all the tabs
as much as you can by scratching at them with a razor. The image below depicts the case after the door has been rotated slightly to begin
breaking the last two tabs.
Mount the board in the case and place and tighten the two screws on the one side of the case. The remaining
screws are inserted from the outside of the closed case. Before you close the case though try to see if it goes together
easily. You may have to adjust some jumpers to get it to do this. Snap the case together and place and tighted the outside screws
and you're all set.
Well that just about does it for this tutorial. I hope you've had fun going through this process to build your own
retro gaming console from the ground up. I know I did. I'll have a little bit more to say in a follow up tutorial
that touches on some advanced topics regarding retroarch and emulator configuration. Till then, game on!
Part 1 of this tutorial which details the hardware configuration can be found here.
Part 2 of this tutorial which details the software configuration can be found here.
