Groovy MiSTer

[sacred ermine]

To clear up any confusion I may have created, my router is in the livingroom, my mister + crt + pc are in my game room. I can’t run chords from my living room to my game room, but I can run a chord between my mister and pc.

[warm vault]

oh then do that

you can hard code the mister IP

that's what I am planning on setting up

[empty fulcrum]

Yes, running a LAN cable from PC direct to MiSTer works fine.

[shell prawn]

It's the recommended setup to avoid other variables.

[winged needle]

Has anyone tried a guncon2 with this setup? I'm gonna give it a whirl later but wondered if it's already trodden ground. I would imagine it should work? So long as mister presents it as a mouse?

[tulip sentinel]

Won't work

for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is that MAME does not write to the screen the same way as MiSTer or an original machine

I found the guncon2 wonky anyway, with Saturn and even on PSX cores It has a tendency to loose accuracy after a few minutes of play

[winged needle]

Well MAME sees MiSTer controllers as a keyboard anyway so yeah not happening.

[tulip sentinel]

that is not the issue. (and also not true, you can play lightgun games with a mouse connected to your MiSTer for instance)

[winged needle]

The guncon shows up as a keyboard. I tried it last night.

My arcade stick does too

[tulip sentinel]

you need to configure groovymame too

in mame.ini in your groovymame directory:

and:

[winged needle]

Not tried a mouse but if that's the case then I guess some other lightgun may work. I used a guncon years ago when I was testing with a guy working on linux drivers. It did work but sporadically. The lag was too much for it to keep track of the screen (flashes were too late drawing). Figured the lower latency on groovymister might have helped

[tulip sentinel]

the lightgun won't work because mame does not build up the scanlines exactly the way the original machine does. (basically mame writes frame per frame to a display device)

and here is an article on how lightguns work:

https://janderogee.com/projects/lightgun/lightguns_info.htm

the guncon is not a positional device, it is a sensor

(the dpad on the guncon will be recognised as a joystick)

[winged needle]

Yeah I know how lightguns work, but mister isn't doing anything differently to how mame uses lightguns. Guncon on mister isn't doing what the original lightgun did for say NES. It's an abstraction layer like any other usb device which is whybif properly exposed I don't see whg mame would be any different. We will see anyway

[jolly flare]

is it possible to stream SD video files to groovy mister? If so, is there a specific format requirement? I have a bunch of DVD rips in MKV MPEG2 that i'd love to see on my CRT.

[supple herald]

https://github.com/iequalshane/MiSTerCast

MisterCast can stream any window in windows

There’s no way to stream video files directly to my knowledge but I haven’t used it in a while

Oh wait

There’s also that plex specific thing I’ve never tried

https://github.com/mrchrisster/mister_plex/

Hmm sounds a bit kludgey for crt though

[empty fulcrum]

The person trying to play decades old media on more decades old monitors is worried about kludge

[supple herald]

Haha well I’ve already been down this road and decided the only good way to is to hook up a dvd player

Everything else is kludge

His MKV file is almost definitely deinterlaced and thus you’ve already fallen at the starting line of kludge 😉

[empty fulcrum]

Everything beyond 'netflix' is a kludge. You're gonna bash together stuff that is no longer easy (which is absolutely something I applaud, and for better or worse the way I live my whole stupid life) just because reasons and welcome to kludge city, population <gestures widely> us

[runic jolt]

I kludge therefor I am

[empty fulcrum]

man I spent hours today just wiring up three more buttons on my Astro City using the correct connectors hooked up to a Capcom kick harness plugged into my Irken JAMMA board for the MiSTer just to play two stupid rounds of Vampire Savior. Kludge is my middle name.

[supple herald]

Love amp up connectors

[shell prawn]

I was planning to add a video play mode before I saw the Plex plugin, which is probably infinitely better than whatever I was going to add to MiSTerCast.

[runic jolt]

Gonna real talk here. I think that kind of shit is brilliant in its own way. It’s just simple ingenuity solving problems with the tools available.

[supple herald]

Your thing would be better, I didn’t need extra settings in my ini like that reddit dude has for plex for groovy core

[shell prawn]

I have 2 fighting boards in mine that connect to the mistercade through USB. Quite kludgy heh

[empty fulcrum]

That's my next project. GP2040 is en route.

