Work-in-progress, my bartop cabinet…

[khayman]

This is my first build and I wanted an old-style classic arcade cabinet but with the portability of a bartop. Hopefully to inspire the next generation to realize how awesome playing old Ms. Pac Man or Donkey Kong in a dark and noisy arcade was.

It’s coming along slowly but surely. I just figured I’d post a picture of what’s been done so far (there are other cut pieces not in the pic). Cuts are done and angled correctly and we’ve hole cut for the speakers. We dry-fitted some of it together this past weekend. We designed an angled front because since it will be two-player I wanted to make sure that in a 21″ wide space players weren’t bumping into each other for space.

Next up is to router the edges for the t-moulding and cut the holes for the controls. Then finish the sanding and joining and paint. Then start mounting the electronics and wiring everything up. Last steps will be to install the plexiglass.

Input and advice is always appreciated. I’ll try to remember to post progress pics as we go.

[dpadder]

Thats really nice, I like the look at the front. I built one like that a few years ago. I will start to upload all my arcade cab designs to my blog within a few days at http://mancavemodder.blogspot.co.uk/

Check it out.

Keith

[khayman]

I really like what you did there. It looks nice and clean. You may want to check your blog, it looks like some of the images are broken. Great job on modding the XBox controller too.

The one problem I’m trying to crack is to make sure we can shut down the box without messing up the image. I’m going to back it up once I have it where I want it, but I want something which will detect the power down and issue a shutdown command. I’m thinking maybe doing something like this (http://mausberry-circuits.myshopify.com/products/shutdown-circuit-use-your-own-switch) and then wiring up a single switch to a power strip which will control the screen, pi, amp and lighting. I believe that circuit should work to correctly power off the pi appropriately.

Either way, all the woodworking equipment is at the parent’s house so the build is coming along slowly. That and both myself and my stepfather are perfectionists so we tend to make progress at a fairly slow pace. I don’t think I’ll have time to work on it this weekend but I’m hoping by the following weekend we can get some time and finish screwing/gluing the wood together and start painting.

[khayman]

More images from work done this weekend. Had to rework the front panels to get the angles right both for the diamond-shaped front as well as the downward slope so that took a long time. Test fit all the major components together, finished drilling out the screw holes (will be fitting the whole thing together with both screws as well as glue) and made sure that the speaker grills were good to go. Also designed it such that when complete we’ll be able to remove the top control panel if we don’t like the joysticks or buttons and just re-make that piece rather than have to scrap the whole thing.

To do next weekend:
1. Few more minor cuts needed.
2. Going to re-cut the control panel piece from hardwood instead of MDF as we want it a bit more sturdy once we start to cut holes in it for joysticks and buttons.
3. Finish the assembly and paint.

To do this week:
1. Design and order marquee, plexiglass and lighting.

[khayman]

More pics…

[Anonymous]

A warning about the mausberry switch: There are some people (including me) which are having trouble getting the mausberry switch to work with RetroPie 2.6

[khayman]

Thanks, yeah I still haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do yet. I’ve got some additional buttons from Adafruit that I can wire to the GPIO pins. Thinking about going that route, but it’s still up in the air. Luckily the way we designed it the control panel is removable/replaceable so I can always re-cut that piece if we don’t like our setup.

[Author]

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