Popcade - Mini Joust Cabinet

[digitalchild]

I recently completed my MAME cabinet and wanted to share it with everyone here.  I have been reading these forums for months now, and am continually inspired and humbled by what I have seen.  I'd like to offer this as a sincere "thank you" to all of you who unknowingly have helped and motivated me through my build.

I live in NYC, and as a family of four, space is at a premium.  When I saw this build, I knew that a mini cabinet was the way to go:
http://www.e-basteln.de/asteroids/asteroids_intro.html

I thought it would be fun to build a mini cabinet representing each major manufacturer (i.e. Williams, Atari, Bally \/Midway, etc), and only install games on each cabinet from that particular manufacturer.  My goal was to select what I considered to be the archetype cabinet from that company, and from that era (circa early 80s).

First up was Williams.  I chose Joust as the cabinet because 1. Joust is an awesome game, 2. the game natively has two joysticks, opening the possibility of more games, and head-to-head/cooperative games.

I feel that in addition to the game itself (graphics, sounds, and gameplay), the artwork itself that came with each different cabinet was as important in recreating a real nostalgic feel.  I decided to include bezel graphics in all the games I put on the machine, and wondered if I could somehow include marquee graphics as well.  After a lot of searching I found a small, narrow LCD that looked like the right aspect ratio for marquee images.  Since I was originally planning on running MAME on an RPi, I figured I would have a second RPi dedicated to driving the marquee LCD (with a little glue code in there to get the two Pis to talk to each other).  As it turned out, the RPi wasn't up to the task of playing games with the bezel overlay composited on top of game play, so I switched to an older P4-based compact Dell desktop.

After digging through BYOAC I discovered that MAME does in fact support two monitors, so I was in business!

I drew up plans for a Joust cabinet on Visio and shrank them down until they fit the measurements of the now de-cased marquee monitor.  From here I was able to determine what size LCD panel I needed to get, how much room I had on the control panel for joysticks and buttons, etc.

I started working on plans in March of this year (2013), started cutting wood (1/2" MDF) in April, and had a working machine with a beta control panel by mid-summer.  in August I rebuilt the control panel out of a piece of sheet metal, and applied side vinyl side art and CPO just this past Thursday (9/19/2013).

Next up is either mini Ms. Pac Man or mini Centipede.

I'd like to thank:
1. thisoldgame.com for beautiful printed art (sides and CPO)
2. KADE for the keyboard encoder
3. Mr. Do at mameworld.info for in game artwork and .LAY files.
4. everyone here who has posted build threads detailing their work.

I just showed it this past weekend at Maker Faire in Queens, NY.  The attached photos of Popcade were taken there at my booth.

Thanks for reading!

[matsadona]

Well done, it really looks good.

I did a similar build a while ago, but based on a CRT and fully Jamma compatible.

[digitalchild]

Well done, it really looks good.

I did a similar build a while ago, but based on a CRT and fully Jamma compatible.

Thanks for the feedback!

I would have loved to put a CRT in my machine but:
1. I'm not sure I would have had the depth and
2. I wouldn't have been able to include bezel graphics around game play

I'd love to see your build.  Link?

[digitalchild]

Here are highlights from the build.

1. Plans were drawn in Visio and printed 1:1.  I had originally tried tracing Jakobud's plans but found they were not 100% accurate, so I ended up tracing the outline of Moon Patrol side art for the silhouette.

2 Prints were cut out and spray mounted to 1/2" MDF.  Pieces were then cut using a jigsaw.

3. With both sides cut, I checked against my cardboard mock-up to make sure I was on track, and to get a good feel for the size of it.

4. I repeated the process for the cross pieces...

5. ...and for the temporary control panel (which ultimately I scrapped in favor of sheet metal)

[digitalchild]

6. Holes were pre-drilled and countersunk.

7. Cross pieces were screwed directly to the sides, using the original print out as guides.

8. Other side was fitted and secured with screws

9. Starting to look like an arcade game!

10. My kids were pretty excited

[digitalchild]

11. Hook up the LCD controller to the panel.  You can see the RPi on the left.  Shea Silverman did a great job with pimame.org, but unfortunately the RPi itself wasn't up to the task.

12.  Aaaaaaaaand...we have a picture!  At this stage of the build, I was still running off the RPi.

13. De-casing the marquee LCD

14. Marquee LCD de-cased and showing a test image off the RPi

15. Test fitting the primary panel.  You can also see the CPO as well.  I had to do a lot of editing to get the original overlay to fit.  I printed onto legal-sized paper to check my edits and make sure it fit.

