A-Raspberry-Pi-Theme

A Raspberry Pi themed Batocera/ES theme

Raspberry Circuit is a simple animated EmulationStation theme in Raspberry Pi colours (raspberry red and leaf green). It's available in two versions as Batocera and ES-DE use different theme engines and can't share a single theme.xml.

Features

• Main screen background: all the Raspberry Pis, repeated to fill the whole screen. A 24 second seamless loop where the rows of Pis slide slowly in opposite directions while each one bobs, tilts and glows, with light sweeps passing over them. It features the Pi 5, Pi 4, Pi 400, Pi 500, Pi 500+, Compute Module 4, Compute Module 5 (and its IO board), Pico 2, Pico W, Zero and Zero 2 W.
• Every console page gets its own Pi. Open a console and its game list sits in front of a different Raspberry Pi product (around 200 systems are covered). In ES-DE these can be animated too.
• Console pictures for around 200 systems, displayed in the system carousel and in the header of each game list.
• Raspberry Pi logo in the header (pulsing in Batocera, bobbing in ES-DE)
• RetroAchievements (only for Batocera). A gold trophy and your username in the main screen header when you're logged in, a trophy in the game list header for systems that support achievements and a trophy icon in the menu.
• Batocera: the panels and game images fade in.
• ES-DE: fade transitions between screens, a choice of raspberry or leaf green as the accent colour and a Theme variant setting (animated main screen, animated console pages or still background).
• Game list with description, rating, release date and screenshot/video preview, plus a simple grid view (Batocera) and themed menus.
• The help prompts sit on their own row at the bottom so nothing overlaps.

What's in this repo

Folder	For	Install to
rpi-berry-theme/	Batocera	/userdata/themes/
rpi-berry-theme-es-de/	ES-DE (desktop / AppImage)	~/ES-DE/themes/

Both use the same artwork. Each folder has its own README.txt.

Install

ES-DE

1. Copy rpi-berry-theme-es-de into ~/ES-DE/themes/ (for older versions: ~/.emulationstation/themes/)
2. Restart ES-DE and then go to Menu → UI Settings → Theme set → Raspberry Circuit.
3. Optional: pick a colour scheme (raspberry / leaf), theme transitions and a Theme variant all from the same menu. The variants are Animated background (main screen) (the default and the lightest animated option), Animated background (also console pages) (each console's Pi floats and glows as a video, which is heavier) and Still background (no video at all, use this if it lags).

To preview from an AppImage with error output:

chmod +x ES-DE*.AppImage
./ES-DE*.AppImage --debug --resolution 1280 720

ES-DE is very strict about theme files in that one incorrect tag will prevent the theme from loading. The error will be logged in the terminal and in ~/ES-DE/logs/es_log.txt. In debug mode Ctrl+R will reload the theme after you've edited theme.xml (changes to capabilities.xml require a restart).

Batocera

1. Copy rpi-berry-theme into /userdata/themes/. On the network share this is \BATOCERA\share\themes.
2. On the console: START → User Interface → Theme Set → rpi-berry-theme.
3. If it looks wrong then have a look in /userdata/system/logs/es_launch_stdout.log

Which Pi is behind which console?

Each console is assigned one of the 12 products. The full list is in docs/console-pi-map.json. To change one, copy a different picture over art/bg/.jpg (for example art/bg/snes.jpg). For the animated console pages in ES-DE, also point bgv/.xml at another video in art/products/.

RetroAchievements

Only the Batocera version has this. ES-DE has no RetroAchievements at all (RetroAchievements are handled within RetroArch) so there's nothing for an ES-DE theme to display.

In Batocera you log in under START → Game Settings → RetroAchievements. The theme then displays your username alongside a trophy on the main screen. It's using the Batocera theme conditions of if="${global.cheevos}" (you're logged in) and if="${system.cheevos}" (the system supports achievements). I wasn't able to test these on a device so if the trophy doesn't show up then please open an issue with your Batocera version.

Keeping the theme up to date

Whenever the theme is updated here, these small scripts in the tools folder fetch the new version for you. The repo needs to stay public for them to work, and an update replaces the theme folder so back up any edits you've made to the theme files first.

Batocera

1. Copy tools/update-theme-batocera.sh to /userdata/system/ (on the network share that is \BATOCERA\share\system).
2. Run it by hand over SSH with bash /userdata/system/update-theme-batocera.sh to try it. It downloads the theme only when something has changed, and tells you if you are already up to date.
3. To check automatically at every boot, create /userdata/system/custom.sh containing:

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" = "start" ]; then
    (sleep 45; /bin/bash /userdata/system/update-theme-batocera.sh > /userdata/system/theme-update.log 2>&1) &
fi

A new version is installed in the background after boot, so restart EmulationStation (START, Quit, Restart EmulationStation) to see it. If an update fails your current theme is left alone, and the reason is in /userdata/system/theme-update.log.

If you would rather run it from the menu, copy the script to /userdata/roms/ports/ and it will show up in the Ports system after a restart.

ES-DE (Linux and macOS, needs git)

• Run ./tools/update-theme-es-de.sh the first time and whenever you want to update. It keeps a copy of the repo in ~/.local/share/rpi-circuit-theme and links the theme into ~/ES-DE/themes/ for you.
• Or start ES-DE through ./tools/launch-es-de.sh /path/to/ES-DE.AppImage and it checks for an update every time before opening ES-DE.
• If you copied the theme folder in by hand earlier, move it away first. If ES-DE does not show the linked theme, run the script with COPY=1 in front to copy the files instead of linking them.

What about the built-in theme downloaders?

ES-DE's Theme Downloader updates themes using git too, but it only lists themes from its official themes list, so a personal theme isn't in there unless the ES-DE team accepts it. I believe Batocera's built-in theme installer works the same way with a curated list. These scripts do the same job for this repo without needing to be on either list.

Customising

theme.xml is commented and written for the beginner. pos and size are screen fractions and colours are 6-digit hex (no #).

• Console picture: drop a PNG file named exactly as the system into art/systems/ (e.g. snes.png). A system with no picture will just show its name as text.
• Animation speed (Batocera): change the duration="..." values (these are in milliseconds).
• Colours: Raspberry is C51A4A, leaf green is 75A928 and the trophy gold is E8B923.
• Check for overlaps after editing: run python3 tools/check_layout.py rpi-berry-theme/theme.xml rpi-berry-theme-es-de/theme.xml. This will list any two on screen elements whose boxes overlap (panels behind text are ignored).
• Move the carousel: change the y values of the carousel, carousel_band/carouselBand and the 'games available' pill.

Performance

The main screen background is a 960x540 H.264 video (approx 2MB) which is quite fine on a Pi 4/5 and PCs. It may stutter on a Pi 3 or older. If it does then in ES-DE just choose Still background under Theme variant. In Batocera delete the

Credits and licences

• Console pictures: ES-DE-System-Icon-Set by Zoidburg13 (CC0)
• Fonts: DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Sans Mono. Both have a free license.
• Product photos: from the Raspberry Pi documentation, © Raspberry Pi Ltd. I cut them out and composed them myself. I haven't verified the licence for redistribution so please check it before sharing the theme widely.
• Trophy icon and background animation: made with code, not AI generated art.
• Raspberry Pi logo: a trademark of Raspberry Pi Ltd. Used here for a personal/fan-made theme. Please check their brand guidelines before redistributing.
• All console logos in the icon set are the property of their respective owners.

This project has no affiliation or endorsement from Raspberry Pi Ltd, Batocera, RetroAchievements or ES-DE.