Mine. Don't have a name yet!

[EkDor]

Ok This is my project so far. Can’t wait to finish it so I can start a new one. Have some local interest so far.

Attached is my progress render of the cabinet. What you can’t see are all the considerations for good design including a structurally sound construction. Will see after I build it if it’s ok. The colours and decal stylings are not representative since my partner is going to do that as her contribution. I’m almost ready to build. Just finishing up on the cut list and have almost all of the components ready to install. Software is where there is much to improve. But that is flexible. Have tested my electronics to a mostly satisfactory state. So The build has a go ahead. Try to update this later when something new to show.

[EkDor]

Just a quick screenshot of the construction. Only showing half of the cabinet.

[EkDor]

– off topic. But doesn’t the reverent from Wallace & Gromit – The Curse of the Ware rabbit look a bit like the Sheev Palpatine “Emperor” from Star Wars.

Sorry!

[mavic19]

Very nice! Can’t wait to see your build!

[EkDor]

Thanks! If it works out I’ll be willing to share plans with community. Presumably I won’t get away with needing to tweak the design.

I’m just about ready to layout my cut list on a sheet, digitally. Will share when done.

I should add some other thoughts. I’ve designed it to fit a 23″ display in it’s normal orientation. And can fit in vertical also so long as the service buttons are moved down a bit. Conditional to the thickness of the bezel of course. I have taken my display out of it’s case and it has a tidy steel frame with about 10-12mm bezel. Along with attachment points top and bottom I’ll use as location guides.

Also, I’m including a USB charger socket along with he service buttons. Charging phones and what not. Useful to have a small power supply right there.

[mavic19]

I used a 24″ in my cab. Hopefully you have someone to help with the initial cuts. If you’re using 3/4″ mdf, those 4×8 sheets are damn heavy and awkward to load up on saw horses by yourself. I found I did more tweaking on mine as I went from the original design.

[EkDor]

Ahh of course. I forgot about the weight. When I did the flooring in my office I used some dense chip board. Was heavy lifting. It looks like I’ll get away with one sheet. I’ll see if I can place the parts so I can cut the sheet into smaller sections with straight cuts. Plan to use 16mm (about 5/8″) MDF.

I’ve allowed a tiny bit of wiggle room at the edges of my display.

Just finishing up on the structure today. Making sure I can actually assemble it. Designing it to have almost no screws on the outside of the cabinet.

How small did you do your cornering where t-molding was used? I’ve read it can be quite tight. But I have noticed on some YouTube stuff that it kinks a bit due to the crown in the extrusion. I think I read using a heat gun helps.

Any advise on doing customer decals? The thing I’m least sure about is the marquee. Want to put the decal on the inside and have light shine through it. It’s also going to be a curved acrylic. Worked with that before so I’m cool with it.

[EkDor]

Also. I have designed the console to fold up so I can easily access the joystick configuration gates without doing too much. More time playing and drinking. This is being built as a party attraction. Something to do when drinking with friends.

[EkDor]

Still struggling to get my controls to work properly. Posted else where about it. But my stick pins are doing some rapid fire which is stuttering. If I swap it for some of the buttons I get a workable work around. but the buttons that get those 4 switches have rapid fire function. I guess I could put them on least used or unused pins. Also can’t get the mapping to work consistently in AdvMAME. Thinking I might have to toss the USB interface and get/try a iPac. I think I need to test it on a regular computer first. Guess that’s another job for today.

[dpicc68]

Check out…..

Autofire on the axis

If your using a THT or Xinmo…
I have a patch you can use more than 15 buttons in mame, also to fix PiFBA inverted joystick.

Dpicc….

[EkDor]

OK, I’ve been doing some digging. The interface name finally came my way Xin-Mo. My assessment is that it’s complete rubbish. At least my board is.

I can assign up, down, left, right to the stick pins. But they jitter; so unusable. I can work around by putting them onto 4 of the button pins. But I am unable to assign any buttons to the stick pins. I was able to earlier; but it longer accepts it. Earlier when it did I was getting a slow rapid fire on those buttons. I could assign them to less used buttons, but now I can’t and it all feels unreliable. So that leaves me with basically two options.

