My take of the classic arcade table (cabinet). Constructed completely by hand with 13mm MDF, glue and a lots of screws. Complete with 4:3 aspect ratio 19 Inch TFT Monitor, thumping 2x50 Watt Class-D Power Amplified and authentic controls.
This design has not been compliance tested and will not be. Mains power is feed directly into the cabinet and can be DANGEROUS or LIFE THREATING. I take no personal responsibility liability should you injure or kill yourself should you decide to copy this design and build a cabinet yourself. I accept no responsibility for any damage to any equipment that results from the use of this design and its components. IT IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK!
After seeing my designs of Raspberry Pi arcade tables or cabinets I was sold on the idea and wanted to build one myself. I found a blog of person who created one using an IKEA table and I though this was a great idea. I then built one and after many hours playing "Buggy Boy" on the C64 I realise the ergonomics of the IKEA table design was terrible!
I actually found some sellers on various auction sites selling designs and cut frames for all different prices, but I wanted the challenge to make one completely myself. So set with 4sqm of 13mm MDF (I only ended up needing 1sqm), a bunch of tools and an idea, I set to work on a table top design.
Simple angels are used ensuring the LCD remains in the optimal viewing position and the controls "lean" towards the player. I researched the layout of the buttons (yes there is actually an optimal layout as each finger on our hand has a different length relative to your knuckles) to also make sure these would be comfortable.
Nice basic frame:
Of course a Raspberry Pi is at the heart of this! As I am only interested in C64 and really early arcade classics (Double Dragon) I settled with a Raspberry Pi B+ which I had on hand. Overclocked to 800Mhz this was perfectly fine. Wired to the Raspberry Pi via HDMI is a 19 Inch TFT, USB dongle for a Keyboard + Mouse, USB Control Kit and a Bluetooth dongle.
Basic internals:
Sound is realised though a set of 7 Inch Car Speakers each rated at 100 Watts mounted on the sides of the cabinet. These are powered by a Class-D Digital Power Amplifier with both 3.5mm Jack and Bluetooth input source capabilities. I found that once the cabinet is sealed closed there is enough loading on the speakers to produce a great sound! I just love the intro music to Cybernoid II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernoid_II:_The_Revenge) - one of the best SID tunes in my opinion.
Wired internals:
With the monitor fitted:
Assembled with controls:
... and finally with some power applied:
To go along with the awesome Cybernoid II intro music, I decided to add some flashing lights... Of course! Having used WS2812, but only having a few spare I opted to use a simple Blue LED strip. Simple but effective, especially with the glossy paint finish.
LED Strip:
I didn't use the Raspberry Pi to control the LEDs as I had on hand a bunch of ATTiny85 USB Dev Boards and I wired an output to control a N-Channel FET. The control software is COMPLETE OVERKILL. I created a series of LED Flash Patterns handlers which in my later Arduino Projects were put into a class. Still huge OVERKILL, but pretty cool nevertheless!
The LEDs are flashed and faded randomly using a random selection primitive handles. The next flash pattern is only selected once the current is finished. Available amazing eye-catching primitives are;
- Slow flashes
- slowFlashSingle
- slowFlashMultiple
- slowFlashRandom
- Fast flashes
- fastFlashSingle
- fastFlashMultiple
- fastFlashRandom
- Fading effects
- fadeOnFadeOff
- fadeOnFastOff
- fastOnFadeOff
That's it! Back to Cybernoid II! 😆