[shell prawn]

The issue is you can't easily swap in other arcade boards without rewiring the controls.

[empty fulcrum]

Funny, some days it feels like 53 years of wasting time on useless shit. ^__^;

[shell prawn]

Unless you also have a USB to JAMMA thing

[empty fulcrum]

Oh, well I wired my cabinet up to be very modular. I can plug a PS2 or Gamecube in there, a real JAMMA board, the Naomi via JVS, MiSTer, whatever.

[shell prawn]

Nice!

[runic jolt]

If it makes you happy then it’s all worth it. And loads of people think it’s cool, especially here. Keep on being a badass, friend.

[shell prawn]

Life is meaningless, do with it as you want.

[empty fulcrum]

It's getting cable-y in there

[shell prawn]

Still looks pretty clean honestly

[runic jolt]

Yeah, the cable wrapping is nice

[empty fulcrum]

It's hard to make a system that can stay clean when everything I do begs for snips, wire strippers, crimpers and a new solution.

Pretty happy with the labels I made though. It's making it a lot easier to identify the damn things when you forgot what brilliant idea you half baked six months ago. 🙂

[shell prawn]

Hah, that's a good call

[empty fulcrum]

Time for sleep, and more pointless hackery tomorrow. gnite! o/

[supple herald]

I like your cable label things

[grizzled atlas]

Can Groovy convert signals?

Like could I do HDMI→Component?

[shell prawn]

Like could it act as an HDMI downscaler? There's no HDMI input on MiSTer.

[grizzled atlas]

Oh damn. What about if I have a capture card? Then again, that'd probably add latency

[shell prawn]

What are you trying to do exactly?

The core lets you send video from an emulator or other app on your PC to the MiSTer

[grizzled atlas]

Oh I was just curious, because I have some older CRTs that don't have modern input

[shell prawn]

You can go from your PC -> MiSTer -> CRT but you connect your PC to the MiSTer through a network cable.

[jolly flare]

well i've set up groovy cast. pretty impressive. Is there a way to cast direct from a video player instead of just exposing an area of the PC deskop? I want to ensure that the video frame and interlacing is true 1:1 from the video source and not just eyeballing it from their cropped center area

[random ember]

I don't know what's available in groovycast nowadays but back when it was young, I bought an hdmi dongle and plugged it in to create a "virtual" screen and just cast that entire screen to groovymister. Then the CRT became basically a second monitor. Can't remember how i set it all up and it might not be necessary nowadays. But it felt clever.

[jolly flare]

ahh that would work i bet, although I can't do dual monitors with my setup. I'm running Windows through VMware Fusion on a Mac (wishing there was a direct Mac solution), so it's quite easy to just make a custom resolution in the VM though, which i've set now to 720x480, and send the full screen to the mister!

VMware running Windows 11 set to 720x480, VLC running full screen on Windows (with deinterlacing turned off), Mac desktop behind

hell yeah!

there's a glitch maybe every 10 seconds or so where the bottom half of the screen freaks out for a frame or two and then returns to normal. Maybe this is related to my convoluted emulation setup though haha

[random ember]

I hate to admit... But for this I ended up just hooking up a PS3 and streaming local videos over DLNA.

[nova talon]

I think somebody made a modified core with direct support for VLC on the groovy discord

[jolly flare]

nice, i'll try to seek that out

[random ember]

https://tenor.com/view/army-of-darkness-evil-dead-ash-groovy-gif-25791428

When Groovy was first announced I thought it was the dumbest most impractical thing in the world that could never work and then the dev proved me wrong and I am thrilled to have egg on my face.

[jolly flare]

i'll have to try that. i have an old PS3 collecting dust. I didn't realize it could do non HD resolutions

[random ember]

Yep. The same AV adapters from PS1 work all the way up to PS3 (mine's actually on RF right now)

I use PS3 Media Server to stream the videos because stuff like Jellyfin and Plex have trouble sending it streams it can comprehend.

It feels funny plugging an RF adapter into a system that has an HDMI port built in but it works.

[jolly flare]

haven't tried the PS3 yet but a drawback for me might be that it can't play MKV files hmm

[random ember]

PS3 Media Player should transcode them. It plays mine (mostly)

[jolly flare]

yes it works great! Played everything i've thrown at it so far. even PAL SD MKV files seem to play fine, if i set the media server to deinterlace first. thanks for the recommendation.

