First Time Arcade Cabinet Project

[wemr97dl]

Hi everyone I have been looking at this site for almost a year and finally started my first Cabinet as a project for me and my son(16). Its a console cabinet I picked up from a local video game dealer/repairman in December. I looked at a few cabinets before purchasing this one I just think the set up is perfect for a 4 player system, plenty of room and your set back from the screen a bit. My original plan was to get custom artwork but after going back and forth with my son about a theme we finally decided on a tron look but not really a tron theme using LED's and fiber optics,and pitched the custom artwork idea. I think it's going to be pretty unique.
Using Ipac 4 for controls, 2 pacled64's. and a few Nano Led's for all the lighting.

Here's a few pics of our project.
the cabinet to start

[wemr97dl]

A pic of the sub woofer box and speaker controls installed

[wemr97dl]

Here are some cabinet pics during modify, I pulled of the box on the back for the display and prepped for the LCD screen (32")
Also cut of the rear legs of the base and moved the casters forward so the cabinet assembled would fit close to the wall. Had to cut access to the speaker cavities so I could put the speakers in whole.

[Billabong]

A pic of the sub woofer box and speaker controls installed

In the second picture, is the box with silver brackets the amp? Did that come with the cabinet?

Also, just IMO, I think wire loom would look nicer than the foam. Just a thought. http://www.delcity.net/store/Split-Wire-Loom/p_800821

Keep up the good work and more pictures!

[wemr97dl]

The subwoofer was a box that came with the speaker set for my old computer I just section off the same square inches for the speaker sealed it up with silicone and ran the tube down through the base to the floor.
 

[wemr97dl]

All patched and primed, in the third pic you can see the repair on the front of the pedestal for  the Four Slot Coin Controls Door, originally had a two slot,  that I got for an even swap for the 2 slot from the man I bought the cabinet from. I'm going to use it for credits, I've searched the internet for different color buttons and so far have a Green, 2 Amber and the Red originals, Still need a Blue, but if I can't find one I think I can make the Amber Blue with a RGB LED.

[wemr97dl]

Here's my idea for the control panel, sort of a sunburst pattern using fiber optic. The CP will be cut by CNC from a friend of mine and adding slots for the optics to lay in wont be a problem, still a long way from done. Thats just a 5v led lighting it.

[wemr97dl]

Got the Paint finished and T molding installed We hauled it down the basement and put it together, one nice thing about this style cabinet its not to bad to move, it breaks down into five parts, CP, CP Base, Display and its base and the marque. Great for going into the basement.

[wemr97dl]

The console is Curved on the front and had a piece of plexi to protect the monitor, not sure if I'm going to put it back in or not, I'll probably make a Bezel for the monitor and mount it flat, to avoid any issues with the light guns, they say to mount the receiver just above the screen, don't know how much trouble I'd make myself with curved plexi trying to calibrate the guns?

We installed the gun holsters, USB Ports, and cooling fans

[wemr97dl]

Bought a heady duty appliance cord for power and wired in an outlet, then started putting in all the hardware
-smartstrip, usb hubs and computer, its a little tight.
Color coded the USB Cables for troubleshooting later most are for RGB lighting using NanoLED's from Ultimarc

[wemr97dl]

Wired a power button on the side of the cabinet you can see the red wires from the top of the PC and stuffed it all in.
All the cables are ran across the top using wire ties trying o keep it as neat as I can with enough cable to remove the computer and still have everything hooked up.
 :)I can still open the disc drive without removing the computer, was a little worried about that.

