Solved Raspberry Pi simple project

bookwormep

bookwormep

Just wanted to share a little Raspberry Pi project this week with my daughter.
It was helpful to show some of the computer basics and have a little fun.

Guess the only question here is whether retro gaming can be integrated on it.

Any tips or tricks would be appreciated.
 
I don't follow games much. I like spades or open arena.

But can I suggest something a little different. The GPIO on Pi is something any kid could dig.

A LED and 2 jumper wires is the bare basics. Throw in a switch and show her how it lights the LED.
If you need help with this just say. You can scrape together the parts for around $5 US.

I grew up on a simliar 200-in-1 electronics bench and would also recommend it for any curious kid.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/123303182337
This one is quite expensive but there are much cheaper versions too.
Radio Shack sold one as did heathkit.
I played with mine for many hours. Radio, microphone, crystal. Yes many many hours of fun.
 
Hopefully I am not going off on a weird tangent. You mentioned retro games. I consider educational games retro.
Anyway, back to Pi GPIO. Without buying a thing you could teach kids about GPIO.(General Purpose Input Output)

The Pi has a couple of LED's on board. If you can do scripting you can make these lights do cool blinking patterns.
I found it fun, and I am a giant kid.
gpioctl 43 1
gpioctl 43 0
It's as simple as that. I dont know if pin 43 is correct for the Pi onboard LED but this command turns pin 43 on and off.
Script it for choreography and you can make some cool patterns.

Also the electronics workbenches were known as 200-in One and 160 in one, many different makers. Some branded Science Fair.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232867734587
This looks like the one I used.
 
Lincoln logs, Erector set and Legos too for some mechanical sense. These are retro games to me!!

Do you have an Xorg install already or command line only? I have used x11-wm/openbox for a light desktop on Arm.
I would be tempted to go that route.
Let the programs drag in all their monster dependencies but use a light desktop.
Sound like a fun project. In my head I thought of making a NanoBSD disk image with kids games on it.
That way if they mess up anything you yank the cord and all goes back to new.
The only problem there is saving the kids work products. NanoBSD is Read Only so you would have to save out their game data.
 
What would be nice would be a misc/pdmenu menu program with some of the games in ports/games in a kids spin for Arm.
Have NanoBSD boot to menu automatically.

I didn't like recommending tux* applications but no sense in ignoring the good work.
 
Phishfry said:
The Pi has a couple of LED's on board. If you can do scripting you can make these lights do cool blinking patterns.
I found it fun, and I am a giant kid.
gpioctl 43 1
gpioctl 43 0
It's as simple as that. I dont know if pin 43 is correct for onboard LED but this command turns pin 43 on and off.
Script it for choreography and you can make some cool patterns.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. GPIO pins turn your RP into a great "controller". You can even couple that with something like NodeJS and have a small server that allows you to remotely turn on LED(s) or read data from other sensors. Highly recommended.
 
Thanks all for your replies. At first using NOOBS on the Rasp Pi. Also tried RetroPie with USB Buffalo game controller. Saw
that the retro games could be copyrighted and if abandonware,
may not be correctly integrated.

So, should we use the FreeBSD ARM images, and build from there?
 
My son is a professional actor and ran his own theatre company. For one stage play, he needed a bucket that would appear to contain a lit, flickering fire that could be carried around on stage. Using an Arduino, some LED bulbs, a UPS, some simple triac circuitry and a keyfob, I programmed the Arduino to wirelessly do all that while being started and stopped, with a controlled brightness, on cue by a stagehand.
 
bookwormep said:
So, should we use the FreeBSD ARM images, and build from there?
Click to expand...
Yes. Packages work but the package repository is not up to date like the amd64/i3386. It lags some.
You will find some packages won't build on Arm yet or are broke.
So the nice thing about using pkg repositories is that it only has available what will actually build.
So in short more stuff is broke on Arm because it is tier 2 support.
All that said it works. You could spend hours to build a port only to find out its broke on Arm.
If you run pkg install tinymux and it says package not found, just move on, it's broke.
 