[random ember]

I already have a jellyfin server, and was able to point PS3 media player at the same folders and it works fine.

Glad it worked!

[charred shell]

fwiw you can do virtual monitors entirely in software these days. no dongles needed

the original xbox is also decent as an sdtv media player aslong as you dont want to watch HD content

[empty fulcrum]

Thanks! I'm pretty pleased with myself for making something so immediately useful.

I've started making micro tags as well to identify individual wires.

[timid locust]

damn i need to bite the bullet and get a 3d printer so bad.
I've been doing this with bluetape for years and its a giant hassle

[runic jolt]

Please do not bite the bullet, you are appreciated and loved!!!!!

[random ember]

Everyone I talked to says bamboo lab A1 mini

Bambu or something?

[empty fulcrum]

I have the Bambu A1, and yeah it's great. I want to make larger things than the mini allows - but so far I haven't made anything that big! =/

[brittle tide]

Bought my first 3d printer just before Xmas, Bambu H2C, it's been running nearly non-stop since. Great machines.

[empty fulcrum]

I wish they'd come up with a material that isn't plastic. Every time I use it I get a bit itchy.

^ thinking about the plastic use, to be clear, not actually physically itchy.

[random ember]

meat?

[empty fulcrum]

Ethically Sourced 3D Meat Printer™

[marsh pumice]

Thanks to everyone involved in this project, im having a blast playing some tate shooters not on MISTer yet !!

[alpine light]

I tried Groovy mister but getting server timeout issue

2 ethernet wires passing from router, 1 on pc and one on mister

[marsh pumice]

Have you reserved a IP for each in the network settings ?

[alpine light]

How to do that?

Reserving IP?

[supple herald]

Watch the video in the pins, I think I that covers it if I remember right

[empty fulcrum]

You shouldn't need to do much special work. A fixed IP will only really help with initial connections, it shouldn't affect drop-outs or time outs after you start playing.

So if your system is dropping out after you get started, I'd look for other solutions first. But a fixed IP won't make it worse, in any case.

[ocean wren]

Hi, is there a version of RetroArch for Linux that works with Groovy Mister?

[woeful notch]

Yes, but you'll need to compile it yourself

https://github.com/antonioginer/RetroArch on the mister branch

[fast merlin]

@timber hound it's in here!

[timber hound]

I’ve finally been able to revisit my macOS+Groovy project, making good progress

The app is using my new zig based streaming library to speak to groovy-mister: https://github.com/dylan/groovy-mister-zig

[fast merlin]

My understanding is that, in addition to enabling the development of that mac version of MisterCast, this Zig library should make it much easier to implement GroovyMiSTer support into other software (such as up to date versions of Retroarch/Dolphin/PCSX2), which could give this project a much stronger future after the tragic loss of its primary maintainer

[timber hound]

For some back story, I had the original API libs compiling on mac, but performance was so-so due to the way it was structured. So as a challenge to myself, I wanted to implement it in zig and gain a fair amount safety/portability/performance, and so far it's worked great. Anywhere that you could use a c library, this should work pretty well.

[grizzled atlas]

I'd love to see a video-player that uses Groovy output

[fair onyx]

this is sick! starred your repo

[fast merlin]

i have a little bit of C++ experience so I'm gonna make some time to start playing around with it. Thanks for sharing this with us!!

[lavish galleon]

I just tried mister groovy with RetroArch on Linux last night to be able to do retroachievements on my CRT. What a great project.

The only problem I have is that I need to use the controller on the PC, which is fine as they are practically in the same place. But it would be nice to not have to swap controllers around

[supple herald]

You can have the controller on mister with groovymister

It’s part of psakhis protocol to be able to send inputs back

Think it’s a setting to enable in the menu? Been a while

[lavish galleon]

Yeah I must be missing something. But when I run RetroArch it won't take input at all from the mister

[supple herald]

Oh retroarch

Guess I’ve only used it with mame and MisterCast

Maybe they never updated retroarch before he died

[lavish galleon]

Yeah. RetroArch with the groovy change to it.