[wemr97dl]

Broke down the coin door cleaned everything (the gum in the coin return button was a surprise) got it ready for paint

[wemr97dl]

I Bought some perforated steel on ebay to match the hole pattern of my speaker covers, Im going to use it to cover some LED's on the cabinet, cut it to sizes i needed and painted everything

[wemr97dl]

My son setting up all the buttons and the CP assembled

[wemr97dl]

my son landing all the wires to the IPAC4 just for a test, already moved the spinner and i may add 2 more buttons on the top for Volume
Moving along have to have a test run this weekend

[wemr97dl]

  :censored:I had mame running great on this computer and now with everything built and ready to test everything is 
I did a fresh install of windows and now with all the updates Its running  flaky every time i turn it on its installing more!! Hopefully it'll calm down soon, Installed Avast anti virus and i'm wondering if thats it

[wemr97dl]

Finished all the setups and now on to lights, trying to keep it as neat as i can, there is a lot of extra work with this cabinet wiring. I have to set it up so that i can just unplug each piece if i have to move it and not rip out the whole harness. I'm addressable RGB led strips, The speaker covers will defuse the brightness. All I have left for wiring to the CP is the headphone jack and the volume control buttons, long time coming from CHINA.

[wemr97dl]

Haven't showed any progress through the summer, but still moving along , the boys are having some fun
Next up the new control panel with lights and fiber optics

[wemr97dl]

Hey Finally found my 4 color coin return buttons to match the controls

[Kobier]

Love the matching coin buttons, just starting on ideation for my cabinet.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[wemr97dl]

Very Hard to find check out this thread

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,147086.msg1530794.html#msg1530794

[wemr97dl]

Finally Got back to work and made my cp art in gimp was looking for some feedback and maybe some ideas for a name?
Will make bezel and marque to match, don't know about any cabinet art for the sides


The controls are there just to preview, the red flare is the spinner. All of the Colored lines will have side glow fiber optics inlaid into the panel and all covered with plexi

[Yenome]

looking good thus far. im a big fan of showcase cabinets. Been wanting one my self. had even bought two 32in crt for my build. but alas i just ended up letting them go didnt want to haul 175lb up two flights of stairs when i moved.

[Scotty_C]

That lighting on the CP is going to be pretty cool!! I'm jealous of the coin return buttons! Great find there. Will be watching this build

[wemr97dl]

I went with a flat screen, I had to get this thing down the basement, it was heavy enough without a CRT, plus I was able to make the back of the cabinet flat so it sits closer to the wall

[wemr97dl]

Opinion?? with light effects or without, Bezel Art

[wemr97dl]

Some primer today, paint tomorrow

[wemr97dl]

Painted and Ready for artwork Im just hedging a bit on the 2 mouse buttons above the trackball ??
Test fitted  of the art to make sure everything lines up

[wemr97dl]

Here's some Artwork, Opinions welcomed
Any Thoughts on the Names

[Aceldamor]

Nice work so far! Showcase cabs aren't too common round these parts any more so it's refreshing to see one pop up.

The art is interesting.

The one thing i'm having a hard time with is the randomness of the colored electricity on the marquee art, yet the CP has those clean lines. If you're married to the idea of using both types of art, i would probably find a way to merge the two (perhaps busted neon tubes, or diodes or something) in the bezel art, so as the eye moves from top to bottom or vice versa, the art makes sense. I'd also find a way to have the crazy electricity perhaps make the letters of whatever name you choose "charge" the lettering so they glow in the corresponding color. That way it highlights the name. As it sits, all that colored electricity just overpowers it and it doesn't pop.

Just my $ .02 though.

As for the name, perhaps something a wee bit more catchy...like the "ARCade" or something like that. 

[wemr97dl]

Now that I Look at it to much lightning, toned it down and added more glow behind the lettering, also added "falling plasma bolts"? to match CP art may do the same with bezel.
I love the cabinet its perfect for 4 player, I went 50" wide for some elbow room and it looks proportioned perfect to the cabinet, it takes up some room by its not an issue for me.

