Master Phruby

It turns out the RetroPie comes set with the volume cranked down. To fix go into emulations station. Retropie Menu > Configure Audio Settings Option 3 to set audio to HDMI specifically Option 4 for Mixer I set audio level to "86" which is 0db gain

Yesterday I went ahead and configured the second joystick and buttons. I turned on the PI and teleneted into it using putty. I changed the keybindings for the two lower buttons to make a little more sense during installation. At the command line, cd to ~./emulationstation. I made a backup of the es_input.cfg file and run sudo nano es_input.cfg. I swapped A for Start and B for select. This will make the P1 start button in Emulation Station start a game, and make the Select button a "Cancel/Back" button. For example, the line <input name="start" type="key" id="101" value="1"> will become <input name="a" type="key" id="101" value="1"> Next, I setup the P2 controls. I moved to directory /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and made a copy of retroarch,cfg. Under the section that lists the P1 keys, I added the P2 input keys we setup for the X-Arcade. input_player1_a = t input_player1_b = r input_player1_y = q input_player1_x = w input_player1_start = num1 input_player1_select = num5 input_player1_l = e input_player1_r = y input_player1_left = left input_player1_right = right input_player1_up = up input_player1_down = down input_player1_l2 = u input_player1_r2 = i input_player1_l3 = nul input_player1_r3 = nul input_player2_a = j input_player2_b = h input_player2_y = d input_player2_x = f input_player2_start = num2 input_player2_select = num6 input_player2_l = g input_player2_r = k input_player2_left = a input_player2_right = s input_player2_up = o input_player2_down = p input_player2_l2 = l input_player2_r2 = z input_player2_l3 = nul input_player2_r3 = nul Moving down the Enable Other Hotkey sections, I assigned the save/load state buttons. input_enable_hotkey_btn = num1 #P1 Start input_exit_emulator_btn = num5 #p1 Select input_save_state_btn = u #P1 L2 input_load_state_btn = i #P1 R2

I've seen plenty of templates and companies that make skins for the X-Arcade Tank Stick (with trackball) but does anyone make skin for the Duel Joystick version?

I've started working on adding the new plugs to the Tank Stick. In this picture I moved the Tank Stick's usb/ps2 connectors to the inside of the stick. Now I have to figure out how to wind the long usb cable into the stick. There is space underneath the button wires. I've also made a 1 1/8" hole for the HDMI/USB connector. This cable has a cap to keep it clean and to give nice finished look. The cable itself is about 3 feet long so I have to figure out how to store it in the Tank Stick. I've also made a hole for the power plug. The hole is 1" x 3/4". I had to drimmel it out in order to get pass the half inch of wood. The plug fits pretty well in the hole. I'm going to take some 12 gauge wire and crack up the included Raspberry PI power supply and solder the plug to the power supply.

If this is an enhanced Colecovision, it should have a built in Expansion Module #1.

What are you people talking about?

I have that same hdmi/usb plug that I will put in. It's the same hole size as a button. I have that ethernet plug too.

Can you get a picture of the back of your PI console? I want to see the hdmi/usb plugs you used.

Since I have a Raspberry PI 3, I setup the wifi. Press the Enter button on the Tank Stick (A on the previous picture) on the RetroPi screen and scroll to the bottom of the list for WIFI. This will take you to a text based screen. Use the keyboard to select (1) for connect to WIFI network and press enter. It scans for SSIDs. Select you SSID and press enter. Put in your WIFI password and it will take a little while to connect. Remember the ip address it gives you. Move over to Cancel to return to RetroPI. Press the escape button on your Tank Stick (B button on previous picture) Press the Player 1 button on the stick to bring up the menu. Move down to quit. Then press Quit Emulation Station and say yes to really quit. You are now at a linux command prompt. Install Putty on your desktop machine. It can be found at http://www.putty.org/. Put in the IP address for the Raspberry PI and leave the settings as SSH and port 22. If you don't remember the ip address. You can type ifconfig on the Raspberry PI to find the address. Putty will prompt for a user name and password. The user name is pi and the password is raspberry. Next thing to do is setup the regional options for keyboard, timezone and country. Type in the putty command prompt, sudo raspi-config Select International Options and Change Local. Uncheck the default and put in your country and select the keyboard. That will be saved. Next select change time zone and follow prompts. Then select your keyboard options. Finally change your WIFI country to your country. Finally hit finish and your Raspberry pi will reboot.

