Ok I thought I would make this for people to talk about applications they would want made for the game shell.
Then others could for me inspiration from these ideas and boom! New GS app.
Is there an app for viewing pdf files? I am still new and learning about all the different things work so a pdf viewer to look at some things might be useful. (I know I could just use my phone or laptop, but a copy of a manual or reference material to look at would be kind of nice.)
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I imagine you can get a browser to run on there. My system hasnât came in yet so I cant verify that sadly. Will be sure to check once it shows up on Tuesday though
I wouldnât recommend a browser like anything modern. Most websites these days are full of bloat and the browsers are as well due to relatively cheaper RAM/CPU and lazy programmers.
The GameShell is a great system, but itâs a far cry from being a powerhouse. Remember how browsers on most game consoles are barely worth using? The total amount of RAM and CPU resources on the GameShell are roughly equal or less than most modern browsers use.
There are other more direct ways to view PDFs, and I suggest those.
It would be cool to get a discussion about developing apps for various things on the system.
See this thread for PDFs. I havenât tried it yet myself, but it sounds like thereâs a solution. 
EDIT:
I just tried this yesterday, and it works quite well! The key mappings from the setup script are also useful. With the 320x240 display, reading anything substantial will be a chore with lots of scrolling, but loading, zooming, and scrolling are nice and fast. That PDF viewer apparently supports ePUB files too, but I havenât tried it and noticed it wasnât included in the file associations in the script. Not sure Iâd want to read an ebook on the GameShell anyway, but for quick reference or more visual PDFs without lots of small text, it could be handy.
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I think a file manager app could be useful. I sometimes notice that e.g. a PSX rom from my library doesnât work with PCSXe, and Iâd like to be able to delete it on the fly without having to boot up the PC.
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Thereâs already a file manager available that is quite useful. Itâs great for renaming as well as deleting, or moving files around.
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Thanks! I wasnât aware of that. Iâll have to give it a try. 
An Amiibo emulator.
This would potentially involve a hardware mod, but given the GPIO breakout cable comes with the Gameshell, and the free real estate within the case, this could be a very attractive project.
This could be in the form of both a Amiibo NFC reader, and a NFC 215 writer.
If someone is particularly, say interested in the smash bros training side of things, having an app to track your stats could be useful. Or even a simple app to scan your amiibos, then play a small voice clip of the scanned Amiibo and display an image would be absolutely adorable! Plus you can make a database of which amiibos you own, and when you acquired them. (And how much money youâve wasted ;))
(Iâm not intending to use this for piracy purposes, as I own all of my amiibos legitimately. Theyâre just all lined up so perfectly, I donât want to disrupt them.)
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I may or may not have been thinking of this exact meme. 
(Hint: I was)
Also, definitely going to be something Iâm looking into; albeit using existing projects for rpiâs, appropriated for the clockwork pi. Just got to find the documentation that gives me the GPIO pinouts. (And wait for my next break from work!)
Donât hold your breath though anyone. This is merely throwing an idea Iâve had for a while into sandbox. In a nutshell, from my research re: RFID, and bus fare passes/bank cards/door keys, theyâre a right pain to decrypt, letalone be read on write protected media. As cool as it would be to just wave your Gameshell over your controller in smash, I donât foresee this to be possible. (Or wave your Gameshell over your nearest train tag on point ;))
Ahem. While Iâm here, another idea:
Direct SPC playback and extraction from SNES Roms
Back in my wee lad days, I used to use a plug-in for Winamp called âSPC AMPâ - which basically allowed you to load SNES Roms into Winamp, and generate a playlist of all of the SPC music sequences it could find.
The provided music player daemon actually does play SPC files out of the box - a fun little bit of trivia.
Leveraging upon this, having a script that can extract the SPC files from a SNES ROM, generate a play list, and play them from the MPD would be a great applicable use of the Gameshell, in a related field.
Building upon this, having the Gameshell act as a midi send device, and plugging it into a bank filled with modern sound fonts, you can have a heap of fun re-imagining old SNES classic soundtracks.
Again, this is something in my âtodoâ list⌠one that is getting ever so high as the days go by.
I have been experimenting with RFID/NFC tags in the past. The reading and writing of data is easy the tricky part is that there was a non writable manufacture value written on the tags so you couldnât spoof a tag (if I remember correctly)
I might do something with the GPIO if I find time, sneak peak:
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Yup!! Sounds like youâve been down the same rabbit hole. That said, I was trying to do so with a university access card, so that someone with an RFID body implant can wave their hand over doors/photocopiers to gain access.
The manufacturerâs non writable value was what I had the most impatience with. Although, just for amiibos, it should be something the hacking community has uncovered already. (University cards are another matter)
It really is a matter of âif you have timeâ hey. You pretty much need go put aside an entire weekend.
Good to hear other people have similar ambitions! 
For the university card was pretty fine I managed to read them and write them and also spoof the rights and notified it to the director because you know, we were at computer science faculty! Also I detected that they used the bigger size storage and was unused so I could put random stuff there without affecting my university badge functionality I dont understand that choice of having extra space not used.
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Ha! Nice! Good thing you reported it, instead of someone else reporting you for any kind of fraud!
The uni I went to landed in some hot water re: spoofing public transport nfc cards; or rather exploiting it via loopholes.
The problem I had was with having a reader accept a card that wasnât a single write non reusable card. Thatâs what I was hoping to achieve re: having a multi Amiibo bank. Iâll definitely hit you up if/when I encounter problems.
Good to know youâve got a solid background in the field! (I officially studied music ages ago, but lived in the comp. sci dept.)
Speaking of which âŚ
Just putting a disclaimer here that I own original copies of all of my amiibos, and that I am not looking into doing anything fraudulent; be it with exploiting existing infrastructure in society, or illegally obtaining data that is not my own.
I have to confess that thats how it all started 
our buses had the paper cards with 10 travels with the magnetic band and I started investigating about how they work and managed to DIY myself a reader from them from and old cassette player, I managed to read them and also decode in bits their info but I never got into actually writting them that was the hard part because you had to swipe them as fast as you swiped them while reading them (Because I dumped them by sound, i hooked the tranciver to the stereo jack) But then they reworked their system to plastic cards with NFC and thats where the NFC fun started but they used another standart that I never found out so I couldn´t read them 
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Thinking of simplifying Bios installation, having a script similar to the Pico-8 installer that identifies bios files for each respective console, and moves them into the appropriate directory.
This could help alleviate troubleshooting people may have, simply installing things incorrectly. An md5 checksum checked can also verify if files are intact if implemented.
Also a check list, stating what you have and havenât installed would be great. The core management implementation in the settings menu is pretty much on track with what could work really well.
While weâre at it, a simple script to just update retroarch. There is the existing excellently maintained one by hpcodecraft, but some users are still having trouble with it.
That shouldnât be too hard
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Something neat that would save people some time: a warehouse entry that a) updates Retroarch b) restores Retroarch to a previously saved config file, c) backs up playlist, config, core options and other user generated content.
Basically a warehouse filled with Retroarch rescue tools.
And another thought. A script that edits your sources.list file, choosing the best server according to your location.
Thereâs probably something already out there, but having a fancy GUI catered to the gameshell without a keyboard would be swell!
Just a couple of passing thoughts.
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