Two new naomi netboot options

[devtty0]

Hey,

apologies if discussing netboot is frowned upon here (I tried to check but wasnt sure) ..

I've come up with two new ways of netbooting using a raspberry pi without the need for the LCD kit, and the soldering and cost that goes with it.. one of which uses your phone as a touchscreen remote to select & launch games, and the other is a really simple and fast single game launcher.

Piforce-Web:
This uses a raspberry pi, SD card, and a wireless adapter - creates an access point, which when you connect to it, re-directs you to a web-page containing a list of the games which you own, with images. Select the game to load using your phone/tablet/laptop/whatever.

# Piforce-Web

Piforce-Web is a raspberry pi image which boots a WiFi access point and creates a web-page containing images and links to the naomi games which you own, and allows you to netboot these games from your phone, laptop or tablet.

a video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-y7jqlN2ko

This has the following advantages:

- touch-screen web page via your phone for game selection; only the games you have loaded are shown
- can be hidden inside the cab, so no need to open the naomi every time, or to run cables outside the cabinet
- no soldering required
- fast boot times
- just the netdimm, a crossover cable, raspberry pi and a sdcard required for multiboot fun
- supports rasperry pi 1, 2 & 3
- UPDATE - now supports pi version 3 using its inbuilt wireless card
- UPDATE - support for GPIO pins for hard-reset of games
UPDATE - v1.1 - Support for naomi 2 and atomswave games
UPDATE - v1.1 - Added shutdown and reboot links from the web page
UPDATE - v1.2 - option to auto-load the last played game
UPDATE - v1.2 - option to auto-shutdown the file system after loading
UPDATE - v1.2 - config menu and shutdown links from every web-page
UPDATE - v1.2 - adds support for naomi2, atomswave, triforce and chihiro games
UPDATE - v1.2 - moves the game names, images and rom names to a .csv (excel) file in the Windows partition (/config/roms.csv) so its easy to amend or changing the pictures and text that are displayed for each game on the web page.
UPDATE - v1.2 - move the image folder to /config/images/ on the Windows (fat32) partition so the image files/pictures can be swopped easily.
UPDATE - v1.2 - integrated GPiO support for this project: http://www.arcade-projects.com/forums/i ... 8#post6248

download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/clh9bzq16 ... b-v1.2.zip


Piforce-Single:
burn the image to a SD card, put your game in the /rom folder from Windows, and connect everything up. No need for soldering, no messing about with partition manager, and its fast: < 12 seconds from power to sending the game, this is faster than my naomi motherboard loads, so no waiting around. Great if you play one game for longer periods.

I wanted to write these as they:
can be hidden inside the cab, so no need to open the naomi every time, or to run cables outside the cabinet
nice web page gui/game selection, which only shows the games you have loaded (Piforce-Web)
fast boot times: < 12 seconds on raspberry pi2! (Piforce-Single)
no need to use a partition manager to re-size the card (Piforce-Single)
no soldering required
supports raspberry pi 1 & 2
simple installation and usage

Some rather poor youtube videos:

Piforce-Web:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-y7jqlN2ko"

Piforce-Single:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH-nQQREGa8"

Github download links:

https://github.com/dev-tty0/Piforce-Web"
https://github.com/dev-tty0/Piforce-Single"

the web-page used to launch games from your phone (Piforce-Web) looks like this:

web-example.JPG

hopefully they will be of use to someone else

[Stompp]

Nice I like the web version and I'll deffo give it a go.

[devtty0]

nice one cheers .. with the wireless one, you need a supported wireless adapter, it works 100% with a Netgear wg111v2, but ymmv with another card..

..In theory, any card supported by a raspbian wheezy image should work, (http://elinux.org/RPi_USB_Wi-Fi_Adapters") however I have not tried them all, and cannot guarantee it!. .. having said that, if you have a spare random USB wireless adapter, there's no harm in giving it a go!

[RMRM]

Great work mate!

[purplec]

ordered a wifi card today, so do you have images for the atomiswave roms also?

[devtty0]

Hey,

I havent added the Atomiswave games .. I just went off the list that the piforce/lcd kit supported .. just had a quick google, didnt realise that there were so many now! :
http://64darksoft.blogspot.co.uk/2015/0 ... us-of.html"

give me till the end of next week, and I will update the game and image list so that they show up, will update the images on medafire and let you know here

[devtty0]

Hey purplec;

I've just been through and checked, and the images/support for the Atomiswave games are on there already

also, replying to a pm : the SSH creds are root/raspberry if anyone needs to do some hacking

[RMRM]

I just got a pi 2 and will definitely try this out.

Thanks again for your work!

[lacanian]

Thanks for your work on this.

As soon as my dimm arrives I know what I'll be doing.

