Jukebox or Rockola System on Emuelec

General
1

Hello! I’m completely new.
I have Emuelec with Emulation Station running ok.
There are a lot of emulators. Pretty cool!
I would like to add any core which I could play mp3 and mp4 files, like a Jukebox or Rockola system.
I know that Retroarch can play mp3 and mp4 files natively, but I would like to have that organized by artists like what we see in Jukebox and Rockola systems.
I’ve searched a lot, but I could not find a system like this, able to run like a core for Emuelec.
Does anyone have any suggestion?
Thanks!

2

If you want to play mp4-files, you can store them under roms/mplayer.
Then you can edit your gamelist.xml-file as you want…
For example, I have the cover art, a synopsis and a short movie trailer for each movie in the directory. Unfortunately you can’t scrape them like games, so you have to manually edit the gamelist, but only if you want it to look nice… you can use imdb.org or https://thetvdb.com/ for all the infos, images and trailers…

Unfortunately, mp3-files are not recognized by mplayer… at least on my system… kind of strange, as mplayer should be able to also play audio files…

You can definitively start them manually in retroarch (the core is ffmpeg). But as far as I know, there’s no real “Jukebox”-system for EmuElec or Emulationstation. Would be great…

But you could use HybridElec to have the possibility to have both CoreElec (including Kodi) and EmuElec. (GitHub - 7Ji/HybridELEC: Side-by-side dual-bootable CoreELEC + EmuELEC, and on-eMMC triple boot with Android)

With Kodi, there are a lot of addons for playing media…

Or another wild idea: perhaps you can find a media-player for dos, run it with Emulationstation and use it to play your mp3s…?

3

Thank you, worstcase, for your reply!

I’ve tested the HybridElec and I could run it great.
I can switch between the systems normaly.

Now, what I want to do is to find a good add-on for CoreElec in order to use it as a Jukebox/Rockola system. I would appreciate if you could give me some tips regarding it.

I was watching a video about an add-on called Embuary, but I don’t know if it’s a good choice for my purposes.

Also, I was wondering:

  • If Emuelec is created based on CoreElec, why can’t I just add the same Add-on I would add to CoreElec into EmuElec?

Again, thanks!

4

Those addons are for Kodi, but EmuELEC, being an emulation and retro OS, does not have Kodi at all. You could think EmuELEC as CoreELEC - Kodi + emulators + EmulationStation.

5

Yeah, that’s too bad!
It would be amazing if Emuelec could have a Jukebox core.
I have created a arcade with games and also a Jukebox/Rockola system. I made use of Windows XP, Maximus Arcade and PsRockola. It is cool, but system is heavy and sometimes it crashes.
I would like to have the same running on a TV box and a SD card, like Emuelec does. It runs softly, without crashes and it demands less hardware. Just a TV box.
My current system needs a motherboard + power supply + HDD + video card.

I hope someone can create a Emuelec Jukebox core someday!

6

It’s up to you and your personal taste which skin you want to use in kodi.

Take a look at these, for example: 15 Best Kodi Skins in 2022 (Must Try) - TechNadu

If you want to play music within Emuelec/Emulationstation, I guess you have to emulate a game system first and then start a music player App from within. I haven’t tried it, but you could perhaps use the Wii with the Dragon Media Player…Dragon Media Player Wii - Wii Homebrew Apps (Media players) - GameBrew

But of course this approach is a workaround and not very intuitive.

If you want one system that you can use both for emulation and playing media, you should install the retroarch addon in kodi.

7

Thank you!
My two tries were:

  • Install any skin on CoreElec to organize my media files. CoreElec shows I’m connected on System info/Network page, but I cannot download anything. Everytime I try to download something, an error telling “Failed to download” happens;

  • Install the Emuelec Add-on inside CoreElec using the zip file downloaded from GitHub and saved inside a USB stick. It also did not work. The error message was something related to Python, then I tried to change a line with Python 2.1.0 to Python 3.0.0 but a new error telling the structure was bad happened. Finally, I found a 4.5 version of EmuElec version and it was installed without the Python error but when I tried to open a new error just telling me to check the log file.

Any help will be valid!

8

Then you can put the zip-file on your sd card / usb stick and install it manually…

But I remember that I also sometimes had problems with connecting CoreElec to the internet.
I think I restarted the box, the router etc. And then I also set up the WLAN-connection again and somehow it worked again…

  • The Emuelec-addon doesn’t work anymore on CoreElec 20, as far as I know.

See here: CoreELEC Add-on