Trying Retropie on official Raspberry 7" Display

[laserdisc]

Hello folks,
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I just wanted to share my experience (so far) using retropie with the official Raspberry 7″ Display with a Raspberry Pi 2.
Colours and brightness seem to be quite good for a 7″ 800×480 display. Well worth the $60US I paid for this unit.
I’ve had some issues with emulation however. It’s quite slow, when I go into the retroarch video settings, the frame rates are everywhere. I suspect the DSI isn’t capable of moving 60hz worth of video, maybe? Seems to favour 50hz. I’ve found turning off VSYNC solves this problem. After about 30-60 seconds of silky smooth gameplay (with or without shaders/overlays) the emulation core locks up. I can still SSH into the Pi, list files, run scripts but the emulation core is frozen.
I have the latest Raspbian packages and performed a retropie update via the setup script and configured the video options that I think should work with this display (since the last display was a 27″ 1080P 60hz monitor).

If you’re tinkering with the new RP-Display w/ Retropie/Retroarch I’d like to read about it. Also if you have some idea what I’m doing wrong, I welcome those posts too.

This is just a preliminary report. When time permits I’m going to do a complete fresh retropie install. Perhaps there’s some config file I’m not aware of causing issues. I’ll make another post on this thread as I go through solving the crashing problem.

[momaw27]

Thanks for the report! Looking forward to watching this develop.

[laserdisc]

Been tinkering with it some more and I’ve got some updates.

I can confirm that emulation runs smoothly when set to 50hz. The retroarch video setting was estimating 50.299 when it finally settled down to 50.105hz but it does tend to drift (.103 – .108). I’ve set the Refresh Rate to match. And now with VSYNC on, it runs smoothly. I’ve read this display has a 60hz refresh rate but using retroarch, this doesn’t seems to be the case. I haven’t noticed significant input latency and it must be fine, I was kicking ass (more than usual) in NES-Mike Tyson’s Punchout and NG-Baseball Stars 2.

As for the emulation-core locking up, it seems to be a power problem. I wasn’t getting the corner rainbow indicator so it didn’t occur to me at first that this might be an issue. I was using a 5v/2a power supply that came with my ASUS Nexus 7 tablet. I took an old Motorola charger and that seems to have done the trick. The core no longer locks up and runs continuously without issue.

So in closing, this display runs great for gaming. Just make sure you have a power supply that won’t buckle under the pressure of powering the display and the pi.

[rickgrimes]

Hey Laser Disc

I have a very similar project, but have been unable to have the 7″ official touchscreen actually work with Retropie. if i may ask, what guide did you follow to have them be compatible with one another.

[rickgrimes]

Hey Laser Disc

I have a very similar project, but have been unable to have the 7″ official touchscreen actually work with Retropie. if i may ask, what guide did you follow to have them be compatible with one another.

[laserdisc]

I haven’t found any guides. But I did SSH into it (or you can quit Emulationstation to access the prompt) and performed 3 commands as directed by Raspberry…
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo reboot
But I think this is for the touchscreen aspect of the display, which will not work with Emulationstation if that’s what you’re wondering.
Other than that I changed the retroarch.cfg from /opt/retropie/configs/all/ (I think thats the right location, I’m currently at work) video_refresh_rate to 50.10 since this display doesn’t like retroarch running at 60hz.

What problem, specifically are you having with the display and retropie?

[DavidBowman]

I didn’t read your updates. Disregard this post. :(

[laserdisc]

Tinkering some more:
Updated Raspbian via the Retropie setup screen then after reboot the display did a 180° flip. Modified the config.txt in the /boot folder to add a line “lcd_rotate=2”. Performed a reinstall of Retropie and now it seems to be all working normally. This time around I didn’t have to mess with the refresh rate setting.

Googling the flipped display issue, it seems the display was incorrectly orientated on the initial release. And I can only guess this was corrected.

I own the Pimoroni stand and while it looks fine, flipping the display to it’s “correct” position does make it look better. I’ll have to modify the stand to accommodate because at present the legs only mount in one way.

[Edit: Deleted a line that made no sense, brain operating at 25% capacity]

[lokagan]

For those who have retroarch freeze with the official lcd: the problem is a firmware issue where the touch panel can froze the gpu. The solution is to made a firmware update. (rpi-update).

[laserdisc]

Thanks for sharing that! I had no clue that it was a firmware issue. When I replaced the power adapter it stopped locking up, so I assumed it was that.
After performing the update (from my last post) and now plugging in the Asus adapter I’m getting the low voltage rainbow indicator that I wasn’t getting before.

[Anonymous]

What version of retropie are you on? Does it work on 3.0?

[laserdisc]

I’ve used it on Retropie 3.0 and 3.1 with success. Though I don’t think I would recommend getting the 7″ 800×480 display for solely this purpose. I bought mine with the pimoroni stand so I could have something small and convenient to tinker with. I’ll use it for quick sessions (5-20 minutes) but if I’m going long playing an RPG, I’ll put it up on the 24″ monitor using scan overlays.

[Anonymous]

Do you happen to have a video of it running? I’m considering buying one

[Author]

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