Please let us know which Pi you are using.
There are a few which don't work with FreeBSD.
Pi=all Good
Pi2=Mixed- They released a newer version with Pi3 CPU which is 64bit. Called Pi2 rev1.2 -Does not work.
Pi3=Works but only with -CURRENT(FreeBSD 12) Which brings a big set of problems.
So Pi sweet spot on FreeBSD is Pi1 or Pi2 before the new model.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=162139

So I suggest you save your NOOBS and use a separate card if possible. Just to get a feel for the experience.
You will need to use the x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb if you attempt an Xorg install.
It needs a display file as noted it the instructions: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/SCFB

I would suggest you use over 4 Gigabyte microSD card if using Xorg and desktop.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
My son is a professional actor and ran his own theatre company. For one stage play, he needed a bucket that would appear to contain a lit, flickering fire that could be carried around on stage. Using an Arduino, some LED bulbs, a UPS, some simple triac circuitry and a keyfob, I programmed the Arduino to wirelessly do all that while being started and stopped, with a controlled brightness, on cue by a stagehand.
Click to expand...

I'm confused: why are we bringing in the Arduino (micro-controller) into this thread? I thought the main topic was the Raspberry PI (system-on-chip) and potential projects/games for kids. What am I missing here?

Phishfry said:
Pi3=Works but only with -CURRENT(FreeBSD 12) Which brings a big set of problems
Click to expand...

What set of problems are you referring to (specifically)? I was actually thinking about buying a RP 3 B+ because of its quad-core CPU and the WiFi (embedded) module.
 
Well first off -CURRENT images ship with full debugging turned on.
This is major speed hit and hindrance to work.
So you want to recompile with GENERIC-NODEBUG kernel if you want to use it like a normal platform.
That requires some legwork as you need either a larger microSD card(>16GB) to hold source and all the/usr/obj/ build directories, or move it to a USB drive mounted as /usr/src.

So you would follow this but use GENERIC-NODEBUG in place of MYKERNEL used in the example here:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/kernelconfig-building.html

Then you have tempfs and swap adjustments to make in /etc/fstab to help it compile right.

I also see you mention Wifi. I don't think we have support for that wireless chipset either. The same with Beaglebone Green wifi.

Generally I think that we will get the RPi2 Ver-1.2(arm64) support if not done already.
That allows for cooler running CPU (albeit at a lower frequency) without crappy wifi.
I think RPi2-ver 1.2 is better overall, just currently unsupported. The tweaking of the DTS can't be that much work.
 
I forgot to mention it is a testing version. Stuff can be completly broke. Arm version can go a month without working.
Now in saying that we have an upcoming code slush for FreeBSD 12. So features should be set, it's just bug fix time.
So now is a better time to pull than 6 months ago. That is a condition of using -CURRENT.
You need to read the mailing list and judge the current state.
 
We were able to get a few games up and running; my daughter
really likes Minecraft, so that went well!

Tried out a variety of your suggestions, and a few more that I discovered after more research.

The Raspberry Pi is 3 and Model B+; the processor is armv7.
Tried a couple of the FreeBSD images, but without success.
It is a really great learning experience, nonetheless; thanks to
all for the tips and tricks!
 
Phishfry said:
Generally I think that we will get the RPi2 Ver-1.2(arm64) support if not done already.
Click to expand...
Looking hard into this, we will not get this RPI2 rev1.2 supported the way it looks.
In some ways I wish we never went ARM64 for the Pi3. The board only has 2GB memory afterall.
 
bookwormep said:
The Raspberry Pi is 3 and Model B+; the processor is armv7.
Tried a couple of the FreeBSD images, but without success.!
Click to expand...

I just installed the 12-CURRENT version on my recently (yesterday) arrived RPI 3 B+. It's a straight-forward procedure. You download the image, write the .img file on an SD card, and you are good to go.

If you want to debug it plug the RPI into your LAN network via the ethernet port and ssh into it, or use a USB Serial cable. Out of the box the RPI 3 B+ works perfectly fine @ 115200 bauds/second.

What tripped you?
 
I am OK but there are few hurdles for most people. The original poster might not have the patience.
It took me around 4 hours to build GENERIC-NODEBUG native.
 
The desktop is LXDE minimal and it seems to be working pretty well.

This simple project was basically a learning experience and I will go back to
another attempt with 12-CURRENT when I have more time to work on it.

Again, thanks for all the helpful comments and suggestions!
 
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