The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book - Projects_Book_v4

Review

(^196) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
Pocket-
sized fun is
the name of
this game –
our most fun
Bonnet ever!
Adafruit
Maker
Says
JOY BONNET
ver since its arrival,
the tiny Pi Zero has
been used for mini
retro gaming projects, usually
involving inserting one inside
an old joypad. Adafruit’s Joy
Bonnet offers a much simpler,
quicker route to pocket-sized
retro gaming, however. Coming
fully assembled, it simply stacks
on top of your Raspberry Pi Zero.
Naturally, you’ll need to solder
(or hammer) a GPIO header to
the latter first. A couple of plastic
spacers and screws keep the
Bonnet firmly in place – which
is pretty essential as you’ll be
pressing its buttons continuously
and therefore pushing it down
on the Pi. While it’s comfortable
enough to hold in your hand, you
may want to add the bottom of
a Pi Zero case for extra comfort

• although we had problems
  keeping the mini-HDMI display

adapter fully inserted through

the hole in an official case.

You’re then ready to install

a retro gaming OS. Adafruit

recommends using RetroPie

(retropie.org.uk) or Emulation

Station (emulationstation.org)

• just flash your microSD card as
  usual. With wireless set up, you
  can then SSH in and use a single
  command to install the Joy Bonnet
  Python library and software. It
  takes a little while and offers
  options to disable overscan (to
  remove the black border on some
  monitors) and install a gpio-halt
  utility for safe shutdown.
  Upon rebooting, the OS (we
  used RetroPie) should sense the
  Joy Bonnet. We were somewhat
  surprised to see it recognised as
  a keyboard: it turns out that the
  Bonnet’s buttons emulate keys
  such as Z, X, and ENTER. Another
  interesting point to note is that the

mini joystick is actually analogue,

although its directions produce

cursor key presses – more on this

later. Once you have assigned

the various buttons and joystick

directions to functions in RetroPie,

you’re ready to play – naturally,

you’ll need to have added a few

game ROMs in the relevant system

folders in RetroPie to make them

appear in the on-screen menus.

Tiny buttons

We started off with a quick

game of Galaga ’88 running on

the MAME arcade emulator.

Everything worked fine and

the controls were responsive

enough. Upon switching to Street

Fighter II on SNES, however, we

encountered a slight drawback. In

place of L and R shoulder buttons,

the Joy Bonnet has a couple of

tiny buttons labelled 1 and 2,

located in the middle of the top

Mount a joypad on your Pi Zero to get retro gaming

E

PICADE

CONSOLE

The control unit

from the Picade

arcade cabinet,

it can be fitted

with a Pi 3 / 3B+,

plugs into a TV,

and features a

robust full-size

arcade joystick

and buttons.

magpi.cc/2pwjhhS

Related

£75 / $83

JOY BONNET