Finished paintingScrewed legs in position. Here you can see the biscuit slots for holding the side walls. Also the areas where the CP will be glued into place have been masked off so the glue will stick. The large 90mm holes are for ventilation and for access to the power switch
Here is P1 with the admin button holes on the rear face and a slot on the side for the volume controls. The CP's have been designed so that the perspex sits flush with the cabinet edge
And the screen with the painted bezel back on it
The paint was a PU 20%gloss (satin) finish. Should be hard wearing and last
Assembly and wiring it all upThis is the interface which I got from ebay seller -
http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/digitalsystemsdesign/?_trksid=p4340.l2559They also made up the extended wiring loom as the CP's are further apart due to it being a cocktail cab
It was pretty tight getting in there and connecting all the buttons up so I had to do it with the table on its side
Standard wiring mess photo
This is the view into the table without the screen in place. So there's half a laptop and a load of wires
P1 CP -
Red- Exit/no. White- Pause. Blue- Menu/tab. Green- Enter
Yellow- Credit. P1- Start
In hindsight again, 6 buttons is overkill, have only played anything like the Streetfighter games a couple of times. Next time 3 buttons will suffice
So with the screen in you can see how much of a tight fit it all is. For the screen I just made a little table for it to sit on with adjustable legs that you screw or unscrew to adjust the height. They are the legs that are used for kitchen cabinets and are good as it means I can get the screen to butt right up to the top with no gap anywhere.
There is a gap at the front middle but the opposite side is taken up by the bass box.
Here is the volume and bass control dials mounted
The next problem to overcome was how to turn on the laptop. I had seen a guide whereby you solder a switch to the laptop for remote powering on-
http://www.mp3car.com/how-to-power-a-laptop/108758-simple-and-clean-remote-laptop-power-switch.htmlhowever, having tested and found which points to solder to, the switch was tiny and would just not take anything being soldered to the tiny points.
So the solution came in hacking the laptop's power on panel down a bit and placing it close to a hole that you can reach it from. This was a little tricky as the ribbon was not very long and everything had to be installed around this power button being accessible by that hole
Another inside photo. Here you can see more wires, two of the speakers at the back, and one of the two USB powered fans (these are meant to go under laptops to keep them cool but do the job for a couple of £)