Buy the TrimUI Brick here: https://joeysrh.link/GGG_TRIMUIBRICK
(use code JOEY for 15% off)
Recommended Accessories
- MicroSD Card: 128GB or 256GB (with the platforms this plays, you would be safe with either of these options)
- MicroSD Card Reader: UGREEN SD Card Reader
- Charger: UGREEN 65W Charger (use the USB-A port for charging)
Stock Setup Guide
This setup guide assumes you want to start from scratch, with a brand new branded SD card and you will be providing your own ROMs & BIOS files.
First, we need to setup the SD card, so you want to get those files from here and you want to choose the base_package option.
Extract the zip using 7-Zip.
Now you want to format your brand new card as FAT32. We can use a program called Rufus to do so. Download the portable version.
Connect your SD card to your PC using a branded SD card reader (recommendations above), and open Rufus. Make sure that device is your SD card, should match the same size. Change Boot selection to Non bootable. Make sure that File system is FAT32 or Large FAT32. Click START.
When it’s done, you’ll have a blank FAT32 formatted SD card.
Copy the contents of the base_package zip you extracted to the root of the SD card – so the RetroArch, Emus etc. folders.
Eject and insert the SD card into your TrimUI Brick and now you can add ROMs and files.
Adding ROMs & BIOS
Connect your SD card to your PC.
Head inside the Roms folder, and you should see a bunch of folders for all of the systems that the device supports.
It should be pretty self explanatory at this point, but you want to move your ROMs for each system into the corresponding system folder.
For BIOS, head to the RetroArch folder, then .retroarch, and then system. Inside of this folder is where you would put your BIOS files.
Don’t forget, that when you add or remove ROM files, they may not always show up and you might need to refresh the ROM list. Head to the Game tab in the operating system, then push the Menu button on the device bottom left and select Refresh Roms.
FN Mode
On the side of the device, there’s an FN button. You want to have this to the right (so moved to the side opposite of FN).
Then, in the operating system, head to App, Fnkey setting, and enable CPU Performance Mode.
Box Art
There is no built in way to get box art on the device, so you will need to use Screenscraper.fr and Skraper.net to do so.
Connect your SD card to your PC.
Make an account on screenscraper, and save those credentials.
Download Skraper from the top right of the Skraper.net website for your operating system.
Extract the .7z file that it downloads in using 7-Zip.org.
Open SkraperUI.exe and login with your Screenscraper credentials then click Validate. Then next.
Let it download resources, this will take a very long time.
Select Generic Emulation and then next.
Now it wants to know where your Roms are, so click the folder and navigate to your SD card and the Roms folder. You should see most if not all of the systems populate, some might be missing and that’s fine for now. Click next. Then next again.
We’re now on the main Skraper screen, if you look on the left, that is all of the system folders that it found, regardless of whether there’s roms inside or not. It’s possible there’s some systems missing here and if that’s the case, click the Plus icon under the list next to Wizard.
Find the system icon for what’s missing and click the icon, then click okay.
Now, you have to tell Skraper where that system is located, so click the folder icon next to Games/Roms folder and navigate to the folder for that system.
Do these same steps for any missing systems.
Head to the left, click All Systems, go to the Game List tab on the right and change to no backup, just update existing. Head to the Media tab, and you can choose what you want scraped. I don’t need the manual, so going to remove that by selecting it and clicking the minus icon on the left.
For Media type, internal mix, you can choose what you want. I’m just going to leave it on 4 images mix.
Now for output folder, change it to: %ROMROOTFOLDER%\Imgs\. This tells it to save all of the box art into the Roms folder, then the system folder (so, like GBA), then Imgs folder.
This is going to take a very, very, very long time to scrape. Once set, click the play button bottom right. Then click OK and it’s going to run. This is going to take a very long time, a very very long time. I would suggest doing one system at a time, by clicking the system on the left then clicking play, but it doesn’t really matter, you can just click the X to stop it and then play again later and it’ll skip already scraped games.
Once it’s done scraping, we aren’t done yet. The issue with the TrimUI Brick is that the images actually need to be in the Imgs folder at the top level of the SD card. So, it’ll be Imgs/systemname/ and inside of that is all of your images. Thankfully, that folder already exists.
Head into each of your Rom system folders, and then each of the Imgs folders, and cut and paste the images into the Imgs/systemname/ folder.
So, for N64, you would go to Roms/N64/Imgs, select all and cut. Then go to Imgs/N64/ and paste them there.
Do that for every system and when you’re done, put your SD card back into your device, turn it on and enjoy your box art.
Turn off Shaders/Overlays
If you’re like me and you hate the shaders and overlays that come pre-installed for most systems, let me show you how to remove them. Jump into a game with them applied and push the menu button bottom left. Head to Advanced Menu. Now, scroll down to On-Screen Overlay and uncheck Display Overlay. Head back and scroll down to Shaders, uncheck Video Shaders. Head back and go to Overrides, and now Save Core Overrides.
Tweaks
- To change the core or emulator being used for a specific game, highlight the game in the game list and push X. You’ll get a list that you can choose from.
Adding Pico-8
To add Pico-8, there’s a few steps you need to do.
First, you’re going to download this 7zip file that has all of the Pico-8 files that you need to run the games.
Extract the 7zip file using 7-Zip.
Copy the Apps folder to the root of your SD card, merging with the existing Apps folder that’s already there.
Then, you need to add the following files to the Apps/pico/bin folder.
- pico8_64
- pico8.dat
You can obtain these by legally purchasing Pico-8 from https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php. You will need the Raspberry Pi version.
Games go into the Apps/pico/.lexaloffle/pico-8/bbs/carts folder.
If you want a curated list of Pico-8 games, you can find a romset here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pico8/comments/yj2k9t/picowesome_v14_oct312022/.
Custom Firmware Options
Custom firmware is a replacement or addition on top off the stock firmware that we setup above.
MinUI
This setup guide assumes you want to start from scratch, with a brand new branded SD card and you will be providing your own ROMs & BIOS files. We will be installing MinUI for this guide.
The Brick follows the same installation as the TrimUI Smart Pro.
