Overview

All of the arcade1up machines come with an on/off switch and a volume switch. I wanted to use these switches for what they were designed for but still be able to play games from a pi3. The solution was to hook the switches up to the GPIO pins on the pi3 and use a python script to turn the machine on/off and the volumne up/down.

In order to turn the machine on and off I used a wifi plug with support for IFTTT. I plugged in the monitor and amp into the plug. The pi I plugged in separately so it would remain on.

Prerequisites

• Raspberry pi3
• RetroPie
• Amp for volume
• Wifi plug that supports IFTTT Some way to connect the GPIO pins to the switches
• GPIO pin connectors
• LED strip light cable
• Knowledge of hooking things up to GPIO pins and using python

Connecting it up

I used the last 4 pins on the right side of the GPIO: Ground, 16, 20 and 21.

• Ground goes to the black wire on the power switch
• Ground goes to the middle wire on the volume switch (I used the same ground pin for both)
• 16 goes to the red wire on the power switch
• 20 goes to the left (volume lowest) pin of the volume switch
• 21 goes to the right (volume highest) pin of the volume switch

Audio prerequisites

In order to adjust the volume you need to install alsaaudio

sudo apt-get install python-alsaaudio

The scripts

There are three scripts provided:

1. on-off.py - This will turn your python on and off
2. volume.py - This will turn your volume up and down
3. on-off-and-volume.py - A combination of both