It does have settings for it in the RetroArch.conf

But it seems to not be working

[supple herald]

I’d say try asking on the groovy discord nogpu channel if no one with RA integration experience responds here

[lavish galleon]

It seems like other people have the same issues:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MiSTerFPGA/s/RiJdRtDFgQ

[lavish galleon]

I'll try that! Thanks!

[tired portal]

Anyone successfully running MiSTerCast on Linux?
Trying to sort through software I like using before the great OS migration

[supple herald]

MisterCast is a windows app by Shane lynch

Unless someone made a Linux version

Oh via some translation layer like wine

Dunno

It’s pretty tied to like casting window handles or desktop or whatever though so doubt it

Sounds like the zig lib guy above would be the way to make a native client since he made that macOS one

[tired portal]

Thanks. Guess the ideal would be a native version.
Not sure if Linux is in your interest @timber hound ? Not expecting at all, just curious to ask. I naively don't know if that's close to what you've done or about as close as programming again from scratch!

[glass zealot]

You can totally play retroarch via groovy mister with the controller plugged on the MiSTer. I do not have time right now but look in this thread there are tutorials explaining how to do this.

[lavish galleon]

I have been searching and googling. But I can't seem to get it to work. I found the documentation and followed the config changes stated. But it just doesn't take any inputs

[chrome marsh]

i have been trying the fightcade one with groovy mister, but a couple matches in screen starts flickering, if i just leave it on in demo mode it doesnt happen, we have sticks connected to PC, using w11 but no flickering on main pc screen and no flickering on hdmi out on mister only on vga>crt

anyone know any solution to this?

https://github.com/adamaq01/fightcade-fbneo/releases/tag/v0.1.0

[honest finch]

@simple ruin any idea to why this is happening?

[simple ruin]

No sorry I haven't really even used it as I still don't have my Astro City 😭
I know there's some issues but really I didn't touch this for a while so no clue even to how to help you, maybe it's a bug in the code and you can't fix it in a simple manner

Make sure you use the latest version of groovy mister

[shell prawn]

Very cool!

MacOS support was requested many times but I haven't done Apple development for quite a bit.

[chrome marsh]

im using Groovy_20240922 which i think is the latest? feels like its almost the inputs from stick making it act up but idk, will try to connect controllers to mister directly and see if it changes anything

gnarp fgc appreciate this utility alot thanks for the work

[glass zealot]

Try putting the file MiSTer.cfg in the folder autoconfig of Retroarch. I also attach my retroarch config if you want to compare to yours. Finally, make sure that on MiSTer, in the grovy core you do assign buttons to your controller and that you activate MiSter inputs

[lavish galleon]

This is perfect. Thanks!

[glass zealot]

You mean you made it work? If so happy to help 🙂

[lavish galleon]

No. But it makes it easier to troubleshoot when I have a known good configuration to compare

Maybe I should mention that I do run Linux as well. It might actually be the issue. But we'll see

[lethal vector]

I finally set up groovymisterm so much fun watching old media on a CRT

480i streams aren't stable for me yet but i guess that's because i'm using wifi

is it possible to mute audio on the source device without muting it on mister?

windows volume control seems to affect the stream audio

[empty fulcrum]

Hmm, I've just muted windows and it didn't affect the mister, but that's streaming games not videos.

Do kind of enjoy the depth of sound playing games with both audio sources running though. 😊

[tiny bridge]

Hello. Is that a settings problem?

[empty fulcrum]

I can't tell what this is intended to show. Video of a monitor is always ... bad. What's the problem you have?

[tiny bridge]

The colors were pale/washed. I got it fixed though. It was the YPbPr setting.

Thanks though!

Can I get inputs from the Mister? Not to fond of dragging the laptop around close to the cab.

[empty fulcrum]

My JAMMA adaptor uses keyboard inputs by default so setting keyboard input to mister made games work for me. Other people may have insight into using controllers on the mister. It can be done. For sure, that's part of the point of this. 👍

[marsh phoenix]

#1212527493169414266 message

[lethal vector]

Strange, i can't seem to control them separately, so instead of streaming with audio i just connected an external speaker next to the tv to my laptop, i guess this might also save on stream bandwidth. I connected my mister over UTP to my router now which seems to make the stream a little more stable but 480i still crashes out after a while

I suppose also connecting my laptop via UTP might solve this, how stable have you guys been able to get 480i? Is it possible at all to just get it completely stable?