Next I fired up the PI with a keyboard and the Tank Stick attached. It booted up and came up with a controller configuration screen. Press a button on the Tank Stick to get it recognized a keyboard. Then press the controls on the Tank Stick for each assignment. We went with a SNES style button arrangement for player 1. For the analog joystick assignments, they can be left unassigned. To unassign them, press and hold one of the buttons on the player 2 side until it goes to the next assignment. Continue until it you get to the OK box. At that point press your Enter button on the Tank Stick (button A in the picture above). Player 1 is now programmed into RetroPi. You can now control RetroPi with the player 1 controls.

In order to program the Tank Stick. Move the switch on the back to bank 2. Press the button on the back of the stick. The little light will go out. Press and hold the controller button and press the corresponding keyboard button. The light will turn on and off. Repeat assigning keys. When finishing press the program button again to write the changes. When starting up the Tank Stick later on double press the programming button again to get your assigned buttons to work otherwise you will be back in MAME mode regardless of the switch bank position.

I worked on the Tank Stick last night. The first thing I did was configure the Tank Stick. In order to do this I used Jason's mapping. This make writing script later on easier than trying to put in MAME's strange keyboard short cuts. The Tank Stick configuration is this: To configuration the Tank Stick, the ps2 keyboard connector on the back must be plugged into a keyboard. The serial port connector must be plugged into the usb cable and then into a computer to give power.

Inside the Tank Stick. The PI will go center bottom.

This could be interesting as a Tron 2 button joystick. You might have to replace the case with a clear one though. https://na.suzohapp.com/products/joysticks/50-9975-00 http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=319

A Tron spinner would be fairy easily to do. It's just a matter of finding space for it. One person suggested this: The spinner control is the same diameter as a button so one of the lower buttons could also be replaced with the spinner instead of drilling a new 1 1/8" hole. There might not be enough room for a push/pull spinner. They are expensive at $130. One of these would work better form X-arcade since it is only 1.5" below the surface. http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=86&products_id=316

Simple enough if I were to replace the joysticks with stick triggers. In the future I would like to add a Tron or Zaxxon joystick and a spinner control. A little later I'll post pictures of the inside of the Tank Stick. The sticks are very easy to unplug and replace with other arcade sticks. I will be drilling holes in the side of the Tank Stick for the hdmi/usb/power plugs.

To begin I bought the Raspberry PI 3.0b from Amazon as part of the CanaKit. It came with the PI, a clear case and 2.5a power supply. We are going to hacking up the power supply so it will fit inside the Tank Stick and use a regular C13 power cable. the CanaKit was $49.99. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C6EQNNK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I also picked up a Sansung 32GB EVO Micro SDHC memory card for $10.99. It might be a little overkill but I have a lot of arcade games. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DOB6Y5Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 Next I downloaded the Win32DiskImager (http://www.raspberry-projects.com/pi/pi-operating-systems/win32diskimager) and the latest RetroPie distribution from RetroPie.org site. (https://retropie.org.uk/download/) Since this is Raspberry PI 3, I grabbed the Pi 2/3 image. Install the win32diskimager and put in the path to the RetroPie img file. Point the destination to your sd card and press write.

In honor of PI day, I am starting my RetroPie tank stick project. The idea is to put a Raspberry PI running RetroPie inside an X-Arcade Tank Stick. I'll be detailing out the project and configuration for anyone that wants to follow along. The Raspberry PI 3 will be completely installed inside Tank Stick with outputs for HDMI, USB, Ethernet and power on the back of the stick. This will make it an ALL IN ONE video game system. Pictures will be posted. I'm going to be following Jason's examples from his i64X YouTube channel with some small alterations along the way. Check out his channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBzlD6bIuM I'll begin with the configuration of the Tank Stick today.

The Museum of Pinball in Banning California is holding it's third annual arcade expo. They are opening their doors to public this weekend to play over 1100 pinball and arcade machines. Tickets are on sale now. The proceeds go towards maintaining the collection. March 17-19th 2017. http://www.arcadeexpo.com/