ETK Pitstop App

The ETK Pitstop ROCKNIX App

Found in the ROCKNIX ES front-end Tools carousel item.

ETK Telemetry

• Career
  • Shows total playtime, number of sessions, percent clean (no crashes), crash stats (recovery/panic)
  • Number of shaders banked, avg shaders per session, clean streak (best streak)
• Ledger: Shows session history at a glance
  • TIME|STATUS|DURATION|RAM|LOAD|TEMP|BATTERY DRAIN|SHADERS HARVESTED
  • Records every session and tuning change from the Tuning tab.
• Session Detail View
  • Clean View: Shows Duration and telemetry summary
  • Crash View: Shows crash type with explanation, peak stats, the driver dial it ran under, and suggested Tuning fixes. If a frame was captured at the freeze, press up to view the crash frame full-screen on the device (any button dismisses).

ETK Tuning

Easily tweak emulation settings on the device. The subset of RPCS3 settings can be customized in config/pitstop_fields.json

ETK Pitstop TUNING tab for GT5P. The on-board subset of RPCS3 settings most relevant to per-game tuning, gamepad-editable in place. The exposed field set is defined in config/pitstop_fields.json — extend or trim per device. B saves to the per-game config; L1/R1 cycle tabs.

ETK Driver

Tune the graphics driver itself, not just the emulator. The DRIVER tab exposes the Mesa/Turnip environment knobs as gamepad dials — TU_AUTOTUNE_ALGO (the GMEM↔system-memory render decision) and the TU_DEBUG isolation ladder. APPLY injects them via profile.d (effective on the next game launch, and they survive a cold boot); Reset returns to Turnip's stock autotune. Every APPLY tags the race ledger with the active dial set, so a session's outcome is attributable to the exact driver tune it ran under. Discipline lives in the screen copy: one knob per soak — change one, drive real laps, read the ledger.

ETK Tools

1. Easily install PS3 packages. Follow the on screen instructions and overlays during the automated process.
2. Easily uninstall PS3 packages
3. Configure the screenshot tool's L1 single-finger camera-shutter feature to work always, on in-game, or never. The SELECT + dpad-up combo will continue to take ETK style screenshots.
4. Manage Shaders — every ROCKNIX nightly rebuilds the graphics driver, which strands the shaders cached against the old build as dead weight (a saturated vault can be >90% stale). This screen shows a per-game fresh/stale graph and lets you Sweep the stale orphans to reclaim space, Delete a game's whole vault, or Clear the RPCS3 cache — each gated behind a confirm.

How to Use Simple Telemetry

ETK Pitstop's TELEMETRY tab shows the per-game session ledger of the last game launched. To switch the visible game, launch a different game in RPCS3, quit back to ROCKNIX, then reopen ETK Pitstop — it will show that game's career rollup and tuning history. Every session, every crash, and every config change is recorded so you can correlate tuning experiments with outcomes.

Session detail: in the TELEMETRY tab, move the row cursor with the D-pad and press the confirm button to open a full-screen detail card for that session (back returns). A clean run shows duration, shaders harvested, and ASCII gauges for temp / load / RAM / battery drain; a crash shows what failed, where it died, and the suggested tuning fix pulled from the crash-signature catalog.

ETK Pitstop TELEMETRY tab for Gran Turismo 5 (BCUS98114). Career rollup: 6 sessions · 50% clean · 3 crashes · 7,639 shaders banked · +1,273 avg/session. The session log shows the full ledger schema — duration, RAM peak, load, GPU temp, battery drain, new-shader count, and the recovery signature (RECOVERY:Adreno = fence timeout, RECOVERY:Silent = soft hang). Config changes are logged inline so every tuning experiment is reproducible.

How to Install PS3 Games with the ETK

Note: The ETK cannot solve the problem of needing to install the PS3 firmware into the emulator. You have to dump that from your console or go to Sony's website and then plug in a mouse to your device and use the RPCS3 application in ROCKNIX tools to get it installed as a one-time setup. The ETK solves the problem of installing PS3 Packages on ROCKNIX which is otherwise a ridiculous process, as indicated above.