1. Assign the stick buttons to 4 of the button pins and leave the stick pins empty. Unfortunately this leaves me with only 2 pins for service. I was hoping to have 5. I could double up but it all seems dodgy to me.

2. Ditch it and buy an I-Pac2 which looks like a nice bit of kit compared to this since it is reprogrammable. As far as I can figure the Xin-Mo isn’t. But the issue with this is that not only do I loose the $25 or so I paid for the Xin-Mo but I have to pay around $80-$90 Australian for the I-Pac2 because of stupid shipping cost to here. Beats me why that little board would cost $35 to send here. I did find one Australian supply for $63 but it’s all sold-out!

Having found the name of the board, since it was not printed on the PCB!, I was able to find an article here about issues with it posted last year. I installed “evtest” and as far as the terminal is concerned everything is fine!

I’m pretty much resigned to taking a piss on the xin-mo; but I guess it will have do for a short while till I find a reasonable price on the I-Pac2.

Anyone willing to help me out and investigate what it might cost you to send one to me privately? Willing to wait on slow shipping if it means I save a few bucks.

[EkDor]

Cool dpicc68, I’ll have a read of it now. I don’t know what PiFBA is?

Also. I don’t know what THT is. Is it a variant? My PCB has no markings on it to indicate what it is in any way. evtest didn’t call it a Xin-Mo or THT…

Just going to see about trying the updated kernel. I’m not sure if I have encountered the button limitation issue. But I had read about it in the article that led me to evtest. It did involve updating the kernel to fix no up or left stick movement. But mine seems to be just fine according to evtest.

[EkDor]

Another weird thing I noticed. After setting my 4 stick directions in advMAME ignore config for input(general) and then opened input(this Game) the up assignment was none. The others had updated correctly. That’s a none issue compared to my other ones.

[EkDor]

@ dpicc68 Thank you for putting me onto that article. feeder chain fixed it for me with his kernel mod. I’m indebted to you both! As far as I can tell my existing issues are all gone! I guess I won’t need to take a piss on the pcb now! :)

Now to work out what other issues are lurking about for me.

[EkDor]

@ dip I just found a way to see what interface I’m using. I opened
//home/pi/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg
and it tells me
<inputconfig type="joystick" devicename="THT THT Arcade console 2P USB Player" deviceguid="03000000c0160000e105000001010000">
so it must have been there in evtest and I didn’t notice it since it was meaningless to me at the time.

[mavic19]

To your previous questions about graphics and your marquee:
1) I used Photoshop to create my graphics and took the .psd files to my local print shop. Cost me $38 to have the control panel, monitor bezel and marquee graphics printed. Make sure you select actual measurements when creating your graphics so that they are to scale.

2) For the marquee, do NOT have them print it on normal paper. I made this mistake the first go around and it didn’t look good. When backlit, you can see the papers grains and it looks funky. Have them print your marquee on photo paper. For my marquee, I cut two identical pieces of plexiglass and then sandwiched my print in between them. Once it was all squared up with the print nicely lined up inside, take some masking tape and run it along the top and bottom essentially taping the two pieces of plexi together. I then utilized 3/4″ aluminum angle to fasten it to the marquee spot on my cab.

[EkDor]

Great! Thanks for that advice. I had noticed the paper grain thing with a button. I have led lit buttons. And I bought all white service buttons with the intension of figuring a way to do custom icons. So first thing was just to get a feel I cut paper circles and inserted them between the clear top and the white frost disc. I ended up saturating the paper with black marker and it actually looks ok. Up close you can tell. Anyway down the track I’ll do something better; like better print or custom printed decals.

I’ve attached two photos. Was hard to get the camera to white balance with the brightness of the buttons.

I have an issue that some of my buttons are different shades to one another. 2 red lit buttons are a bit more magenta than the blood red of the others. Only noticeable when lit. But since there are two I might put them in as the thumb or primary fire buttons. Some of the whites are off too which is of more concern. One player button is yellowish and the other crisp white. And the same for the other two blank white service buttons. Might be able to do something with them. Not looking into that job till construction since it works and easier to deal with.

