Pixelcade LCD Installer for EmuELEC

Note that the Pixelcade dynamic game scrolling and screen saver updates requires EmuElec 4.4 or above. Pixelcade will be installed in /storage/roms/pixelcade. 

From a computer on the same network (Ethernet or WiFi) as your EmuELEC, SSH into your EmuELEC using the username of root and the password of emuelec.

Pixelcade LCD Only

curl -kLO -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alinke/pixelcade-linux/main/installer-scripts/setup-emuelec-lcd.sh && chmod +x setup-emuelec-lcd.sh && ./setup-emuelec-lcd.sh

Pixelcade LCD + Pixelcade LED (use this if you have both a Pixelcade LCD and a Pixelcade LED marquee)

curl -kLO -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alinke/pixelcade-linux/main/installer-scripts/setup-emuelec.sh && chmod +x setup-emuelec.sh && ./setup-emuelec.sh

Note in the command line -kLO is the letter O and not the number 0

The LED installation script will take around 10-15 minutes to complete and the LCD installation script will take a few minutes.

Artwork and Firmware Updates

LCD Artwork and Firmware Updater

curl -kLO -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alinke/pixelcade-linux-builds/main/lcdupdater/lcdupdater.sh && chmod +x lcdupdater.sh && ./lcdupdater.sh

LCD Artwork and Beta Firmware Updater

curl -kLO -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alinke/pixelcade-linux-builds/main/lcdupdater/lcdupdater.sh && chmod +x lcdupdater.sh && ./lcdupdater.sh -beta

EmuELEC and Pixelcade Demo

RetroAchievements Integration

Optional LED Artpack

An optional paid LED art pack is available for Pixelcade LED with additional animated marquees.

Customizing

You can customize the Pixelcade behavior by modifying the scripts located in 

/storage/.emulationstation/configs/scripts

Here are the scripts for reference which you can customize

https://github.com/alinke/pixelcade-linux/tree/main/emuelec/scripts

ScriptDescription
System Selected

Launches each time a system/console/collection is selected. This script make this API call to display the system/console marquee:

http://127.0.0.1:8080/console/stream/[console-name]

Game Selected

Launches each time a game is selected like for example while scrolling through games. This script makes this API call to display the game marquee:

http://localhost:8080/arcade/stream/[console name]/[rom name]

Game Start

Launches each time a game is launched. This script will check if the game has high scores and display high scores in cycle mode if yes. Cycle mode means cycling between the game marquee and the high score scrolling. If the game does not have or does not support high scores, then the text “Now Playing will scroll and then the game marquee will be displayed. 

You can customize these settings in this script:

DISPLAYHIGHSCORES=yes

If set to no, high scores will not scroll and the “Now Playing will scroll and then the game marquee will be displayed.

NUMBERHIGHSCORES=3

The number of high scores to scroll, choose 1 for example to only show the top score.

CYCLEMODE=yes

Cycle mode continually cycles between the game marquee and scrolling high scores while a game is active. If set to no, then high scores will scroll only once on game launch and then display the game marquee.

NUMBER_MARQUEE_LOOPS=1

For cycle mode, the number of times the animated marquee will loop before scrolling the high score text, this has no effect if it’s a still image game marquee.

Front End Restart or Shutdown

 Launches when the EmulationStation front end is restarted or shutdown. This script will display the text “Bye” using this API call:

http://localhost:8080/text?t=<Your%20Scrolling%20Text%20Here>

achievements

Fires each time a RetroAchievement is achieved. Note that RetroAchievements are one time events. You must have RetroAchievement turned in the EmulationStation menu.

Here are features available from the Pixelcade API which you can use in the above scripts https://pixelcade.org/api

Browsing Artwork and Customizing the Default Image/Animation from a Web Browser (For LED Only)

There is also a Web UI to browse artwork and customize the default image or animation on Pixelcade.

  • Saving will write the selected image or animation to Pixelcade’s onboard microSD card and the last written image or animation will loop and continue to play before EmuELEC takes control.

IMPORTANT: After clicking save, Pixelcade will go blank do not click or do anything else until the image or animation re-appears on Pixelcade. Longer animations will take longer to save.

  • From any web browser on the same network as your EmuELEC, go to:

<EmuELEC IP Address>:8080

For example: 192.168.1.198:8080