1. Place a single PS3 .pkg and .rap into /storage/roms/etk/pkg_install_drop/
2. In ROCKNIX Tools > ETK Pitstop > TOOLS > Install a staged PS3 Package
3. Wait for the automated process where ETK will handle RPCS3 installation for you and follow the on screen overlay instructions
4. Quit ETK Pitstop after installation and run Update Gamelists in ROCKNIX so the newly-installed PS3 game appears in the PS3 system list. (Note: this does NOT refresh the ETK Pitstop entry itself — that's installed once by ./install.sh and persisted by the Sentry.)

ETK Pitstop TOOLS tab — headless PS3 .pkg installer. Drop one .pkg (plus a .rap licence if needed) into the staging folder shown, select Install a staged PS3 Package, and ETK drives RPCS3 through the install with overlay prompts. Solves the "you can't operate the RPCS3 desktop UI with just a gamepad" problem.

Setting Up the Private Paddock (optional)

The Private Paddock is your own personal cloud backup for shaders, a 2GB per-game remote vault that includes your settings and saves, all pushed and pulled straight from the rig to and from your own private GitHub repo over WiFi, with no host computer in the loop. ETK ships the tooling; the bytes are yours and are never shared. The PADDOCK tab only appears in ETK Pitstop once you've configured a token, so this whole feature is opt-in — leave the token blank and nothing changes.

1. Create a GitHub token (and repo)

You need a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT). Either type works:

• Classic PAT (easiest — lets ETK create the repo for you). On GitHub: Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Tokens (classic) → Generate new token. Tick the repo scope and generate. You do not need to create the repo yourself — install.sh will create a private etk-paddock repo for you on the first run.
• Fine-grained PAT (most locked-down). First create the private repo yourself on github.com (e.g. name it etk-paddock, visibility Private). Then Settings → Developer settings → Fine-grained tokens → Generate new token, scope it to only that one repo, and grant Repository permissions → Contents: Read and write. (Fine-grained tokens can't create repos, which is why you make the repo first.)

⚠️ The repo must be private. ETK refuses to use a public repo — a public paddock would publicly distribute your vault, which is exactly what ETK is designed not to do.

2. Configure etk.conf

etk.conf lives in the repo root (it's generated on your first ./install.sh and is gitignored, so your token never leaves your machine). Set:

PADDOCK_TOKEN="ghp_your_token_here"
# Optional — defaults to <your-github-username>/etk-paddock
PADDOCK_REPO=""

Leave PADDOCK_REPO blank to accept the default <token-owner>/etk-paddock, or set it to owner/repo to use a specific repo name.

3. Run the installer

./install.sh

The installer's PADDOCK LINK step then:

1. Verifies the token with GitHub and derives your username.
2. Finds — or, with a classic repo-scope token, creates — the private repo.
3. Refuses to continue if the repo is public.
4. Seeds an initial commit if the repo is empty (uploads are GitHub Releases, which need a commit to tag).
5. Writes the credential to the rig at /storage/roms/etk/config/paddock.json (root-only, chmod 600).

If the token is rejected, or the repo is missing and your (fine-grained) token can't create it, the step prints exactly what to fix — correct it and re-run ./install.sh.

4. Use it on the rig

Reboot or relaunch ETK Pitstop and open the PADDOCK tab. Each game row shows where its data lives — LOCAL-ONLY, REMOTE-ONLY, BOTH, or EPOCH-OLD (a bundle built against a different driver build). Use the D-pad to select PUSH or PULL and press confirm to run it.

• PUSH uploads that game's vault + config + saves to your paddock, tagged to your current driver build.
• PULL brings it back down to the rig — after an SD swap or reflash, or onto a second SM8250 device running the same driver build. Pulled shaders are checked against your live driver (the homologation gate): a mismatched bundle installs the config only and skips the stale shaders.

💡 Sweep stale shaders with TOOLS → Manage Shaders before a PUSH so you bank a lean bundle — a fresh driver build can strand >90% of a vault as dead weight.

To disconnect, clear PADDOCK_TOKEN in etk.conf and re-run ./install.sh, or run uninstall.sh (which removes the rig credential). Your remote repo is never touched — it's your backup.