[wemr97dl]

Wanted to update
It's been very slow going, Ordered my Art work from Joe Szabo, looks great and I thought the price was good.
Cut the Bezel from 1/4"in black plastic sheeting I had and uncased the IR Tracking and mounted it to the back, I added a Piece of aluminum L to stiffen it up for handling 

[wemr97dl]

Put in the marque then ran into problems with the CP, When I put it on the cabinet it had Warped??
 I had it cut on a CNC out of MDF , I don't know if it was from the groves I had cut for the Fiber Optics or when I painted
I tried putting Aluminum L channel across the width of it and it was still curled up on the ends. So I  bought a sheet of Furniture Grade Plywood and cut a new one, had to wait 2 weeks for a 5mm router bit to redo the fiber optic slots, then repainted.
I WILL NEVER USE  MDF AGAIN!!
Here's a couple pics
You can see the Fiber optics laid in the Groves and they already are taking on the color without the lights hooked up 

[wemr97dl]

Finally nearing the End
Been a long time since the last update, everything sorta blew up on me
First off the side glow fiber optics did not work out, after installing them you could barely even tell they were on, so I ordered EL Wire and Optic Isolated contact boards to run them from the Pac64, the EL Wire I ordered was 5 mm to match the Fiber optics I had, but they wouldn't fit they were slightly over sized and I didn't want to force them, even tried putting them in the freezer overnight but no luck, so I then order 3.2 mm and had to put somethin under them to raise them up even with the panel surface. Thin wire tie cut offs worked perfectly.

[wemr97dl]

You can see in the Pic's I decided to home run all the grounds just in case I have to replace them later, and I didn't want to do any soldering over my controls and wiring.

Horay!! I'm done, not!!

Downloaded LED Blinky and started to generate my Map, wait, I have 6 NANO Leds for my addressable LEDS and 2 Pac64's for the CP lighting,
Tried everything including new firmware from Andy and everytime I tried addressing the Nanos to anything above a 3 the firmware would fail 
So Andy agreed to return them 
Gave up on that for now and again started my LED Blinky map???
Hey now some of my Keys wont work from my IPAC4???
Tested them and over 20 of the outputs only showed 2.3v and one less than 1 volt, What happened???
The only thing I could guess is all the playing with Ultimarc Firmware and adjusting brightness trying to get the NANO's to work, somehow I screwed up the IPAC
Back to Andy who agreed to look at it and repair or replace it, Mailed it out never to be seen again 
After 7 weeks Andy just sent me a replacement

In the meantime had to fix the cabinet lighting, so I took out all the addressable LED strips and replaced them with regular RGB Strips, had to run wire all the way back to the CP from the speakers and Main Cabinet, but it gave me something to do while I waited for the IPAC4 replacement

Finally got it last week and rewired all the controls over the weekend see video link

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCssqGCnDgDgoSatAGqKso9w

[wemr97dl]

Now I am trying to hook up Mosfets to run the RGB Cabinet lighting from the PAC64, ordered some IRL540N but they won't turn on, they are N channel and I guess I need P Channel so I'm trying to find ones that will work, the most I am going to draw is just under 1 Amp, and I have 11 segments to run so I want to make sure they will work before I order any more.

That's about it for now will post again when I figure out the Mosfets

[acvieluf]

Freakin' A, that CP looks great!

 

[wemr97dl]

Thanks it's certainly taking long enough

[wemr97dl]

CALLING IT DONE
I never did update this since it was done so I figured I'd show everyone.
Never did get the mosfets to work with my pac64 so I ended up buying a couple of driver boards from ZEBS to Drive the RGB Led strips. I have been tinkering with it seems like forever but its all software so I'm calling it DONE.
I had CP wizard working with it for mame and started working with CPWizBiz for all the other systems, but started noticing the computer seemed to get slower and slower. So ordered a new I5 Gaming rig a couple of months ago and started over with a fresh install of Rocket Launcher and Launch box/Big Box, so far I really like the look of it and it is pretty easy to set up stand alone. Its a little more work using Rocket Launcher but I don't want to give up Bezels which launch box currently does not support. There are some quarks with Launch Box and MAME as far as importing, but it is getting better and the development is very active with a very active community. Real quick responses on the site and very helpful tutorials.
I still have my Hyperspin set up and can run both, My son and his friends still like it better.

[wemr97dl]

A bit more

[yotsuya]

Good thing you didn't build an aircraft carrier. We would have to pants you at ZapCon if you did.

[wemr97dl]

A bit of wiring