Update: 99.9% complete! P-chan's Pedestal

[P-chan]

Update : see the bottom of this post for the updated images.

Now that all the wood has been cut and I've started screwing the base together, I guess I should create a project thread.

This is going to be a MAME/SF4 pedestal that will sit a few feet from the wall where a LCD TV is mounted.

Here is the initial design:



And what the side will look like:



The control panel layout has changed since I drew this up :



Now it is considerably wider (38") and has space in between the players for an LCD monitor to be mounted.  The mounted LCD will display button config information for each game using CPWizard.

Here is the control panel artwork that I have already sent to be printed (6 buttons each player, plus P1 start, P2 start, and one admin button for each side, which will probably be a dedicated "shift" button unless someone has a better idea):



Sort of what it will look like (this doesn't have the LCD in the control panel)



I really wanted to do red laminate on the sides, but as I couldn't really find either item I needed to make it happen (red laminate or 5/8" MDF), I went with 3/4" MDF and am going to carefully sand, primer, and paint it.


I have two U360 Joysticks with octagonal restrictors designed by elkameleon and 3D printed by a friend of mine :



My friend also took the dimensions of the standoffs and printed me some standoffs and washers.  These along with some 4mm screws, should get the result I'm looking for.







Big props to Nephasth who measured the "official" standoffs for the octo restrictor for me.  I couldn't have done it without that.



Last night I assembled the floor and the front and rear panels of the pedestal.  I have all the panels roughed out, but my next cuts will be the side panel curves.  After that I can attach the sides.  Once I get the artwork, I will start on the control panel.  While I'm waiting, I will fill all the countersunk screw holes with drywall putty, sand the whole thing, and give it a few coats of primer.  The sides will be that bright red, and the front and rear panels will be black.  The T-molding has been ordered and shipped and it is also black.

I am ordering the Neo-Geo graphics ( yeah, I know on the CP artwork I should have done a Samurai Shodown theme ) from emdkay:  ( http://emdkay.net/catalog/cabinet-side-6piece-mvs213-mini-p-1275.html )

Anyone have experience with ordering from emdkay?  Good? Bad?  They look to be the best price.

Also possibly looking for a non-functional, cheap coin door for the front.

Update 4/30/12: Control panel is built. Monitor mounted on the rear, will display button configs using CPwizard.  Next is to wire up the buttons and test it out.  

There's a few things I would do differently and a few cosmetic things I don't like about this one, but they're pretty small things in the grand scheme.  Trying to mount plexi over a graphic in a dusty environment is the SUCK.  I've got two rather large pieces of dust on the monitor (under the plexi) and there is nothing I can do about it.  No freakin way I'm taking everything off again.  












Update: 5/8/12:



See last post in the thread

Update 5/19/12 :










And today the side graphics arrived from Emdkay:




I say it's 99.9% complete because I haven't installed and configured CPwizard yet (runs the secondary monitor for Button configs), which during my testing, only took a couple hours to get running right.

Also, I need to paint the wall and the white conduit I have HDMI and power running through

Right now I am just using the HDTV speakers for sound, my HIS Radeon 5770 outputs great sound through HDMI natively, works great!

[elkameleon]

You never got my standoffs to work then, huh? KIDDING! Good work, those should work just as well. I need to get me one of them 3d printers.

[Nephasth]

Awesome to see the printed restrictor plates installed!

I need to get me one of them 3d printers.

+1! The things I would do if I had one...

[P-chan]

You never got my standoffs to work then, huh? KIDDING! Good work, those should work just as well. I need to get me one of them 3d printers.

Not your fault, the threads didn't print well enough and I didn't want to tap threads in the plastic on something like this.  I didn't trust ABS threads not to get loose over time on the restrictor plate.

Your help was really invaluable, it looks like these plates work great, but of course I have to wait until it's all up and running for the real test. 

[P-chan]

Awesome to see the printed restrictor plates installed!

I need to get me one of them 3d printers.

+1! The things I would do if I had one...

Honestly, there are a handful of uses, but for me, it's not worth the ~$600+ to build one, especially when I have a friend who has one!  I actually have a second friend who also has one, so I even have a backup.  They're pretty cool to mess around with, but this is the first application that has been really useful. 

I take that back, I believe he also printed a custom enclosure for some electronic project another friend was working on.  To make it really useful you need to have some modeling skill.  elkameleon could certainly put it to good use.

[elkameleon]

Awesome to see the printed restrictor plates installed!

I need to get me one of them 3d printers.

+1! The things I would do if I had one...

Dildo bat.

[P-chan]

Here is the box.  Front, rear, and bottom.   The rear panel has the cutout for the access door.





The front is 37" tall and the rear is 39" tall.  Coupled with the 3/4" thick control panel and the plexi, the joystick/button height will be at a slight angle upwards.

[P-chan]

Bump, control panel is built!  Pics in first post.

[Unstupid]

Your drill bit slip when drilling the holes for the bottom row of the blue buttons?

[P-chan]

Your drill bit slip when drilling the holes for the bottom row of the blue buttons?

Yeah   It's actually a measuring error on my part.  It's only off by like 1/8" or something, it looks worse than it is.  When you're playing you don't even notice 

[P-chan]

Update: here's a gratuitous shot of SFIV arcade edition running on the CP monitor.




This will be a secondary monitor running CPWizard to display button configurations.  The actual "monitor" used for playing will be a widescreen HDTV mounted on the wall in front of the pedestal.  

I already bought the wall mount and it will rotate 90deg for vertical games.  TV is on the way.

All the woodwork is done, paint is done, I'm moving it from the garage into the house tonight, and then I just have to put the hinges on for the rear door, install the cabinet fan and electrical cord, and attach the CP (I'm using a piano hinge), then toss the motherboard/powersupply in.

The computer is a 3.4Ghz Dual core Pentium D, 4GB ram, 32GB SSD, on Windows XP.  I would have installed Windows 7 but I really wanted to use the SSD and it would have been too tight with a ~15GB Windows 7 install, ~9GB of Super SFIV Arcade, and 2GB of mame/frontend/roms.  XP install is only 3GB vs. 15ish for Windows 7 so I have plenty of free space.

[elkameleon]

Very nice! Makes me want to build a pedestal now too with a big ass rotatable monitor!

[P-chan]

Very nice! Makes me want to build a pedestal now too with a big ass rotatable monitor!

I bought a 40" HDTV and a rotating wall mount, I'm interested to see how it's going to be.

[elkameleon]

The point of a huge flatscreen is that there's no need to rotate it.   

But can you imagine vertical shooters on that? AWWWWW YEAHHHH!!!

[P-chan]

Update 5/19/12 :










And today the side graphics arrived from Emdkay:




I say it's 99.9% complete because I haven't installed and configured CPwizard yet (runs the secondary monitor for Button configs), which during my testing, only took a couple hours to get running right.

Also, I need to paint the wall and the white conduit I have HDMI and power running through

Right now I am just using the HDTV speakers for sound, my HIS Radeon 5770 outputs great sound through HDMI natively, works great!