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Raspberry Pi full size cabinet

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VDfreesince1983:
So I just joined the forum. I recently bought a raspberry Pi for the purpose of Universal emulation not just arcade emulation. I have a programmer working on a intuitive GUI that will let me choose from various emulated CPUs (SNES, Arcade, NES, Sega and so on). the Cabinet and wood work isnt an issue. but the control im finding difficult to devise a plan, since everything needs to be done as cheap as possible, so no specialized controllers everything made from scratch or spare parts. i guess my major limitation is the two USB ports that the raspberry pi B uses and the 4 joysticks and 22 buttons i want on the controller. my first idea was to use 4 6 button USB controllers tear them apart and wire the buttons onto those, use a USB hub to connect all four connections to the Pi. Then I thought it might be more prudent to tear a keyboard apart and wire the buttons onto that; keyboards are wired in serial and have a low bandwidth that would cause a Time delay during a 4 player game. Ive read several articles on various controllers that will do the job I-pac4 and others, but these are to pricey for the project and to specialized. can anyone refer me to maybe another forum post or offer any ideas. i know 65 dollars is isnt that much for a solution but my experiment is based in Frugality. here is my price list so far.

22 happs buttons and 4 8-way joysticks: $50
Raspberry Pi B: $35
Wood and laminating materials: $50
32 inch 4:3 CRTV from a thrift store: $20
4 chilled cup holders: $20  :cheers:

Unstupid:
Questions:
How are you going to go from Happ Buttons to USB?
What 4 player games do you expect to be able to play on a Pi?

raungst:
Unless you have laminate/wood already, I think you'll find MDF/MDO and laminate will run much more than $50 for a full size cabinet.

DaveMMR:
If you want to save money, a four player cab ain't the best way. You'll be spending more on the wood and laminate than $50 as raungst stated (closer to $100+.) Then to get everything to work together nicely, you're going to need more than just a Pi.

Ditch the Pi and cup holders, use part of those savings to pay for the wood and a cheap encoder and find someone to give you an old computer that was just going to be tossed anyway.

Or better yet, re-evaluate your priorities. I've seen cabinets done inexpensively, but more often than not, a lot of the materials/hardware was already on-hand. Starting from scratch, it's going to be really difficult to get satisfying results from a really tight budget.

VDfreesince1983:
im running the microswitches just like they normally would be for the control and then sending them through multiple USB connectors, and writing the drivers in linux or im going to solder them to a device that already uses USB and into the pi. on the wood my neighbor is a carpenter and has some large scrap pieces he is going to give me, and the rest ill just buy from lowes. I want to be able to do the TMNT games the simpsons, the D&D game. nothing past 1995. and im not looking for doing any high end emulation like MAME. because i don't think the pi is there yet


also ive got a local artist who wants to paint the sides, so they might end up vanished instead of laminated

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