240p seems to work fine for me

[empty fulcrum]

a gigabit LAN is way more than enough bandwidth, but if you're using wifi then yeah you're just asking for instability.

[lethal vector]

yeah, i currently have a shortage of LAN ports on my router, need to buy a little external switch for the non essential stuff

[empty fulcrum]

I wouldn't bother fighting too hard with the wifi if you're going to wire it up anyway, because it's never going to be perfect. The best you'll get is perfect until it fails

[lethal vector]

hm

i've been playing with the idea of setting up a home server that handles all of this kind of stuff, because i'd prefer to not have to move my laptop to the router every time, maybe repurpose an old PC just for storage of video files and also install mistercast on it so that i can open it via remote desktop, although i guess without a display to pull from it wouldn't have a stream source

(if i don't use a monitor on the server i mean, just remote control)

[empty fulcrum]

I guess I don't use it for as many things. I run groovyMAME on it, and I plan to run a few other emus that directly support Groovy, like Dolphin. GMAME runs fine without a display, I assume Dolphin does too...

(I should say it runs fine without displaying anything, I dunno if it actually runs without a monitor attached. I stream this stuff from my main PC via LAN, I don't use a dedicated machine for this purpose)

[lethal vector]

yeah in my case i also stream a fair amount of other things in currently awkward setups, like my wife streams japanese kids' shows for our daughter via a vpn to an nvidia shield from an old laptop, it'd be nice if she doesn't have to do that and can just remote into a server and tell it to stream something, and then also use that to stream to mister, i watch a fair amount of old 4:3 stuff in my free time, i'm still thinking about a good solution in general for my home server needs though

[empty fulcrum]

Yeah you might be over complicating things (but I think you're in good company here, haha)

[lethal vector]

well currently everything is complicated in my house and this would simplify it in a way, although doing everything from a single machine may take a lot of setup, i got a dns sinkhole that i'd want to run from it, plex server, and steam streaming (because that's the only way i've found to be able to stream the japanese stuff without DRM), this is why i don't have any free LAN ports now, just too many little machines everywhere doing their own thing

[empty fulcrum]

I've got VLC running on a NUC in the living room, and it plays vids off a shared drive from my PC or the server in the basement. The server is the backup / shared storage for all the other systems, so there's only one storage machine and everything else pulls from it. Pretty simple and does everything I need it to.

[lethal vector]

deep rock galactic on crt

[lethal vector]

using the core for its intended purpose

[rose siren]

https://youtube.com/shorts/NKwT9R_X40M

This is using groovy mister, but pico8 is running on the mister itself. Groovy mister is just being a bridge

[lavish galleon]

Anyone knows why the game is so small on groovy retroarch on my PC?

[shell prawn]

I did a non-pixel perfect scaling to get it to display a bit larger

[rose siren]

Is that streaming from pc then?

[shell prawn]

Yeah, so less ideal.

[rose siren]

I plan to add scaling options to the shim

[shell prawn]

I'm definitely excited to try it out when it's ready.

[chrome marsh]

have been trying to map controller so mister send inputs some of the binds work like joystick movement and i been able to map lp but no other buttons is mappable i get stuck in this screen with fightcade waiting to release button so it never get saves anyone know any solution to this? with the the ones i been able to assign i press the button it get saved then leave mapping screen to press it ingame and then do next button and it worked for joystick and one button but no more...

nvm i solved it with rage.... if i mash button enough times it get saved for some reason

one controller done 😄

[robust kindle]

How well does fightcade work? I have been meaning to give it a go

[chrome marsh]

if we connect joystick to pc and send inputs to mister, crt screen starts flickering? now i have connect sticks to mister we have a meetup today so can update afterwards, otherwise it feels great

when i tested by myself it has small flickering when match ends which is fine i guess

on third strike

[chrome marsh]

No flickering yet so sticks to mister seem to solve that problem

[vale verge]

Any hope for MiSTerCast running on linux? not getting very far running the windows version :p

[supple herald]

Someone made a Mac version I think? If you could find the code for that maybe you could make a Linux client

[vale verge]

interesting, it's called Mistglow and I extracted the .app which my distro seems to detect as a Java exectuable

That's as far as I got cus it seems to be compiled to only run on macos 😅

here's hoping someone gets around to it 🙏

[supple herald]

You can be the someone! 🤘

[tired portal]

It will be lovely if someone works out a Linux version!
Need the skills to do it, currently trying to learn SMS programming myself, but will hope 🙏

[shell prawn]

What graphics card do you have?