[EkDor]

Update. Just finished my most recent part layout session. I was hoping this was the last one. But I am concerned about the weight. I guess it’ll have more resistance to being pushed against. Also it will come apart into two parts to make moving and transport easier. Guess it will be ok. Possibly I could reduce some of the structural stuff and use a stronger material for that. Make the shelves and hatches a thinner material since they are not all offering direct structural support or stiffening. The shelves do a little.

– amendment. I calculated the area and using the material weight worked out the used area, including the offcuts, to weight around 50kg (110 pounds I think I converted that correctly). I think it’ll be ok given I can split it and it would be strong enough to move with sack truck anyway.

The smaller panel on the right is for the acrylic.

[EkDor]

The reason there is so much material is that I am including internal structure so I can assemble with almost all screws inside. Would be simple to screw from the outside but I wanted to avoid filler blemishes or cracks.

[mavic19]

Very clean layout. Best of luck with getting it all cut. Are you going to be doing most of your cuts with a oscillating jig saw?

[EkDor]

Thanks, worked hard at it. I looked into using an automatic nesting app. But Maya’s DXF output refused to be recognised so I ended up doing it by hand.

I have laid it out so that I can make some long cuts to reduce the large sheets down to small manageable sizes. I’ll be using both circular-saw and jig-saw. The vertically angled cuts will be with the circular-saw because it has an angular cutting jig. Where possible i’ll be using some aluminium fences to keep the cuts straight. I’d love to use a table-saw but I don’t have access to one. Thinking I might see if someone in my part of town has one to lend. I live in rural Australia so it’s not always so easy.

Reducing the panel size, besides being easier and safer to manoeuvre, will also mean I can put them one at a time on my desk next to my computer desk and draft the parts up using my 3D file for dimensions.

Incidentally the grey parts are vertical cut recliner cuts. The yellow parts have vertical cuts but require a bit more shaping care. Orange parts are thinner than the other parts. Not sure I have the means to do that reliably. Would like to use a planing machine. The red parts have angled cuts and or shaping and routing. Levels of care and difficulty.

Also the measurements are in a strange format. They are in cm but the decimal place is in the wrong place. e.g the left measurement shown as 8.169 is actually 81.69 cm.

– amendment – It looks like it would be solid MDF. But the models is entirely hollow. Weird. Just have to wait till we have a nice day after this weekends family birthday gathering to get the MDF and cut it into the smaller panels. Hope I got it right.

[EkDor]

Just wish to follow this up with update. I’ve been waiting for some cabinet parts to arrive before starting the cutting. I want to know how the T-Moulding behaves and what my limitations incase I have to make changes. That’s the last material to arrive, soon! Yay!

Additionally. I realised that in my quest for perfection I forgot that exposed screws in the back will be acceptable. This allowed me to remove a small quantity of MDF frame from the interior. The sides and front will remain screw free.

Hope to have it complete by my 40th birthday this July. Should post some picture by then. Maybe some of the party too just for kicks.

[EkDor]

Link to my family blog progress 1 & 2 for this project. Meant to post this way back, so just catching up now. There is also a YouTube video there.

DIY Arcade Machine – Progress 1
DIY Arcade Machine – Progress 2

[EkDor]

Ok It’s been a really long time since I’ve had time for my own projects. I should be getting this one finished soon after I can get the dust off it.

Interesting note. I unpacked my raspberry Pi and it refuses to fully start. No idea why since thing has happened to it since I last started it successfully. Tried re-imaging my SD’s, they all fail. Older version works better but still fails during Emulation Station load. Put a fresh copy of Rasbian on one of the SD’s and that works… I would think that either my computer is re-imaging the SD wrong or the backups have gotten corrupted, except that I hadn’t re-imaged when the first failed loads happened. No idea what’s up. Just about to start from scratch with a recent version of RetroPie… Not looking forward to all the fixes I had to do to the last one…

[EkDor]

Sorry. I broke the two progress links.

I’ve started to loft the mdf sheets. Laborious task.

[Author]

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