[RMRM]

Well, i just bought a TL-WN725N v1, and should be compatible:

http://elinux.org/RPi_USB_Wi-Fi_Adapters"

But it does not work

After i try a couple of boots, also with another Asus Wifi adapter i had, seems like the Raspberry simply stoped booting. I pluged in a HDMI monitor, and it says something about a keyboard input and gets stuck.

Before that, i saw a red error about the wifi adapter, does that mean my adapter is not supported? Guess i will have to order the Netgear wg111v2 from Ebay and wait 3 weeks

[RMRM]

I just tried the "single" version and it hangs at the "serching network" screen.

The rom is supposed to be uncompressed in the /rom folder right? Like you normally do for netbooting?

Thanks

EDIT - I'm not using a zero-key security pic, i'm using the normal pic i use for netbooting, you think this is the problem? Maybe for this but not for the "web" version because i can't see the wireless network on my phone...

EDIT 2 - I just noticed this "Note that if you do try multiple cards, you will need to re-burn the image each time, this is as otherwise each new card will be registered as a new interface (wlan0, wlan1, wlan2 etc) which will cause the script to fail."
Guess i have to burn another image and try the other adapter...

[RMRM]

I noticed i was missing the "crossed network cable", but even with this cable, it hangs on the searching network screen...

I've opened a thread looking for the zero security chip, other then that i don't know what might be...

I guess i will have to stick with the good old Wireless netbooting method

[classiccor83]

Still can't get this to work...1st it was the wireless dongle, so then got 1 with the R3570 chipset and that worked with a few tweaks, downloading the ralink firmware etc. Now I can finally see the Naomi and connect to the naomi wireless network, whenever I try to browse to a site on my phone, all I get is "This web page is not available ERR_CONNECTION REFUSED"

Are there any steps or things I can check to trouble shoot?I have placed a few of the smaller roms into the roms folder (Akatsuki, cosmic smash, gunspike etc) but cannot access the "page" that you choose your roms to send to the naomi.

I must add, I am only trying this as a test not connected to my naomi cabinet as that's in the garage, I'm guessing you don't actually need it physically connected for the page to load up with the selection of games?

[Marty]

Hello classiccor83, any news about running this great solution on your system? I have still problems after changing the wireless USB Stick to Netgear V2 Thank you devtty0 for giving me some Tips but it still doesn't work. There is no Network coming up Do i need a special firmware too?
Thank you!!

Still can't get this to work...1st it was the wireless dongle, so then got 1 with the R3570 chipset and that worked with a few tweaks, downloading the ralink firmware etc. Now I can finally see the Naomi and connect to the naomi wireless network, whenever I try to browse to a site on my phone, all I get is "This web page is not available ERR_CONNECTION REFUSED"

Are there any steps or things I can check to trouble shoot?I have placed a few of the smaller roms into the roms folder (Akatsuki, cosmic smash, gunspike etc) but cannot access the "page" that you choose your roms to send to the naomi.

I must add, I am only trying this as a test not connected to my naomi cabinet as that's in the garage, I'm guessing you don't actually need it physically connected for the page to load up with the selection of games?

[longobongo]

Love the idea!

But Is there any way to update the image to remove the requirement for the Zero Key Security PIC? I would get to the 'Loading Game' screen but then it would reboot back to the Naomi logo with Error 33 Gateway Not Found. Guess I need the PIC which I don't have

[Sp33dFr34k]

This seems like a great solution (the wifi one), as I understand the images are still on the micro SD and via the wifi signal you tell the Pi which image to flash, genius.

Any experience from people who did get this to work properly and if yes, did you use a powered USB hub to properly power the wifi dongle?

[longobongo]

Quick update, I got a null zero key and piforce-single works fine, but when I'm trying piforce-web i'm getting issues:

I'm using the same usb dongle, netgear wg111v2 but it displays "wlan0: link is not ready" so no access point is created, anybody experience the same issue?

[nam9]

Hi devtty0,

Very nice project! Hope to give it a shot soon. One question, is your disk image compatible with this project?
http://www.arcade-projects.com/forums/i ... 8#post6248

To work around some resetting issues this solution uses a modified piforcetools.py file and some hardware...

[devtty0]

Hey,

sorry for the late reply - I totally missed that .. yes, it is totally compatible with that solution and should be easy to integrate..

.. in fact, seeing as the PI3 has an inbuilt wireless antenna, that should make everything loads easier - no messing about getting the right wireless adapter! just burn the sd card and use it in an unmodified PI3!

I will push out an updated image once I manage to get hold of a PI3

[projectRS2]

Hey,

sorry for the late reply - I totally missed that .. yes, it is totally compatible with that solution and should be easy to integrate..

.. in fact, seeing as the PI3 has an inbuilt wireless antenna, that should make everything loads easier - no messing about getting the right wireless adapter! just burn the sd card and use it in an unmodified PI3!

I will push out an updated image once I manage to get hold of a PI3

So the original image won't work on a Pi3?

*drool*

Unpatiently, but patiently waiting for Pi3 image.....