I think there's been some issues with hybrid GPUs (where you have an Intel integrated GPU) and an Nvidia GPU when using that API

[void chasm]

Does mistercast work on a Nvidia system?

I don't have groovymame but for a lark I tried mistercast and I got a connection but the video was outputting absolute trash. I don't know if that's a Nvidia issue or something im missing

I don't really wanna mess with getting groovymame set up I just wanna do video from my PC to mister on my crt TV via ypbpr

Curious if thats possible

[vale verge]

Intel iGPU (Iris), no dedicated graphics. I gathered that the Dxgi function just isn't supported in wine but I can't tell for sure 🤔

[shell prawn]

Oh, yeah probably not

[shell prawn]

Works fine with Nvidia

You need to use a wired Ethernet connection with either a fast switch or a direct connection to the MiSTer

[void chasm]

okay, not sure why i was getting a garbled video

im wired gigabit ethernet throughout the house, to all my important devices

one thing im unsure about is the mistercast documentation says you need groovymister set up and working before you can use mistercast

which i did not do at all. i was honestly hoping to skip that step and not have to fight through setting up groovymister first and skip straight to mistercast on its own

i was hopeful to have any video reproduced on my crt at all tbh

but it just wasnt clear

[void chasm]

i thought maybe it was because i have 2x displays

so i set to single display only

turned off hdr

set my screen to 60hz

possibly related to using direct video for hdmi-vga adapters on this particular mister setup

wasnt direct video mode messing me up

tried on my other mister

[void chasm]

https://youtu.be/Jb2R9SetBa0

[shell prawn]

Can you do a direct wired connection to the MiSTer to rule out the network? The network requirements are surprisingly high with how small the window is to transfer data on Groovy_MiSTer?

[empty fulcrum]

You pretty much have to run wired LAN with GroovyMiSTer. It isn't a robust protocol, any dropouts (and it pushes wifi to the limit, making dropouts likely) and it'll just die.

[void chasm]

I'll certainly give it a try

[shell prawn]

I'd love to add a mode that would allow a single frame delay with packet resend for WiFi support

Which would be nice when you just want to steam video or play a game where a frame doesn't matter as much

[grizzled atlas]

That'd be great. Especially if there's some kinda Groovy-MPV

[vale verge]

so I've actually gotten somewhere with a linux port! hit a bit of a brick wall though 😅

I can get a session to start with GroovyMister but capturing the display with ffmpeg on Wayland is giving a lot of difficulty

either permission issues or it doesn't like how Wayland handles colour depth

my biggest lead is that Sunshine (game streaming app) is able to do something with KMS capture that I can't replicate

I think the job's nearly done if anyone wants to help pick up the torch

[vale verge]

👀

[torpid spruce]

I set this and rebooted my PC and now it's all smooth, no overclocking either, thanks!

[vale verge]

linux version is getting closer, not without some teething issues 🫠

[tiny bridge]

thats the fix for mapping

[winged needle]

I'd deploy a dedicated system for this if it can run on linux

[vale verge]

240p is locked in perfectly now, 480i needs more work

[shrewd bane]

I figured out how to fix this the other day. it's in the screenshot djfrijoles shared yesteday.

[shrewd bane]

currently, I wouldn't recommend playing ranked using it. it always has score mismatch and reports scores as zero. seems fine otherwise

[chrome marsh]

yes djfrijoles pm:ed me aswell ty good job

[winged needle]

Wish there was a way to play Time Crisis on MAME or even PCSX2 with a guncon2

[shrewd bane]

Has anyone ever dialed in fightcade over mistercast? It looks chunky when I try it?

Unfortunately groovy fightcade breaks things for fightcade (can't play ranked because it doesn't record score)

[alpine light]

anyone tried dreamcast games? using groovy mister?

[empty fulcrum]

I haven't had any luck getting any interlaced videos to work on my setup.

Have only tried MAME but nothing interlaced works, it's like the fields are reversed.

