Raspbian + Retropie + XBMC

[heiNey]

anyone know how this guy managed to get retropie and xbmc installed on the same rpi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKahG0w81DQ

[heiNey]

or can point me to a tutorial?

[j4c3]

I have not done this with XBMC, but it seems pretty straight forward.  In ~/RetroPie/roms create a directory for applications: mkdir ~/RetroPie/roms/apps

Then, to edit the emulation system config to add an apps section: nano ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg and add:

DESCNAME=Applications
NAME=apps
PATH=/home/RetroPie/roms/apps
EXTENSION=.sh
COMMAND bash %ROM%

The use ctrl-O, ctrl -X to save and exit.

Now, we add the scripts to launch our apps.  To create a test: nano ~/RetroPie/roms/apps/test.sh and type:

#!/bin/bash
nano

Then ctrl-O ctrl-X to exit and save.

Load up emulation station, and you should have an apps menu, with our test, and it should launch the nano test editor when selected. For other apps (XBMC, etc) create a .sh file in the roms/apps directory use the command to launch the application in place of nano from the test.sh file.

[heiNey]

thanks, i’ll give it a shot.

[heiNey]

thanks, this actually worked, except needed to put an = sign between COMMAND and bash.

only problem im having is xbmc doesnt recognize any keyboard presses after it’s launched.  works fine from the bash prompt though.  the system isn’t locked because it still dims when idle, but other than that, it does nothing because i can’t send any input to it.

any ideas?

[sgtslaughter]

Worked  for me…  You might want to try a different model of keyboard…  I have an older Saitek keyboard that worked fine in the shell but acts all weird in emulationstation

[heiNey]

yea, i got it working with a different keyboard.  strange.  the first keyboard worked fine with raspbmc, but not with retropie and xbmc

[jbaker1225]

Heiney, where/how did you get XBMC installed on your unit running Raspbian? Most of the things I’ve found so far are for entire OSes dedicated to XBMC on the RPi.

[heiNey]

i just did this:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mene.list and added: deb http://archive.mene.za.net/raspbian wheezy contrib

then:

sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-key 5243CDED

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xbmc

that’s it.

source: http://michael.gorven.za.net/raspberrypi/xbmc

[sgtslaughter]

Just curious how your XBMC is responding?  I did the same as you did for the install using the RetroPie Img, and I’m getting pretty slow menus within XBMC.  Video playback is fine if I have my Pi overclocked to 900mhz.  I’ve tried the OpenELEC distro for XBMC and the menus are perfectly fine.

[heiNey]

[quote=1567]Just curious how your XBMC is responding? I did the same as you did for the install using the RetroPie Img, and I’m getting pretty slow menus within XBMC. Video playback is fine if I have my Pi overclocked to 900mhz. I’ve tried the OpenELEC distro for XBMC and the menus are perfectly fine.[/quote]

my menus have a little bit of lag at times, but for the most part i think it’s fine.  i switched skins to the confluence mod 2 version, because i like the kiosk option it gives me, but i think it causes a little bit of slowdown.  the default confluence skin is quick and responsive though, but i didnt use it long enough to really notice if there was significant slowdown

i actually tried openelec before this, and it was much slower/laggy than this.  im also clocked at 900mhz, but im running my raspbian from a usb drive instead of the sdcard.

[mistertml]

Hi

Sorry I’m a noob and would like some assistance.

Please can you advise how I add xbmc link.

I currently have 2 sd cards. One with openelec xbmc and another with retropie.

I have tried the above and failed.

Please can you provide the commands and config file if possible.

Thanks in advance

[superkoal]

Just to point this to the right direction:

I use a dual boot setup with raspbmc and raspbian on one 16 gb sdcard

to do so
1) use NOOBS or NOOBS-lite from here
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
and follow the install instructions
choose both OSes, install and configure them.
2) install retropie/emulationstation on raspbian

Now you can make a choice between xbmc and emulationstation at startup

from here on it’s optional:
3) get the advanced launcher addon for xbmc (use google for the repository)
4) find out which partitions your OSes are on and write two scripts that edit the noobs config file to boot to a specific partition
5) tell advanced launcher to launch your script to boot to raspbian (add sudo reboot to this script if you want to do it instantly)
6) for the moment i added my script to boot to xbmc next time to raspbian’s init.d, meaning it runs on startup. Can i configure emulationstation to run a script? this would be the best solution I think.

