Circuit Gem Software, Wifi, and ROM Guide

Get help with your VMµ build here!
Post Reply
gmay3
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:33 pm

Circuit Gem Software, Wifi, and ROM Guide

Post by gmay3 » Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:01 pm

Hey all! I wanted to thank this community for the documentation of their build guides for Kite's Circuit Gem, the were super helpful for my first circuit gem build in a clear blue VMU and it was a success! Special s/o to @markyPi for the inspiration and introduction to this little "Gem" and @kiteretro for this incredibly cool board and kit!!

I wanted to just post some notes for the POST hardware process because I was a bit uncertain of what to do next after following the steps on the Circuit Gem wiki.

So once you've built the Circuit Gem and loaded the software on to an micro SD card by following the steps in the wiki you will have a Raspberry Pi running RetroPie automatically which will boot into EmulationStation which is a front end with emulators pre-installed. All you will have to do to start playing is to add roms to the SD card, which is very easily done over Wi-fi.

Startup
Turn on your circuit gem, Kite Retro logo will show on the screen for about 1 minute. The next thing to look for is EmulationStation splash screen, followed by a tiny box which will tell you no controller is attached. What you need to do here is hold down the A button and emulationstation will recognize that you're using a keyboard (even though the software keyboard is not on screen).

Configuring the controller
After your gem's A button is recognized, you will see a controller config screen where you can map all the VMU controls. Follow the mapping for each control you want to set and HOLD the A button on the controller options that you don't have buttons for. This will skip to the next button mapping without overwriting any of the controls. At the end press A to continue to the main emulator front end screen.

Setting up Wifi
There are a bunch of ways to send roms to your Pi but I was shocked how easy this process is. First in the front end menu, dpad down to the Wifi option and press A. Follow the config process and if you have any trouble navigating the menus, there is an incredibly useful on screen keyboard that is accessible by turning the circuit gem's power switch off and then pressing the A button to toggle the keyboard. Follow these screens until your wifi is connected successfully, you'll see the wifi icon in the top right corner change to indicate that the wifi is connected.

Transferring the Roms
Ok so now you are going to need another computer that is also connected to the same network as your circuit gem. On a windows machine, all you need to do is go to the start menu, select Run (or press windows key + R). In the text field, enter "\\RETROPIE" it may prompt you for a login and password and by default this is the standard raspberrypi password (user: "pi" pass: "raspberry"). Once you're connected to the retropie folder, you will see a few folders: bios, configs, roms, and spashscreens. Open up the roms folder and find the console you'd like to add roms to. Simply move rom files into their respective console folders (.zip files are fine)

Enjoy!
Please feel free to submit any corrections or questions as I am doing this from recent memory! Hope this helps others that were very confused like I was :)

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest