Although the main reason I started my website was to talk cars, I also love other interesting electronics projects as well! Something I've wanted to do for a long time is put together my own Arcade Cabinet and I finally decided to pull the trigger on that earlier this year! I'm not much of a wood worker, and I've never done anything like this before so here is my journey!
Being that I'm not much of a wood worker I decided to look for CAD plans to have the wood cut out for me! That way everything ended up nice and symmetrical. A few minutes on google would reveal that many people have a variety of different shaped and sized arcade cabinet plans for sale and I ended up purchasing a set of CAD plans on Etsy for about $30. Fortunately I worked next to a woodworking shop at the time and ended up trading some labor for labor and only had to pay for the materials cost of the melamine! The total cost of all of the wood and assembly materials was about $300 bucks - Late 2022 pricing.
I would then take all of the precut panels home and assemble them in my garage. Note that originally the arcade cabinet plans were for 3/4in MDF, so I would need to open up all of the slots and alignment dowels so this thing could slip together as intended. Kind of a pain in the neck but not too much trouble and I didn't end up having to finish the outsides of the cabinet as the Melamine is very nice feeling on your hands while you are using the controls! Here is everything in shambles as I assembled.
Next was deciding what kind of controls package I wanted to go with for everything and what games I was intending on playing so I could figure out all of the controls I would like as well as there orientation. I ended up purchasing a set of controls and a trackball from these amazon hyperlinks:
TRACKBALL and MOUNT/BEZEL
Albeit inexpensive, I was actually pleased with all of the quality of the controller components. I made sure the buttons and Joysticks would work with all of the precut holes and got everything ordered. Then continued through the assembly process of the remaining parts of the cabinet. I wanted to have a bumping sound system for the cabinet so I purchase a nice set of Sony 6.5in Auto Speakers and a compact 2 Channel Amplifier from Amazon so I could get the good tunes rolling! Wiring this up was a piece of cake! Not much to tell there. Here is the link to the amp I purchase, but I think any cost effective set of 6.5in speakers would probably do just fine in an application like this.
It turns out that pretty much only the lower volume settings on this was usable while you are playing as this thing goes up to Nursing Home level! So freaking loud I ended up using it as the stereo in the garage for a while!
I was able to use a 32in Flatscreen Computer Monitor as the main screen for the cabinet as that is what I had laying around the house. This cabinet was actually designed with provisions for that size monitor as well so things ended up working out really well! I didn't have to purchase this unit but it looks like you can get your hands on a brand new one for $150-$200, not too bad!
I finished panels for above and below the monitor with a few pieces of plexiglass I measured for after cabinet assembly and then had them cut at my local Ace Hardware. A can of Black Walmart 99 cent Spray Paint on one side of the plexi had these looking like real arcade filler panels for inexpensive! The plexiglass ended up running me about $40 bucks or so!
Then finally all my controller items came in so I decided to assemble the whole control system and wire everything up! This was super intuitive as the controls kit I purchased basically had each players controls all plugged into a USB project board with a regular USB A out. I purchased a USB splitter so that I could plug all of the controllers into one place for my own ease of install. I did end up having to purchase a special adapter to plug the trackball into my USB splitter block. Here are the hyperlinks to those items:
I used some sticky squares and some zip ties to manage all the wires and I ended up mounting all of the USB board components with 3M's Dual Lock Velcro. Here are some pictures of how everything came out as well as links to those goodies!
Some quick 99 cent white spray paint on the trackball bezel and final controls mounting and the cabinet finishing was nearly done! I decided to paint the edges of all of the wood with a Black Latex Paint to try and seal this thing up from future moisture as it will be living in a garage environment for the bulk of its life. In hind site I wish I would have purchased more small paint brushes but these did the job. Had to be preetty exact on that whole painting the edges thing. #preparedwithawetrag LOL.
Lastly and most importantly, I purchased the project box kit with a Raspberry Pi 4 board that would be the brain for this arcade cabinet. After doing some pretty extensive reading I realized that a Pi 4 board was probably overkill for this projects functionality, but I wanted to make sure that the sky is the limit with this one and I can still grow and experiment with this device after project 'completion'. It looks like the price of these project boxes has come down pretty significantly since I purchased mine earlier this year!
Watched a plethora of youtube videos about setting up one of these for arcade cabinet use and initially decided I'd try to use the RetroPie OS, which I actually hated. Most people talk about how nice this OS is for doing all of the arcade emulation stuff, ease of setup, aesthetic menus, etc. Maybe if I was using a very basic controls package for 2-players it would have worked out well, but after beating my head agains't the setup wall for a few days, I explored other options. I ended trying Batocera which was a huge success! This OS was fantastic for all of the functionality that I was looking for and allowed for 4-Player setup and Trackball use, even though I'm trying to figure out how to dial that in still. Loading the OS onto the Pi 4 SD card and loading everything was relatively intuitive and there are enough forum posts and videos for troubleshooting any problems you are having. Controller setup was a little finicky but once done you don't ever have to mess with it again.
And there it is! Aside from getting your roms which I have no idea how to do... **wink wink. Some deep internet searching will allow you to find some of these things, but I must advise that the legality of acquiring these isn't really a thing that I have found. You are supposed to have purchased the rights to use these, so do with that what you will. After acquiring Roms I used a Rom ripper program to steal clip arts to make the machine interface more aesthetic and have nice game video and images to view when scrolling through all the game options! Here is everything all finished out!
I decided to add some drink holders because my first night of use had folks setting beers, etc. on the control surface which made me very nervous! This cabinet is not as sure footed as I'd like so if a few people where to put all there body weight on the cabinet it might tilt or rock a little and cause things to spill. Being that I'm from Texas, I really wanted a drink cup holder that would fit a large Whataburger cup, and these adjustable ones did not disappoint! I also decided to add a small Keyboard with Integrated mouse that I used a TV remote holder to keep on the cabinet. I mounted a USB bulkhead to the underside of the control panel for quick easy game exchanging and Keyboard use for adding and changing things about the machine. Here are the links to my finishing touches!
This project was a first for me and was a blast to do! Just a friendly reminder to everyone thinking about doing cool projects like these... There's nothing to it but to do it! No matter your skill level, persistance and determination are all you need to create cool shit for yourself! If you have any questions about my project please reach out and I would be glad to assist!
Cheers everyone and Happy Creating!
-The WireDaddy- Nate :)
Comments