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TOS_GRS_Switch README.md

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TOS GRS - Automatic 4/8 way restrictor gate

TL;DR - I just want to set it up!

  1. Copy these files to these locations (creating directories as required). All default root owner / permissions are fine:
/usr/bin/tos_grs/get_tos_tty.sh
/usr/bin/tos_grs/tos_grs_command.py
/userdata/system/scripts/tos_grs_switch.sh
/userdata/system/configs/tos_grs/roms4wayWithPath.txt
  1. Run:
chmod 755 /usr/bin/tos_grs/get_tos_tty.sh
chmod 755 /userdata/system/scripts/tos_grs_switch.sh
  1. Run:
batocera-save-overlay

This saves the new files you've added /usr/bin/tos_grs (so not lost on reboot).

That should be all you need. No additional software (no exes/binaries as previously mentioned). Just shell scripting and a python helper to reliably write to/read from the TOS GRS controller TTY port.

Overview

The 4/8 way restrictor gate allows selection of 4 way (diamond) or 8 way (square) orientation of the restrictor gate on Sanwa joysticks. The replacement gate (with servo motor attached and with custom control board) is available here from https://thunderstickstudio.com.

First link is a full kit to do one joystick: https://thunderstickstudio.com/products/tos-grs-4-to-8-way-restrictor-all-in-one-kit Then purchase one of these kits for each additional joystick: https://thunderstickstudio.com/products/tos-grs-4-to-8-way-restrictor-extension-kit

FYI.... the height of the restrictor gate and servo is about 81mm (from centre top plate where joystick shaft is attached to the tip of the motor servo) if you are needing to plan for controller panel space.

The software that comes with the kit is designed to run on a 32-bit AARM architecture (ie. Pi 3, but not Pi 5 which is 64-bit only) or Windows. The scripts below should work on any Linux Batocera distribution (x64/86 etc...) as they only require bourne shell and python 3 (both already included in Batocera), so no additional packages / compile etc... are required.

The tos_grs_switch.sh script does 2 things:

  1. When a game is launched by Batocera, it checks whether the game - "emulator/rom" is in the roms4wayWithPath.txt file, and if so - tells all TOS GRS joysticks to switch to 4 way orientation (and if not found, 8 way orientation)
  2. When a game stops, the script queries the current TOS GRS joystick orientation and if different, updates the roms4wayWithPath.txt - either adding an entry if the orientation is 4 way, or removing if 8 way. Basically a way you can "teach" the config without resorting to manually adding games as 4 way games to the config file (do it by playing and setting - what works best). The current set pretty much covers the MAME repo, but you can use this to learn other ROMS from other emulators, or MAME games not in the list etc.

Files and commands (should you want to roll your own scripts etc...)

One way to dynamically find the tty device the TOS GRS controller:
grep -l -m1 PRODUCT=2341/8036/100 /sys/class/tty/tty*/device/uevent | cut -f 5 -d"/"

This will return your device name, eg:
ttyACM0

I've put the above in the script get_tos_tty.sh which will return a fully qualified /dev/ttyXXX so you can then send commands.

Although you can read/write to the TOS GRS tty device directly with echo / read commands, I found this inconsistent as there would be read failures on the result of setting or getting current controller orientation. I therefore ditched the shell approach and used python pySerial library which is reliable. I still set a timeout on read/write to prevent any hangs (which would cause Batocera to appear frozen as it would wait for all scripts to execute).

The python code is in tos_grs_command.py.

Automatic switching of TOS GRS restrictor gate between 4 and 8 way

Assuming you have installed the get_tos_tty.sh and tos_grs_command.py scripts, you can use the tos_grs_switch.sh script to automatically load 4 or 8 way mode per ROM / game.

The above switch script will also store the selected setting when you exit a game, so it can be "remembered" on next play. This assumes you've wired your TOS GRS button up and can switch modes during play. Close the emulator and the current setting for that ROM will be stored. Don't forget to chmod 755 so it is executable.

Also download the file that contains the ROMS that should be 4 way (otherwise 8 way is the default) here roms4wayWithPath.txt

When you are playing a game, if you want to change the orientation, use the supplied button to toggle, then on game exit, the tos_grs_switch.sh script will run and update/store the preference for that game so it will be recalled next play.

The only configuration parameters for tos_grs_switch.sh are path related to files:

roms4wayFile=/userdata/system/configs/tos_grs/roms4wayWithPath.txt
exePath=/usr/bin/tos_grs

Change the above if you place file containing roms that should be in 4-way position in a different location.

Batocera runs all scripts in the /userdata/system/scripts folder on both game startup and shutdown, passing the name of the ROM and whether a game start or stop event has occurred. The roms4WayWithPath.txt is exactly the same list of pre-configured 4 way MAME ROM list from the Thunderstick site, but qualified with a mame/ ROM directory. This allows the same ROM across 2 emulator cores to have a different orientation.