[Anonymous]

The file examples linked at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKahG0w81DQ worked. I ended up making some changes once I knew it worked.

I installed a precompiled XBMC from a link at the top of href=”http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianXBMC.

Run the raspi-config to set the raspberry pi to boot to terminal and not X. Run the retropie setup script again after installing and you can set it to autostart emulationstation at startup. Along with XBMC, you can add a launcher for “startx” to start your default DE. Make your %ROM% scripts executable with chmod +x

I find this method doesn’t result in XBMC being as fast as it is with OpenELEC. I suspect the video randering is a bit more efficient in OpenELEC for the menus/UI. The CPU usage is of course not to be trusted as the CPU usage display itself uses any remaining CPU to render. The quartz theme is pretty lean and responsive.

[superkoal]

Yes, this is why i ended up with the dual boot.
Both systems run perfectly fine now!

[superkoal]

I slightly changed my setup:
Instead of adding my script to init.d in step 6) i now reconfigured the es_systems.cfg for the input config section (i named it advanced menu and gave it COMMAND=%ROM%) and added my script to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/esconfig
Also i renamed Start.sh to InputConfig.sh.

So now i can put any script I want in this folder and execute it from within emulationstation.

Result: Perfect!
I can select the advanced-launcher shortcut to boot to emulationstation from within raspbmc and select my “boot to raspbmc” script from within emulationstation to get back.

[gilbert82]

hi when i add to the es_systems.cfg
DESCNAME=Applications
NAME=apps
PATH=/home/pi/Roms/apps
EXTENSION=.sh
COMMAND=bash %ROM%
I get the error:
emulationstaion cleanly shutting down…ent?ation/es_systems.cfg was found, but contained no systems.n line ”
and it stops working
even when i delete the new entry it doesn’t work, i have to reload an olded version of my es_systems.cfg
any ideas what i’m doing wrong?

[pomme]

I’m running XBMC with a script in EmulationStation and it all works great, BUT… I lose my XBOX 360 Wireless controller controls when I get into XBMC. I have to use the keyboard to navigate.

Anyone successfully using a controller with XBMC launching from EmulationStation?

[OlDrunk]

I made my own Ultimate Raspbian as well based on the blog link from the video nullgames.blogspot.com.es/2013/07/ultimate-raspbian-youtube.html
All works but trying to figure out how to get my wireless 360 controller to work in XBMC , looking online just ended up finding a bunch of different ways of it being done which is just confusing the crap out me, hope some one here has already got it working and can suggest which method to use.

[Anonymous]

I would like to add doom and retropie Setup to menu. Does anyone know what do I have to write to the Sh file to start doom and the retropie setup?

[randjo79]

I have the same setup. I used Berryboot. Works like a champ.

[phipix01]

once i built a little controller by myself (gpio connected) and used a script which mounted keyboard-presses when i pressed a button on the controller.
If you want to use xbmc with your controller i guess you can just start xmbc.sh aswell as the read-custom-input.sh (i don’t remember how it’s called) from emulationstation.
I’m not sure how it’s gonna be if the controller is connected by usb but i guess u could just modify the script a little bit.
like i said, i can’t remember the name of it but i can have a look at it on my pc as soon as i get home from work :D

cheers

[royenroy]

[quote=6625]once i built a little controller by myself (gpio connected) and used a script which mounted keyboard-presses when i pressed a button on the controller.<br>
If you want to use xbmc with your controller i guess you can just start xmbc.sh aswell as the read-custom-input.sh (i don’t remember how it’s called) from emulationstation.<br>
I’m not sure how it’s gonna be if the controller is connected by usb but i guess u could just modify the script a little bit.<br>
like i said, i can’t remember the name of it but i can have a look at it on my pc as soon as i get home from work

cheers
[/quote]
How would you run the 2 .sh files at the same time?

[phipix01]

Sorry for the late answer @royenroy .. i was quite busy.
I would run the Adafruit-Retrogame script on boot/startup. This script then runs backgrounded and maps your custom gpio inputs as keypresses. again, i used this to build my own controller for retro games. but maybie you can map usb controller inputs aswell and then just assign them values for example left and right and navigate through xbmc like this.
EDIT: it didnt paste links for some reason:
this is the script u have to run in background:
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Retrogame
this is how you run it in background:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12973777/how-to-run-a-shell-script-at-startup

i hope it will work. please give me some feedback as soon as u tried it because i want to make it aswell one day.

cheers!

