Completed Project - Arcade Cabinet

My brother turned 30 last year and I felt like making something a bit special. After looking around for a few weeks I decided to try and make an arcade cabinet. I was pretty confident I'd be able to deal with the electronics but I had never attempted to build anything from wood. The plans are loosely based on a plan I purchased for this design from the geek pub. 

I wanted something comfortable for adults to play side-by-side and easy access to USB ports so I took the plan, learned how to use Sketchup and widened the plan to 28". I used 1/2" MDF instead of 3/4" to try and keep the weight down and added some cross beams to secure the monitor and reinforce the structure. I also added some supports underneath the widened control board. 

As this was my first attempt at something like this I bought cheap arcade controls and a Xin-Mo dual arcade controller rather than spending a lot of money on expensive equipment that might end up rotting in a toolbox. For the USB hub I ordered a "naked" powered hub from a Pi supply website and cut the 5v line to avoid back-feeding power into the Raspberry Pi. For the software I used the Retropie distro

The first step was configuring the Pi with Retropie, wiring up the Xin-Mo controller and labelling all the buttons. There was a bit of Retropie hacking required to get both joysticks and my gamepads working nicely together.

After several days testing and setting up the various emulators for the arcade controls I disassembled the hardware again ( after labelling each pin carefully!) and prototyped several layout schemes for the controls . 

Not terrible for my first woodworking project but I got a bit carried away with the first set of control holes and had to patch it up with filler

Modesty blocks and gorilla glue were used to assemble the cabinet after I cut all the parts using a jigsaw. I had no idea how strong MDF was and the second-hand monitor I purchased for the cabinet was pretty heavy so decided to err on the side of caution and use as many blocks as I could fit. Due to not having a circular saw for cutting out the pieces I had to rely on the blocks to close some uneven gaps in preparation for filler.

Rough assembly with a dry-run on the wiring before painting. It doesn't look terrible in this photo but you can see the rough edges if you look closely. I decided to press on since I didn't have the time to start again.

The monitor sits into a panel cut to fit the large gap. The cut-out was the toughest part of the whole build but I used a router to cut out the bulk of the waste and gradually enlarged the hole until the monitor fit snugly. Trying to fit the top-heavy monitor into the slot resulted in a few near-misses and heart palpitations.

So it turns out a few coats of spray paint add to the thickness of something. Who'd have thought right? Another nerve-wracking evening was spent sanding the recess for the monitor and getting it back into place.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Here's a shot of  the  usb hub mounted on the side of the cabinet. I had routed a slot during construction and then I mounted the hub it on some plywood with spare motherboard stand-offs and attached with hot glue and a bracket and used hot glue to ensure the internal cables wouldn't pop out during transport. The connections are to the pi ( data ), xin mo( power + data ) and input power.

The final internal fit. The monitor has built-in speakers and is supported by the front frame and the two cross-supports with long m4 bolts threaded into the VESA mount holes. I didn’t feel comfortable wiring a raw power source to something I built so I just used an extension cor as there’s more than enough current for the pi, hub and monitor

I ordered some plexiglass for the marquee, screen cover and control panel to finish it off. The screen cover is epoxied to the monitor mounting board and the sides painted over. The bezel around the monitor is just a piece of black card but it looks quite well considering.

I had wired up a light in the marquee but it washed out the logo and showed internal modesty block shadows so I pulled it out in the end.

All told the build took about 8 weeks of evening and weekend work ( 2 weeks ahead of the birthday deadline) and came out at somewhere around €200 for the hardware and electronics.

When I started this project last year I was pretty sure I'd end up with a mess of broken MDF and just end up falling back on the configured pi as a present. It's not perfect but it was definitely worth taking the chance at something outside my comfort zone.