[vale verge]

more testing

[steel sedge]

Great job, looking forward to it as a full-time Linux user

[wary estuary]

I really wanted this to exist and I happened into a Claude sub for a work project, so I spent some time putting together a relay that acts as a source for Groovy_MiSTer to receive video from other sources. Heavily based off of projects like MiSTerCast, ffmpeg acts as the conversion bridge to take Plex video or the URL of a video file (Archive.org, etc) and pass it as 480i/240p to the MiSTer. I wanted something I could just leave running on my server headless instead of casting a screen or window. It's still heavily work in progress but I'm sitting here watching TV just fine. Check it out!

https://github.com/idio-sync/MiSTer_GroovyRelay

[vale verge]

Ok my linux port is nearly ready for release. Interlacing isn't quite where I want it cus it can drop fields sometimes

If anyone would like to test early lemme know :) just to get a good sample on a couple of different setups

[steel sedge]

Willing to try it on my Fedora system

[fair onyx]

i run endeavouros on my gaming rig and would love to test!

[worn canopy]

Willing to try too

[runic jolt]

I use arch btw

[wary estuary]

I added initial support for Jellyfin as a cast source 🎉

[charred shell]

jellyfin support is very interesting to me!

[brazen cloak]

this looks insanely amazing and is just what i was looking for here

[wary estuary]

It's still a bit buggy, right now you can start a JF cast and it will play but seeking doesn't really work and the controls don't always respond, nor does the stream display in the dashboard. I need to flesh out the cast target capabilities and identification so JF knows more about the target, but once I do that it should be at the same level as Plex.

I'm also still toying with the stream to groovymister. I've had it playing for a few hours every night over the last week or so and there are still occasional slowdowns and (rarely) some frame corruption on the bottom inch of my screen. That being said, I knocked out a whole season of Seinfeld and a bunch of episodes of prime season Simpsons so far and am really enjoying it.

[pine matrix]

would really love a good CRT streaming solution, my current setup is a PS3 via component with Plex as a DLNA server, it mostly works with the right encoding setup, but sometimes stuff just refuses to play

[wary estuary]

Def give this a shot, I spent a bunch of time last night making sure Plex/Jellyfin streams looked good and were able to be cast reliably

[vale verge]

yeah groovy relay looks like a really good approach, the setup I have to use is dlna on an og xbox

[wary estuary]

I did the same, alternating between that and a raspberry pi with a vga666 adaper. Both Have their issues but work okay, I hated having to grab a controller and the xbox is just kinda cumbersome. The Pi would flake out on me every one and a while, I used Kodi with a plex plugin to cast but it rarely "just worked" and my library is a lot for kodi on a pi to handle all by itself.

[grizzled atlas]

What sort of resolutions can you expect?

[wary estuary]

480i and 240p work, I put in the PAL equivalents as well but I don't have a PAL crt to test so consider those experimental.

[slate thorn]

Looking for some help. Cant get miracast and groovy to work on mjy superstation one. Not sure what the deal is, getting this specific error:

I have tried transfering the files a number of different ways and have updated the ini file accordingly. When the groovy section is populated in the mister.ini file it locks up the superstation, if I remove it then Groovy.rbf will load and i can access the menus, but can't connect to it.

semi got it working. Casting now but in black and white?

[torpid spruce]

Is your TV PAL or NTSC?

[slate thorn]

Ntsc

[slate thorn]

Cant seem to figure it out. Config works over HDMI in color, hooked up to CRT it is black and white.

Tried multiple config values, all cores are in color outside of groovy

[shell prawn]

Are you using composite video?

Oh, I think the Superstation needed a framework update for video.

[slate thorn]

I tried composite and svideo with superstation, both ini files modified correctly all black and white

What do you mean updates framework? Works fine with all other cores

I think it's the mister main .ini causing it because if I modify to the latest file then the cores are black and white so it might be something specific to how the superstation One works

[shell prawn]

The Superstation was using newer builds for cores to get an updated framework. Yeah, S-video and composite would be impacted. A new Groovy core would need to be built against the new MiSTer framework but also some changes are lost because the code wasn't committed yet that fixes some issues. I'll look into what it will take.

