Raspberry Pi Forums

Hello fellow tech wizards.

I bought a raspberry pi 3 last year, and we recently finishing building a full bartop aracde to go around the pi 3 which is running emulation station/retro pi.

The cabinet we built as a main on/off switch for ease of use. This switch power a 4 outlet power box, which is used to power the TV, the marquee light and of course the pi. I can get everything running, but once I do a shut down of the pi through the menus, wait for it to be down and turn off, and then flip the main switch...well the next time we want to play if we just flip the main switch, the tv and marquee light come on, the LEDs in the arcade panel button come on (powered through the pi3 usb)...but..the pi itself does not boot.

Not a HUGE deal, as I just have to open the cabinet to unplug and replug the pi and then it will boot. Obviously it would be a better over all experience if the pi 3 would just boot on power up...but I'm at a loss as to why it does not... unplugging and replugging it will force the boot...so..why is giving power to the outlet not doing the trick? If all else fails, we may just rewire the electrics so the pi is constently powered and on..and the main switch just turn off the light and tv... I would rather get this working however.

Any ideas?

livlos wrote:
...
the LEDs in the arcade panel button come on (powered through the pi3 usb)...but..the pi itself does not boot.
...

Transient current surge(s) dropping the voltage? Does the red PoWeR led on the Pi flicker? (Possibly difficult to see with all the other lights flashing). What is powering the Pi? How good is the connecting cable? (Can you try a shorter/thicker one?).
Trev.

Another possible reason is that the RPi is booting but is directing its video to the composite output because the TV comes on too slowly for the RPi to sense its presence on the HDMI output in time. Test that theory by temporarily leaving the TV powered up via an unswitched supply while you boot the RPi.

If that is the cause, invoke the 'hdmi_force_hotplug=1' command in config.txt.

Would adding boot_delay=n in /boot/config.txt work? I've used it before to allow a hard drive time to spin up, but I don't know when in the boot sequence the HDMI signal is checked relative to the boot_delay.