What's new

FrancoB

Champion
Joined
Jul 21, 2015
Messages
570
Reaction score
1,464
Location
UK
Has any one got any information on [this] type of PiForce setup that uses a colour TFT?

DBCA8E0E-5436-4108-8B2C-7F31C1C75E37.jpeg


It looks to use [this] Adafruit PiTFT Plus Assembled 320x240 2.8" TFT + Resistive Touchscreen.

I wonder if it uses the touchscreen for game selection or if it uses the tactile buttons on the RHS?

I'm finally cracking on with my mini cabs and after messing about with CF cards working/not working for weeks I decided to try my old PiForce setup and BAM, it works 100% on every game I tried. The LCD in my PiForce is screwed so I'm looking to replace it and I stumbled in the above. I would ask Pianela but it doesn't look like he's too willing to share.
 
I thought about using a touchscreen for the longest, I wanted to take it a step further and use a Pi + touchscreen display for Netbooting a naomi and also as a replacement for Darksofts LCD for all of his multis. I had message @Darksoft & @corey at one point, so maybe a solution can be worked out, a color touchscreen nowadays is like $20-30 so definitely affordable.

It would be the perfect upgrade to a setup I was working for my vewlix to mount a headphone amp/jack and DS lcd, are relocate/duplicate the test/service buttons, so I dont have to keep going into the cab or keep the door open. Added bonus is the headphone amp mutes the cab speakers when a headphone is plugged in, perfect for late night playing without disturbing the family, well not until I start button smashing :)

IMG_7761.JPG


But yeah, I would love to get a touchscreen solution on the naomi. I hate those little tactile buttons on the lcds, they break/snap off to easy.
 
A touchscreen would be nice, I quite like standard low profile tactile touch buttons, I'm just not keen on the really long unsupported ones like the ones on some of the multis which, as you said, can break off easily and they're a bit awkward to use.

I like your Vewlix panel! It's actually something I'm working on for my mini cabs and has kind of been my stumbling block for some time. I had planned on making some new aluminium panels with various I/Os and switches etc as well as either a CF slot for CF Naomi etc games or a LCD for the PiForce. If I could have got the CF card working 100% of the time I would have gone down that route but as it was so hit and miss and the PiForce (seems to!) be working so well I'm going to go down that route.

I've decided against mounting the LCD in the IO plate as i'm a bit limited on space with everything else I'm trying to fit in, I'll make a separate mount for it elsewhere...

But yes, a touchscreen, or even just the colour TFT showing the game would be a nice upgrade to what I have currently. I thought if anyone knows about it or how to go about it then this would be the place to ask :thumbup:
 
Its a work in progress :D

Its meant to mount under the rectangular cover next to the RFID card reader atop the vewlix control panel.

But yeah, lets see if we can figure out this touch screen thing for the Naomi netboot.
 
I have an adafruit touchscreen tft on the Pi that runs my 3D printer... it's terrible seriously sometimes it's super sensitive and other times you need to practically break the screen to get it to respond. as a screen it's not exactly the best either. I mean I don't expect it to impress me but a half decent viewing angle would be nice for this application.

info on this here (including a design for a 3D printed case... which is a terrible design BTW, don't ask me to print you one :P) : https://learn.adafruit.com/3-dot-5-pitft-octoprint-rig/software

the touch thing may just be software related but even still who wants to troubleshoot that stuff for a Pi setup.

honestly I'll take physical buttons over a touch interface for game selection all day buffet.

for something with a large game set like the NAOMI (or even CPS2) what I REALLY want is a multi-depth menu where I select say game Genre first and then the game so I don't have to scroll through 100 games that I'm not looking for. whether that menu is displayed as a 2-line character display with some buttons or a touch-screen TFT is irrelevant. IMO
 
I have an adafruit touchscreen tft on the Pi that runs my 3D printer... it's terrible seriously sometimes it's super sensitive and other times you need to practically break the screen to get it to respond. as a screen it's not exactly the best either. I mean I don't expect it to impress me but a half decent viewing angle would be nice for this application.

info on this here (including a design for a 3D printed case... which is a terrible design BTW, don't ask me to print you one :P) : https://learn.adafruit.com/3-dot-5-pitft-octoprint-rig/software

the touch thing may just be software related but even still who wants to troubleshoot that stuff for a Pi setup.

honestly I'll take physical buttons over a touch interface for game selection all day buffet.
Ah, if the touchscreen is gash then that's that one out of the window. There are some tactile buttons on the display that could be used. instead though. I would still be interested to know how they got the graphics to display on the TFT.


for something with a large game set like the NAOMI (or even CPS2) what I REALLY want is a multi-depth menu where I select say game Genre first and then the game so I don't have to scroll through 100 games that I'm not looking for. whether that menu is displayed as a 2-line character display with some buttons or a touch-screen TFT is irrelevant. IMO
That would be nice, you could have a favourites etc folder too. Ideally you would want it to reference the game set rather than have multiple duplicate copies of each game in various folders. I'm not sure how do-able that is though.
 
