Wolfware Howler lol

[SigmaX]

So a long time ago I decided I wanted to build an arcade cabinet. At that time, a new control board - the howler by wolfware - came out. I backed the project on kickstarter and the device delivered what I was looking for.

Unfortunately they no longer produce these boards and back then I had plans on getting a second and creating a 4 player cab. Since that's no longer an option for me, I decided on a bartop 2 player cab.

Yesterday I got a raspberry pi. I've been wanting one for a while now. I got it up and running and it's impressive, but the issue I have now is, connecting my control board to my pi.

Has anyone else gone through this. Is there a pi OS out there that emulates windows? (I have all the drivers and software for windows). Is there a Pi OS that I could use to connect my control board?

I saw a video today of someone soldering their controls right to the pi so do I even need a control board now? Any suggestions would be great. I would rather not purchase a new CB right now, but when I do I will be planning on a 4 player cab.

[meyer980]

I wasn't familiar with the Howler so had to look it up. Looks like it's either a gamepad or keyboard encoder? Pretty flexible. If that's the case - the raspberry pi should just detect it as such. Not much fuss.

The raspberry pi shouldn't be used to run windows. It doesn't have an x86 processor which windows needs. You could emulate it, but performance would almost definitely be terrible. Most people using pis to play arcade games are running RetroPie. It's a fantastic image with tons of emulators built in that have been compiled to run on the pi and a front-end all ready. Just add your roms and configure controls.

Retropie supports both keyboard and gamepad controls. So, as long as your Howler is detected as a standard keyboard or gamepad, you should be fine.

https://retropie.org.uk/

[keilmillerjr]

You dont need nor want to run Windows on a pi. The howler is a keyboard/joystick encoder. Configure it with the app on a windows machine, then plug it into the pi or whatever device.

I backed the howler too. Switched to jpac due to project switching to crt. Too bad things with howler and ultimarc went the way they did.