Raspberri Pi 3 Emulation Station

[Kirin]

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-yo...sole-498561192

So after hearing how well the RPi has been received here on BG over the years, and a friend of mine doing this himself just recently I thought it might be something neat to look into and have a little fun with.

Having more tech knowledge than most, but not as much as the rest, I'm not teribly well versed in fiddling with the technical details on stuff like this. I know it can output to 1080p, stream and emulate which are three things I like.

1.How simple is this to set-up and get going? I don't have a lot of coding experience, so if its any more difficult than setting up a BIOS for a new PC then I'll be a little lost.

2. In getting a case for this, do you need to worry about ways to displace heat with it emulating something more graphically intensive like a Saturn/PSX/N64 title as opposed to a NES/SNES title?

3. Power Supply. Can anything and everything work for this, or is there a specific type I should seek out?

4. Vanity cases. I have a dremel, and could afford to lose (or find) some materials like older SNES cases or an old gameboy color to turn into a case. Are the store bought cases a better buy?

I don't want/need something overly expensive or flashy, but would like this to be something unique and I think retro-fitting an old SNES case would work...unless there are pre-made SNES RPi cases out there.

[Niya]

#1 installing RetroPie on the Pi is simple as cake (pun fully intended ). Works like installing any other distro on it, you just need a little tool like win32diskImager to "unpack" the image to the SD card, not much more needed.
BUT I can say from first hand experience with the RetroPie of a friend, setting up controllers/gamepads can be a bit of a PITA. You need to set them up twice, once for the game select menu, once for the game emulation level itself. Needs a bit of fiddling, but there are pretty good tutorials around and you should be able to set it up within an hour or so.

#2 usually not. Most cases are built to allow enough air flow. But just in case you might want to add a little heat spreader to the main SoC ("processor"). There are "cooling kits" available for the Pi that often include more heat spreaders for the network chip etc, but those are IMHO not needed at all.

#3 Definitely not everything. If you want to attach a lot of periphery like controllers you NEED a strong PSU (2 ampere highly recommended) and in worst case a USB hub with its own power supply. Most smartphone chargers can work, but you might have to try.

#4 if you want to, go for it ^^ The only advantage of the pre-built cases is that they exactly fit the board dimensions and have cut-outs for the ports. Building your own case can sure be fun, just remember to not make it too tight and add a few holes/gaps for air flow/heat exchange.

[Kirin]

Thanks for the input!

In looking around the internets at other retro RPi projects, I see some installing a dedicated on/off switch. Is that worth looking into for utility, or is the RPi not difficult to power off?

[Niya]

Well, the Pi doesn't have a power switch, it just starts booting when you plug the charger in. When you shut the OS down, the board still stays "powered" but you can't boot it again without un- and re-plugging the charger. Adding a switch might make sense, but I dunno if there's a way to switch it via the IO pins or if you'd have to cut/interrupt the charger cable to add the switch.