Summary of Contents for Sparkfun Electronics PiRetrocade
Page 1
4x Screws and four nuts Covered in This Tutorial This guide aims to get you up and running with your PiRetrocade in no time. Thanks to the included SD Card with the emulation image installed, setup is quick and requires no programming! This guide in conjunction with the video below will guide you through the assembly of the PiRetrocade, so you can get gaming.
Suggested Reading Before building your PiRetrocade, you may want to read some of the tutorials below if you’re unfamiliar with the Raspberry Pi. You do not need to have any previous experience with Raspberry Pi to build and use this kit.
Page 3
The bottom pin labeled “COM” for common or ground on the switch is ground. The single wiring harness will attach to the bottom pin on the short right side of the switch. It is labeled “NO” for normally open. Joystick First, figure out which switch corresponds to Up, Down, Left and Right.
Page 4
I labeled that top right switch “Left” which corresponds to GPIO Pin 7. Continue the same process for each direction and replace the bottom cover with the four screws along the outer edge. Once you have the orientation, unscrew the red ball from the top of the joystick handle, and remove the black washer as well.
Page 5
Ground wiring harness for the joystick with female end. You need one. _ Ground wiring harness for the buttons with female end. You need one._ In the video, each button and direction was labeled along with its corresponding GPIO on the box with marker.
Page 6
For the power, audio and monitor cables, cut three holes in the back of the box, and feed those cables through them. I’m using a set of powered speakers for audio. Close the box, and get ready to play. Emulation Software In the video above you saw how easy it was to get up and running on your gaming machine.
Page 7
Power the Pi, and connect a monitor through an HDMI cable. Once it boots up you should see the RetroPie home screen, then the Emulation Station home screen and then a menu which shows you the available system emulators and how many games you have in each emulator. Now is when you’ll want to get familiar with navigating through the menu and add your roms.
Page 8
Plug in a keyboard, and Hit F4 to exit emulation station. From the terminal window, type the command to restart your station. You should now see the menu expanded based on sudo reboot the roms you saved. Thus, if you added NES roms, there will now be an NES option in the menu. Instructions on obtaining roms is beyond th scope of this tutorial.
Need help?
Do you have a question about the PiRetrocade and is the answer not in the manual?
Questions and answers