Lakka – The open source game console

I always want to have my own arcade game machine. Today I tried Lakka, actually, I tried RetroPi before. Lakka is a lightweight Linux distribution that transforms a small computer into a full blown game console.

First of all, I would like to list my hardware for this small project.

• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
• 16GB MicroSD card
• Monitor: Acer AL1716, which is VGA connector
• AC power adapter, I use the one from my old smartphone
• Afterglow Xbox 360 wired controller
• DragonRise Arcade joypad
• HDMI A to VGA converter
• 2 way Speakers

Second, the basic Lakka information.

Lakka is built on LibreELEC, LibreELEC is a fork of OpenELEC. It makes it support a lot of different hardware.

From Raspberry Pi Zero to Raspberry Pi 3, from Odroid-C1 to Odroid-XU3/4, and also support PC, Orange Pi, Cubieboard, etc.

The third, I would like to make a simple guide to share my experience to make it works on my Raspberry Pi 3.

1. Follow the installation tutorial, Choose Windows as my current working OS, Choose Raspberry Pi 3 as the hardware I want to install Lakka, Click the download button to download Lakka for Raspberry Pi2/3 package. It is about 300 MB.
2. Download Etcher, which is a free flash tool. Flash the downloaded package from step 1 into the MicroSD card.
3. First boot
   1. Insert the MicroSD card into my Raspberry Pi 3
   2. Connect the HDMI wire from my Raspberry Pi 3 to my HDMI-VGA converter, connect the VGA wire from the converter to the Monitor.
   3. Connect the speakers to Raspberry Pi 3 through phone jack
   4. Power on my Monitor
   5. Plug in my Afterglow wired controller into one of the 4 USB ports on my Raspberry Pi 3
   6. Plug in the power supply of my Raspberry Pi 3
   7. The system will expand the filesystem and reboot after about 30 seconds. It happens only on the first boot. The rest of the boots should be very fast.
4. Turned on the SSH and SMB at the Services
5. Config the WiFi to connect the network
6. Copy some ROM files from desktop to Lakka system. It is visible in Windows neighbor
7. Fix the problem, no sound
   1. SSH to the R Pi 3, username and password are root.
   2. mount -o remount,rw /flash
   3. nano /flash/config.txt
   4.  Add  hdmi_ignore_edid_audio=1
   5. Save and exit
   6. mount -o remount,ro /flash
   7. Reboot
8. Add correct timezone
   1. nano /storage/.cache/timezone
   2. Add TIMEZONE=America/Vancouver
   3. Save and exit
   4. reboot

Here is a video clip.

 

Some game screenshot

Reference:

https://wiki.libreelec.tv/index.php?title=Config.txt

http://www.lakka.tv/doc/Raspberry-Pi/