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Batocera for Smart Pi One

Batocera

1. Introduction

Batocera Linux is a full retrogaming distribution that boots straight into EmulationStation — no desktop, no setup wizard. YUMI-LAB maintains a fork with Smart Pi One (Allwinner H3) board support added: Batocera-SmartPiOne.

A fork of upstream Batocera

Only board-level additions on top of stock Batocera — a boot script, U-Boot DRAM tuning, and a device tree. Zero changes to emulators or the Batocera core, so the official Batocera documentation applies as-is: controls, scraping, netplay, themes, RetroAchievements.

2. RetroMi or Batocera?

Two different retrogaming images are available for the Smart Pi One, same hardware, different trade-offs:

RetroMi Batocera
Base Armbian Bookworm Batocera Linux (its own OS)
Systems 102 cores, 20 groups 117 systems
RetroAchievements No Yes
Updates Reflash Atomic — swaps a single squashfs file
ROM transfer Web FileBrowser, Samba, USB auto-mount, SCP Samba (SMB), USB
WiFi Onboard driver support USB dongle only (RTL8188EU tested)
Download size About 2.7 GB, split archive About 1.1 GB, single file
Status Actively developed v38 — board support stable

Not sure which one? RetroMi has the wider emulator coverage and more ways to get ROMs onto the board. Batocera is the simpler, more polished pick if RetroAchievements and netplay matter to you.

3. Hardware notes

Spec Value
SoC Allwinner H3 — Cortex-A7 quad-core
RAM 1 GB DDR3 (576 MHz, custom tuning)
GPU Mali-400 MP2 — Lima / Mesa (GLES 2.0)
WiFi USB dongle required (RTL8188EU tested)
Storage MicroSD, image about 1.1 GB, expands to fill the card
Kernel Linux 6.1.55

What to expect performance-wise

The H3 is roughly comparable to a Raspberry Pi 2. NES, SNES, Game Boy / Color / Advance, Mega Drive and Master System run at full speed. PS1, arcade boards (CPS1, CPS2, Neo-Geo), DOS and ScummVM run well on most titles. N64 and Dreamcast only handle light titles. PSP is not recommended on this hardware.

4. Download and flash

Batocera-SmartPiOne releases

File Size Release
batocera-h3-smartpione-38-20231018.img.gz 1.21 GB v38 — 2026-04-07

Flash with Raspberry Pi Imager or balenaEtcher (both read .img.gz directly), or with dd:

gunzip batocera-h3-smartpione-38-20231018.img.gz
sudo dd if=batocera-h3-smartpione-38-20231018.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M status=progress
sync

5. First boot

  1. Insert the microSD card, connect HDMI and a gamepad, power on.
  2. Batocera boots to EmulationStation in roughly 60 to 90 seconds.
  3. Configure WiFi from the EmulationStation menu — a USB WiFi dongle is required, the Smart Pi One has no onboard WiFi.
  4. Add ROMs over the network share (SMB) or a USB drive.

6. Supported systems (117)
Abuse Amiga 500 Amiga 1200 Amiga CD32
Amiga CDTV Amstrad CPC Amstrad GX4000 Apple II
Apple IIGS Arduboy Atari 2600 Atari 5200
Atari 7800 Atari 800 Atari Lynx Atari ST
Atomiswave Cannonball Cave Story C-Dogs SDL
Channel F ColecoVision Commodore 64 Commodore 128
Commodore PET Commodore Plus/4 Commodore VIC-20 Commander Genius
Daphne DevilutionX DOS Dreamcast
EasyRPG Famicom Disk System FinalBurn Neo Flash
Game & Watch Game Boy Game Boy (2 Players) Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Color Game Boy Color (2P) Game Gear HCL
Hurrican Intellivision LowRes NX Macintosh
MAME Master System Mega Drive Mega Duck
Moonlight Mr. Boom MSU-MD MSX
MSX2 MSX2+ MSX turboR Multivision
Naomi Neo-Geo Neo-Geo CD Neo-Geo Pocket
Neo-Geo Pocket Color NES Nintendo 64 Nintendo 64DD
Odyssey² OpenBOR PC-88 PC-98
PC Engine PC Engine CD PICO-8 Sega Pico
PlayStation Pokémon Mini Ports PrBoom (Doom)
PSP Quake III SAM Coupé Satellaview
ScummVM SCV SDLPoP (Prince of Persia) Sega 32X
Sega CD SG-1000 Sharp X1 Sharp X68000
SNES SNES MSU-1 Solarus Sonic Retro
Sufami Turbo Super Bros War Super Game Boy SuperGrafx
Supervision TheXTech Thomson TIC-80
Tyrian TyrQuake Vectrex Videopac+
Virtual Boy WonderSwan WonderSwan Color Xash3D FWGS (Half-Life)
XRick ZC210 ZX81 ZX Spectrum
OD Commander

7. What YUMI-LAB changed

Board-level additions only — no changes to emulators or the Batocera core:

File Change
board/batocera/allwinner/h3/smartpi-one/ New board: boot script, genimage, extlinux
package/batocera/boot/uboot-multiboard/nanopi_m1/ U-Boot DRAM tuning (576 MHz, ZQ calibration, ODT)
configs/batocera-h3.board Added the sun8i-h3-nanopi-m1 device tree

Board profile

v38 builds on the orangepi-pc board profile, which is fully compatible with the Smart Pi One's H3 through the nanopi_m1 device tree. A dedicated smartpi-one board profile is prepared for a future build.

8. Notes