Phatty's Tech Talk

So after making an arcade console and getting the kids hooked on great old video games, I saw this set of videos from Bob at http://www.iliketomakestuff.com Arcade Cabinet Part 1 Arcade Cabinet Part 2 Arcade Cabinet Part 3 Parts 1 and 2 were informative, but part 3... A human sensor that turns the lights on and off!!! Must have! So I started playing with an arduino uno board, (really fun) but then I got to playing with this little creature:   you can learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NodeMCU You can buy some with my Amazon affiliate link here:  https://amzn.to/2SoLbGK Update: the above link is to the version 2 which I used for this project, but the version 3 is available now here for ~$5.50 each:  https://amzn.to/2Sn9CVi It took a bit of fiddling to get it to work so I wanted to capture that on the blog for later use. First I had to get drivers here:  https://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/software/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-dri...

So, for my birthday I got a Raspberry pi 3, with a case, and a power supply, and I had to immediately set it up. I tried OSMC with Kodi I tried straight up Raspbian And then I found RetroPie !!! I was completely sold. Old school games, Kodi, nice interface, So I set the whole thing up with XBox 360 USB connectors, it was cool...but playing those old games I wanted the arcade feel: Hearing "Full point" in Karate Champ is not quite as amazing when you had to use the D-Pad and the ABXY buttons. So I did what any one else would do, I ordered 4 joysticks and 40 buttons and 2 two player PCB boards that attach via USB, and a trackball, oh and 2 more LED joysticks (for Karate Champ!) and an OrangePi PC so I did not have to cannibalize the RPi media center. I was excited , the OPi is: Slightly faster than RPi 3 at 1.6 ghz vs 1.2 Has the same RAM A Mic for Alexa support An IR chip It was only $27 with a case and power cord! Sadly: OS support is very poor  The...