[sander]

Does anybody successfully installed a xbox controller in XBMC?
Working from emulationstation.

[woabash]

I’ve successfully added a apps folder and I got my xbmc.sh in there. but when I try to install xbmc it says there are broken packages and it could install?

sudo apt-get install xbmc

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
xbmc : Depends: xbmc-bin (>= 2:11.0~git20120510.82388d5-1) but it is not installable
Depends: xbmc-bin (< 2:11.0~git20120510.82388d5-1.1~) but it is not installable
Recommends: python-qt3 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[shywolf28]

Yea I have mine working in emulation station and in all my emulators..its wireless Xbox 360 controller

[jerezer1985]

Can anyone tell a complete noob step by step how the get xbmc on to my retropie and how to get it working and launch it it from retropie I just got my raspberry pi today got retropie loaded on the sd and booting and thats as far as I got. Soory I am a noob.

[shywolf28]

this is how i got mine to work

1. first store the line command below to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mene.list and save it
deb http://archive.mene.za.net/raspbian wheezy contrib

2.Import the archive signing key:

sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-key 5243CDED

3. Update the package lists:

sudo apt-get update

4.You can then install it as you would with any other package, for example, with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install xbmc

it should install afterwards..

Go to es_systems.cfg in etc/emulationstation and add this command line
<fullname>Apps</fullname>
<name>apps</name>
<path>~/RetroPie/roms/apps</path>
<extension>.sh</extension>
<command>bash %ROM%</command>
<platform>apps</platform>
<theme>appS</theme>

now you would have to create a apps folder
cd ~/RetroPie/roms
mkdir ~/RetroPie/roms/apps

5. Now all you have to do is create a file called xbmc.sh and add the line

#!/bin/bash
sudo xbmc

save it and put it the apps folder you created earlier.
Dont forget to go to terminal and run sudo chmod +x xbmc.sh

thats it..sudo and reboot

let me know how it goes

[jerezer1985]

how do i get to terminal

[shywolf28]

Easiest way is to use winscp in windows. .or putty

[sander]

is there a way to use your joypad to browse true xbmc?

[lunarkingdom]

1. first store the line command below to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mene.list and save it
deb http://archive.mene.za.net/raspbian wheezy contrib

2.Import the archive signing key:
sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-key 5243CDED

3. Update the package lists:
sudo apt-get update

4.You can then install it as you would with any other package, for example, with apt-get:
sudo apt-get install xbmc
it should install afterwards..
Go to es_systems.cfg in etc/emulationstation and add this command line
<fullname>Apps</fullname>
<name>apps</name>
<path>~/RetroPie/roms/apps</path>
<extension>.sh</extension>
<command>bash %ROM%</command>
<platform>apps</platform>
<theme>appS</theme>
now you would have to create a apps folder
cd ~/RetroPie/roms
mkdir ~/RetroPie/roms/apps

5. Now all you have to do is create a file called xbmc.sh and add the line
#!/bin/bash
sudo xbmc
save it and put it the apps folder you created earlier.
Dont forget to go to terminal and run sudo chmod +x xbmc.sh
thats it..sudo and reboot

I did all of this and it does not show up in emulation station, exited and did sudo xbmc and it loads fine but when I leave xbmc via the power selection bottom left it goes to blank screen then stays there so I assume I have 2 issues:

1) I need help making it an option in emulation station

2) I need help making it return to emulation station

[lunarkingdom]

ok I missed step 2 so I went back and tried it

sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-key 5243CDED

and I got this:

Executing: gpg –ignore-time-conflict –no-options –no-default-keyring –secret-keyring /tmp/tmp.zeZza7DRdj –trustdb-name /etc/apt//trustgb.gpg –keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg –primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg -keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com -recv-key 5243CDED
gpg: conflicting commands

[dizzycrosby]

Take a look at Ultimate Raspbian. I think its running the older version of Retropie but I’m sure someone have a update for it. You can download it to an extra SD card just to see how its configured.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=58839

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