SmartyPi Setup

January 2022 - SEGA Edition, PCB Revision 1.1

SmartyPi Setup – What’s in the box.
When you receive your parcel it will contain the following:

• SmartyPi SE PCB.
• GPIO to SmartyPi adapter.
• 2x PCB Extenders.
• USB Cable (USB-A to USB Micro-B)
• SD Card adapter containing a Micro-SD card which is ready loaded with the latest Raspberry Pi image.
• Heat Sink for attaching to your Raspberry Pi.
• Optionally if you have purchased game adapter PCBs or additional items, these will be included.

Before we begin…

The Only additional component you will require is a Raspberry Pi 4B, SmartyPi has currently been tested with 1, 2 & 4Gb Ram versions.
All SmartyPi SE PCBs are tested in a game cabinet before shipping, I have full confidence that your out of box experience will be straightforward and after following a few simple steps you will be up and running playing games. While SmartyPi is intended as a replacement for the original game PCB, it will not fix a cabinet that has poor controls, or bad colours on the monitor, audio will still be routed through the original cabinet’s audio amplifier circuit. Assuming that’s understood, lets get on with the setup.

Recommended setup procedure
We need to complete assembly of SmartyPi by connecting your Raspberry Pi, adding the SD card, and fixing the Heatsink. Let’s complete this in the following order.

• Gently remove the GPIO to SmartyPi adapter (highlighted in photo at end of document) It will lift upwards if you wiggle it back and forth.
• Remove the 4 nuts that are connected to the threaded hex spaces
• Remove the Micro-SD card from the adapter you received with SmartyPi and push it into the Raspberry Pi Micro-SD slot. If we are looking at the Raspberry Pi from the top side, the green sticker on the SD card will be facing upwards when inserted.
• Place the Raspberry Pi onto the threads from the hex nuts, you may need to loosen the screw from the underside. Once the Pi is sitting correctly, place the nuts onto the threads and finger tighten them (clockwise), take your GPIO adapter and align it to the pins on the Pi and the header on the SmartyPi SE PCB. Press it down until it’s making a snug fit and against the pins of both the Pi and Smarty. If necessary, tighten the nuts on the hex posts. Now we can attach the heatsink.
• The Heatsink is larger than the surface we are connecting it to, in our case the heatsink will sit directly on the CPU but also cover various other components of the Pi. Remove the tape from the underside of the heatsink and place it over the Pi, it is a snug fit against the GPIO connector and other connectors of the Pi. Press down over the centre of the heat sink for 30 seconds making sure it is sitting flat over the CPU.
• Plug the supplied USB cable between the Raspberry Pi and the microcontroller (As shown on the SmartyPi silkscreen labelling. Do not force the cable into the microcontroller port it will only fit one way round and should be gently pushed into the socket.
• Now we will prepare the configuration file which set’s SmartyPi to use your cabinet and games.
• To remove the Micro-SD card, press the metal lid upwards, it will move and then fold upwards releasing the card.
• Take the Micro-SD and via a direct connection or by using the supplies SD card adapter connect it to a computer. In the root of the drive is a file called setup.txt open this in your text editor of choice. There are various parameters that can be adjusted, at the time of release the config file is at revision 1.8 The options that be configured are as follows:

Cab=OR (This option selects the Cabinet SmartyPi will be used in and calibrates controls to suit.)
SwitchGames=TRUE (If you are entitled to play different game ROMs set this to TRUE.)
Outputs=ALL (Decides which output signals are used.)
GameList=ORm (Chooses the game list and order that games will play
CG1=CB (Custom Game 1 – To be used with the Custom GameList=CU parameter.)
CG2=OReh (Custom Game 2 – To be used with the Custom GameList=CU parameter.)
CG3=TOR (Custom Game 3 – To be used with the Custom GameList=CU parameter.)
CG4=PD (Custom Game 4 – To be used with the Custom GameList=CU parameter.)

Read the list of available options for each parameter and alter as necessary. Once happy with the options save the file.

• On the Micro-SD card browse into the ‘SmartyPi Rom Pack’ folder. The ROMs SmartyPi uses can be downloaded from publicly available sources on the internet.
• Double click the file called RUNME, Windows may tell you the file is untrusted, you will have to approve its use for the download to take place. Once running a terminal window will open and you will see the rom files being downloaded. Once complete, the terminal window will say its finished, you can press a key to close. If you now look in the ‘rom’ folder, you will see there are a selection of required ROM files.
• Copy the ‘rom’ folder and put it into the root folder of a USB stick (i.e., G:/roms/) where G is the drive letter of your USB stick. Once copied, eject the USB memory sick and put it into one of the Raspberry Pi spare ports which is shown with silkscreen on the SmartyPi PCB.

We should now mount SmartyPi in the cabinet. Let’s turn the power to your cabinet off. If you do still have an original game PCB, I would suggest it is removed and stored in a safe place so not chance of accidental damage can occur while SmartyPi is being wired in and setup. Using the supplied PCB Extender arms, SmartyPi can be mounted and fixed to the original hole position an original game PCB would occupy.
Before plugging in any of the connectors to SmartyPi, I advise checking your cabinets 5-Volt power supply level. Turn the cabinet on and measure the 5V DC form the white and yellow power connectors of the original game, adjust your supply to be as close to 5 Volts DC as possible, a reading from 5.00 to 5.09 DC is acceptable and suitable for use in SmartyPi. If you do not follow this guidance, and the power supply it is set higher that 5.2 volts, you will likely destroy the Raspberry Pi and other circuits on the PCB, providing more disappointment than when your original PCB breaks! I cannot accept responsibility for damage caused by over voltage. If you do not know how to check and adjust the power supply, please ask and I will guide you through. Once you have checked and set your power supply turn power to the cabinet off.

Plug in the connectors to SmartyPi. Use One of the Power connectors (The second one you have can be left disconnected and loose.) Connect the Video and Audio connector. You may have a four or six pin connector for audio, if it is four pin, follow the placement as shown in the PCB silkscreen (Connect from the left side, leaving two unused pins on the right side as you look at the PCB, with the text in correct reading orientation.) Finally connect the two I/O connectors, the 50 pin and 20 pin black connectors. These are ‘keyed’ and can only be connected in one orientation. Once all connectors are in place, you can power on the cabinet on.

If you don’t have a USB memory stick inserted, or don’t understand what to do, you will see a different image on screen, check the SmartyPi troubleshooting guide to help get back on track.

Once you are happy with the image, press one of the cabs buttons (Start, Coin, or Test are good choices). Once the file copy is complete you will see a new image.

SmartyPi will now restart and should load the first game from the selected game list. The USB stick can now be removed. SmartyPi can be powered off and on from your cabinets power switch or mains power connection and will always load a game at power on. If after what seemed like a successful ROM copy, SmartyPi hangs on a plain SmartyPi boot screen, check the Troubleshooting guide to help you find the issue.

If upon restart SmartyPi loads you’re a game, depending on how you configured the setup.txt fil can use the cabinets Service button to switch games (default link option on PCB) If you have wired and external switch and connected it to the ‘Game Switch’ connector, pressing the button will also rotate through the game list you have set. This concludes the SmartyPi setup guide.

SmartyPi component locations

Further information can be found at smartypi.co.uk or you can contact me via email at smartypi.arcade@gmail.com Other SmartyPi users may be able to help with technical issues, they can be found on the UKvAc forum, or on Facebook in the Out Run Arcade Owners and Enthusiasts, or SmartyPi User’s groups.