[Guide] ili9341 SPI TFT Screen on Retropie

[Mischief]

Just an update on the issues I was having, turns out the ribbon cable on the screen was broken so had to request a new one that's why the backlight was so dim.

[moosepr]

Just an update on the issues I was having, turns out the ribbon cable on the screen was broken so had to request a new one that's why the backlight was so dim.

ah that sucks!! at least you didnt do anything wrong!

[bitbank]

I'm working on a custom game emulator project which uses all of my own code and talks directly to the SPI TFT. Many games are able to run at 60fps and all games run with considerably less input lag and no display tearing compared to the retropie+fbtft+fbcp setup. The code currently uses smart buffer management to only send the parts of the display which change each frame. I'm working on adding support for the hardware scroll register of the ili9341 to make side-scrollers run at 60fps too. It currently supports many coin-op, Gameboy, GameGear/SMS, TG16, NES and Genesis. Not all of the emulators have the same level of compatibility as the ones used in retropie because I wrote every line of code myself as a hobby. Let me know if anyone would like to beta test it and I'll work with you to get it running on your hardware.

A video sample of how it looks:

https://goo.gl/photos/9DsgvQswbdPwUUuDA

Sound is working with certain hardware (Pi0 pwm output) and hdmi.

[abrugsch]

wow that sounds awesome!

[bitbank]

wow that sounds awesome!

I just added ASCII configuration file parsing to allow customization for any hardware. It can read GPIO pins directly for game inputs (no Linux drivers needed) or gamepads/keyboard. Do you have a RPi with a ili9341 LCD connected? I can share the executable if you'd like to give it a spin.

[abrugsch]

Yes and no... I have a couple of ili9341 screens but nothing set up that works...

[bitbank]

Yes and no... I have a couple of ili9341 screens but nothing set up that works...

That's the nice part of using my emulator. You don't need to set anything up. The only thing you need is to do is connect the display and controls and build pigpio with EMBEDDED_IN_VM defined in pigpio.c (oh - and SDL2 for joystick support). No other external dependencies.

BTW - I just got the hardware scroll support working. Makes side scrolling games have even less tearing and higher framerates. Here's a short demo video of the latest code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn4AXWC0IQs

[Jay_Adusumilli]

Hi,

I've been following your guide and ran into a problem.

Code: Select all

sudo modprobe fbtft_device custom name=fb_ili9341  gpios=reset:25,dc:24,led:18 speed=16000000 bgr=1

After I type this into the command line, the code below gives an error about syntax.

Code: Select all

con2fbmap 1 1

I've looked around and couldn't find an answer I could understand (I'm a beginner btw) and was wondering if you could help.

Thanks in advance!

[moosepr]

Hi,

I've been following your guide and ran into a problem.

Code: Select all

sudo modprobe fbtft_device custom name=fb_ili9341  gpios=reset:25,dc:24,led:18 speed=16000000 bgr=1

After I type this into the command line, the code below gives an error about syntax.

Code: Select all

con2fbmap 1 1

I've looked around and couldn't find an answer I could understand (I'm a beginner btw) and was wondering if you could help.

Thanks in advance!

Do you get any errors after running the modprobe line?

[Jay_Adusumilli]

No, I typed it in and it waited for a second and the ~$ thing came back.
Also thanks for replying.