I would still be interested to know how they got the graphics to display on the TFT.
That particular TFT uses the ribbon cable connector on the Pi. Octoprint is just a web-service so essentially it's setup to run the web browser as the shell and display it on the screen. If you go through the installation procedure in the link I posted, it explains most of it.
 
I've been working on project past few weeks, using Raspberry Pi 3 + 3.5" LCD touch screen (which for the record, works exactly how its supposed to without frustration)

61am6dCx54L._SL1000_.jpg

Maybe you have heard of the Emulator/ROM loader called Attract Mode -- it is a highly customizable, open source menu system for displaying rom lists and launching emulators. But if you think outside the box, it can launch any program and list whatever info you want.

So the theory stands, you could use it for lets say picking a game from a list and launching a program that issues commands to a multi of sorts? ;)

@twistedsymphony just to note your comment, about favorites/folders -- attract mode supports that out of the box :D

AM uses 'layouts' based on a scripting langauge, and does not have any out of the box examples for using a touch screen. Takes some study to solve how to use mouse/touchscreen inputs, but definitely works!
 
I've been working on project past few weeks, using Raspberry Pi 3 + 3.5" LCD touch screen (which for the record, works exactly how its supposed to without frustration)

61am6dCx54L._SL1000_.jpg

Maybe you have heard of the Emulator/ROM loader called Attract Mode -- it is a highly customizable, open source menu system for displaying rom lists and launching emulators. But if you think outside the box, it can launch any program and list whatever info you want.

So the theory stands, you could use it for lets say picking a game from a list and launching a program that issues commands to a multi of sorts? ;)

@twistedsymphony just to note your comment, about favorites/folders -- attract mode supports that out of the box :D

AM uses 'layouts' based on a scripting langauge, and does not have any out of the box examples for using a touch screen. Takes some study to solve how to use mouse/touchscreen inputs, but definitely works!
One step closer then to figuring this out. :D

A RPi with that touchscreen to work on all of DS multis, and upcoming multis from others as well ;) and for use with the naomi netboot would be awesome. Basically one solution for all, I would pay good $$ for that. Its just simplifies things, can be mount into most cabs. Would go great with the plate I am making for the vewlix.
 
@twistedsymphony just to note your comment, about favorites/folders -- attract mode supports that out of the box
So does Hyperspin and most other Front Ends I've tried... the problem is the implementation is usually terrible.

I'm also skeptical of that touch screen working "exactly how its supposed to without frustration". The biggest issue I have with mine is performing "single click" operation as the screen doesn't detect a click but instead detects a swipe.

If you've got it working well though, I'm happy to be wrong.
 
@twistedsymphony just to note your comment, about favorites/folders -- attract mode supports that out of the box
So does Hyperspin and most other Front Ends I've tried... the problem is the implementation is usually terrible.
I'm also skeptical of that touch screen working "exactly how its supposed to without frustration". The biggest issue I have with mine is performing "single click" operation as the screen doesn't detect a click but instead detects a swipe.

If you've got it working well though, I'm happy to be wrong.
Hyperspin is closed source, not even a consideration. You should check out Attract Mode, it can literally be customized in every way possible. Most can be done just with the layout scripting language, but also because the software is open source. I was able to create a working custom graphical layout/navigation for 480x320 resolution supporting touch screen in only a few hours.

As for touch screens -- not all touch screens and interface chips are created equally, same applies to the drivers used for each device too
 
using Raspberry Pi 3 + 3.5" LCD touch screen (which for the record, works exactly how its supposed to without frustration)
Is this the adafruit one??
No
https://www.waveshare.com/3.5inch-RPi-LCD-A.htm
https://www.waveshare.com/3.5inch-RPi-LCD-B.htm

Original design, not a clone. This page shows what cheap clones look like on the backside: https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/3.5inch_RPi_LCD_(B)

Ver B uses an improved IPS display
Cool, ordered 1 of the B version to test it out, thanks!
 
I wonder if you could incorporate attractmode into this and when you pick a game instead of running a emulator it ran transfer game
 
I wonder if you could incorporate attractmode into this and when you pick a game instead of running a emulator it ran transfer game
Good question - that is what was asked in another thread. Is it possible to have attract mode run on a PI3 (Hyperpie) and basically provide a front-end on the monitor for selecting Naomi games. Seems like this should work as attract mode and Hyperpie already exist on the Pi3 and possibly be modified to transfer the rom file instead of an emulator. I hope someone looks further into this that has more skills than I do.
 
I wonder if you could incorporate attractmode into this and when you pick a game instead of running a emulator it ran transfer game
Absolutely it can, that is what I meant when I posted earlier "But if you think outside the box, it can launch any program and list whatever info you want."

Could be a flasher program, with a list of network images ---- doesnt have to be emulators and roms
 
Didnt see all of that I got my hopes up and started a thread about the idea haha I can figure out the launching of a script using am on pi just don't know how you would change triforcetools.py to be game specific if that's even the right way to do it.
 
Back
Top