Kodi on raspbian running external programs

Question

I have installed Kodi on my Raspberry pi 2 with raspbian jessie. Media center works great it is just missing something, and that is games. I also installed RetroArch with some libraries, and I can run games running a bash script. What I would like to have is to run those commands directly from Kodi. For that I tried Advanced Launcher and ROM collection browser, but when script is run it runs the emulator, and I can hear the sound of the game, but the kodi does not go into the background. Can someone help how can I send Kody to background or kill the process so I can rung games, and then start kodi after exiting the game?

Answer 1

I found a way to do it.

I am using RaspBian and I do install retroPie on it to get retroarch running

I also have Advanced Launcher installed on Kodi

Follow the steps:

1 - Install retroPie on raspbian(or use retroPie distro)

2 - Install this packages with apt-get

sudo apt-get install at
sudo apt-get install kodi-eventclients-xbmc-send

3 - Edit the main.py from advanced launcher /home/pi/.kodi/addons/plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/resources/main.py

add this:

arguments = arguments.replace('%categoryID%',    categoryID).replace('%CATEGORYID%',  categoryID)
arguments = arguments.replace('%launcherID%',    launcherID).replace('%lAUNCHERID%',  launcherID)
arguments = arguments.replace('%romID%',    romID).replace('%ROMID%',  romID)

after this:

arguments = arguments.replace('%romtitle%',    rom['m_name']).replace('%ROMTITLE%',  rom['m_name'])

4 - create this script on some directory ex:

/home/pi/adv_bian.sh

adv_bian.sh content:

#/bin/sh

log_file=/home/pi/advanced_launcher_script.log

rom=$2
emulator=$1
categoryID=$3
launcherID=$4
romID=$5


retro=/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch
basecore=/opt/retropie/libretrocores/
baseconfig=/opt/retropie/configs/


# you need at command
# check for at command
if ! [ -x "$(command -v at)" ]; then
  echo 'Please install "at" with "sudo apt-get install at"' >> $log_file
  exit 1;
fi


# you need kodi-send installed
if ! [ -x "$(command -v kodi-send)" ]; then
  echo 'Please install "kodi-send" with "sudo apt-get install kodi-eventclients-xbmc-send"' >> $log_file
  exit 1;
fi


# configure each core here
if [ "$emulator" = "megadrive" ];
then
    core_emu=lr-picodrive/picodrive_libretro.so
elif [ "$emulator" = "snes" ];
then
    core_emu=lr-snes9x-next/snes9x2010_libretro.so
fi


retroconfig=$baseconfig$emulator/retroarch.cfg
core=$basecore$core_emu

# any unique name ( file must not exist )
helper_script=/home/pi/retro

if [ -f "$retroconfig" ] || [ -f "$core" ] ; then

    # send command to quit Kodi
    kodi-send --host=127.0.0.1 --port=9777 --action="Quit()"

cat <<EOT > $helper_script.run
    while pgrep "kodi" > /dev/null
    do
      echo "kodi is still running " >> $log_file
      sleep 2
    done
    sleep 1
    echo I will run retroarch now >>  $log_file
EOT

    echo $retro -L $core --config $retroconfig \"$rom\" --appendconfig /dev/shm/retroarch.cfg \&  >> $helper_script.run
    echo "$helper_script.running $categoryID $launcherID $romID | at now" >> $helper_script.run


cat <<EOT > $helper_script.running

echo cat $categoryID, launcher $launcherID, rom $romID >> $log_file

while pgrep "retroarch" > /dev/null
do
  echo "retroarch is running "  >> $log_file
  sleep 2
done

at -f /usr/bin/kodi now
sleep 5

kodi-send --host=127.0.0.1 --port=9777 --action="ActivateWindow(1,plugin://plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/?catID=$categoryID&com=SHOW_ROMS&launID=$launcherID)"

EOT

    chmod +x $helper_script.run
    chmod +x $helper_script.running 
    at -f $helper_script.run now

else
    echo $retroconfig or $core not found >> $log_file
fi

Note In this script I just configure megadrive and snes, you need to add the configuration for the other cores.

5 - Now on Advanced Launcher's categories.xml file

5.1 configure the application tag like that:

<application>/home/pi/adv_bian.sh</application>

5.2 configure args tag like that:

<args>megadrive &quot;%rom%&quot; %categoryID% %launcherID% %romID% </args>

And you are done!

When You launch a rom it will Close Kodi and launch the rom

and when you close the rom, it will reopen Kodi in the same Category ex(mega drive) you leave it.

ps: english is not my primary language so if you find some english error on this guide, let me know. Thanks