[slate thorn]

Ty I appreciate that, might be a worthwhile endeavor since it seems the product is doing well. Appreciate the help either way, wasted a lot of time yesterday fiddling with it. 🙂

[tiny bridge]

Has work completley stopped on this? Having scores work would make it perfect

[shut oriole]

Id suggest sending feedback to the dev on the groovy discord I mentioned rather than pinging me

[tiny bridge]

thanks

[forest pewter]

I set up Mistercast and it works well. Quick question: I saw it doesn't support jumbo frames. I couldn't get jumbo frames to work on the supported software either but just wondering if this could improve things like slight stutter on fast scenes when watching TV?

[empty fulcrum]

If you're using a gigabit LAN connection you've got a ton of overhead, so no. If you're using WiFi you're at the mercy of a ton of different factors, and in my own testing I was constantly running out of headroom and into troubles. Jumbo frames aren't likely the solution here either, but it doesn't hurt to try.

[shell prawn]

Can you test a direct ethernet connection between your PC and MiSTer and see if the stutter still happens? What audio sampling rate is your PC using? There was an audio sampling bug in the core that we identified and fixed but I only have the core binary with the fix and not the source. It could sometimes cause video stuttering or red frames when in debug mode.

[forest pewter]

I watched ep 1 of Star Trek Voyager and in my unscientific testing I noticed some stutter on the CGI ships flying fast .. but honestly that could have been in the original footage. I'll do some more thorough research. So far no audio stutter at all.

[winged needle]

I have a PAL TV so happy to test that. Was wondering about this, is there no way to parse the videos resolution and refresh? I believe plex can do this

[wary estuary]

Right now I have ffmpeg translate the general 480p source stream from plex into the crt's analog resolution, I need to have explicit PAL resolution targets for plex to keep the whole chain native PAL but I can get on that soon.

Also I have native Win/Mac/Linux builds up now. Still working out some Plex discovery related issues specific to Windows but Jellyfin and the URL casting work on Win as of now. I don't have a Mac to test that platform, though, so it's an experiment until I get user feedback.

The docker deployment on the same host as plex/jellyfin is still preferred due to just having fewer variables.

[winged needle]

Cool, I have a few macs too so can let you know on that too

[forest pewter]

Will test windows build tomorrow

[brazen cloak]

tested the docker from src and it works great ! jellyfin integration is awesome as well as the companion extension to quickly play stuff from browser. (linux)

ill see if i can add a "stop" "seek Xs" button onto the bridge. If it is possible i guess getting the current play-position from jellyfin media is possible to - currently its either play from the beginning or continue from last-played position.

[wary estuary]

I can take a crack at that. Everything is still very WIP. Honestly Plex is my main app so I am spending a bit more time on that side. I can investigate and see of I can bring it up to par with the Plex functionality, you should be able to seek by hitting a location on the progress bar in plex/jellyfin and if you play from a location that the video was stopped at previously it should pick up where you left off.

Also I'm adding direct torrent streaming, as well as DLNA/UPnP and a built in catalog of public streams like Toonami Aftermath and MTV Rewind

[floral moth]

I'm having some difficulty getting GroovyMAME to work properly with my Sega New Net City CRT arcade cabinet.

I have managed to get into the menu in Groovy and that displays reasonably reliably, but I can't get the MiSTer to register any inputs when it's on that screen.

Additionally, when I try using MiSTercast, it just gives up completely and goes into "no signal" mode.

Anyone have experience with trying to run it through this device?

[supple herald]

Groovymister really wants/needs a direct Ethernet connection from the host machine, there are instructions pinned I think. Are you using mistercade or something else for the jamma to usb encoding? Try remapping controls in the core

[wary estuary]

Doing some updates to the groovyrelay web-ui

[rose siren]

looks dope

[brazen cloak]

awesome mate - checking the git repo daily. Work done here is amazing

[rustic glen]

that looks awesome, @wary estuary

[pallid robin]

amazing cant wait to try it out

[pallid robin]

does audio not work over hdmi? was testing it upstairs away from my crt and i get video playback but not audio

[pallid robin]

nevermind i found audio setting that was defaulted off

[wary estuary]

Polishing it up bit by bit, it's fully functional and I added a bunch of visualizers that show on the crt when you run audio from plex/jellyfin. You can test it out in the docker image.

[pallid robin]

@wary estuary could you add a feature. That if groovy isn't running on the mister but a play request was sent you buffer that request, start groovy,then play?