16. Test fitting the marquee LCD

[digitalchild]

17. Now on to the cabinet internals.  I mounted plastic u-channel to hold the plexi. I originally used the same plastic u-channel to mount the LCD panel, but it was too tight and I replaced it with aluminum.

18. Added PCB mounts for all the electronics.  Show here is the LCD controller.  You can also see cutouts for the multi-pin connector at the top, and the inverter connector at the bottom.

19. LCD controller mounted. 

20. Rinse and repeat for all other PCBs, including the PC motherboard, power and USB daughter boards, USB encoder (http://kadevice.com), and marquee LCD keypad.

21. Power supply was mounted using aluminum L-brackets.  I used +12 and +5 off the power supply to power the LCD panels, the LEDs for the coin door, and the speakers.

[digitalchild]

And now the software...

22. As I mentioned earlier, I was originally using an RPi.

23. But I switched over to a PC running Windows XP because it ran faster with the bezel and marquee graphics, and with native dual-monitor support, I just needed to add an inexpensive graphics card. (btw - I'm running a little out of sequence here, as you can see the PC to the right sitting on the cabinet that I showed in previous pics de-cased and being mounted inside the machine.)  To get bezel and marquee graphics working, I started with Mr. Do's .LAY files.  Then I found marquee images and updated the .LAY files to include them.  I repeat this process for every game I add.

24. Another shot showing Bubbles to give you an idea of what the marquee panel looks like when you switch from game to game.  Most folks either don't notice it, or think it's a backlit translite or piece of plexi.

25. By this point I had built a beta control panel so I could test-fit my CPO and actually play some games.  Unfortunately, I don't have pics of the build, but it was constructed out of 1/2" MDF and was just held in place by gravity.

26. I then installed MALA for my frontend and designed this skin for it.  Since I plan on creating a machine for each manufacturer, I created what I consider to be a "Williams" color scheme for this machine and put the Williams logo in the top right corner.  I've already created themes for other manufacturers.

27. For the cabinet pic, I used Sketchup.  Someone who goes by "Gozer" created models for hundreds of machines.  I then downloaded a two-week trial of Shaderlight and rendered cabinet images for all the games I planned on including.

[digitalchild]

After I built the beta control panel in MDF, I rebuilt it in metal for the final version.

28. I used 22 gauge steel.  I would have like to have used 16 gauge but Home Depot didn't have any.  I quickly built a brake, measured the opening in the cabinet, measured the desired angle, clamped it in and bent it.

29. I printed my final CPO onto paper and spray mounted it to my blank CPO to use as a cut guide.  My wife bought me a drill press for my birthday.  She's awesome.  I then drilled out the holes for buttons, joysticks, joystick mounting points, and hinge mounts.

30. Holes drilled, surface sanded, hinge and clamps mounted, and JB weld applied.

31. While it was setting, I clamped a piece of scrap MDF underneath (with wax paper in between) so the joystick mounts would remain straight up and down.  When the JB weld finally set, I sanded it flush and painted it with primer.

32. Final control panel with everything mounted and wiring in place.

[digitalchild]

And now....finishing.

33. I filled in all the screw holes with bondo and sanded them flush with the cabinet.

34. Sides got multiple coats of primer.  I used brown brown since the main color in the vinyl overlay is brown too.

35. Now for the truly nerve-racking part: applying the side art.  thisoldgame.com did a beautiful job printing my side art and CPO files.  I first laid out the art on the cabinet and felt for the edges of the machine.  I sized the side art as large as I could, so the tolerances were tight at the point of the lance, the space around the Williams logo, the feathers around the base of the neck, and the toenail of the back leg.  All those areas had to come close to the edge with none of them going over.  I also had to make sure the overall art was parallel to the back of the machine and not leaning forward or back.

36. Once I was confident I had it laid out properly, I used some stone coaster to weight it down in preparation to...

37. ...clamp it down.  Some cloth between the vinyl and the clamps protected the art.  I then trimmed down much of the excess so it would be easier to work with while adhering it to the cabinet.

38. I used a credit card to smooth as I removed the backing.  The whole process was very slow.  When I was done, I pulled off the paper backing from the top side of the vinyl and realized I should have pulled it off BEFORE I mounted it on the cabinet.  It was *really* grippy and wanted to pull the vinyl art back off the cabinet.  You can see some air bubbles at the bottom where it did pull away a bit.  I used an xacto to pop most of the bubbles and smooth them down.  After learning the hard way, I didn't make the same mistake on the other side!  As a side note, you can also see I added leg levelers on the bottom.

The rest of the build was applying CPO artwork and popping in the t-molding.

Thanks for reading!

[matsadona]

I'd love to see your build.  Link?

Here's some pictures and information:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,105790.msg1120585.html#msg1120585