SpacePad - a lap-top/desk-top Frankentroller

[Dan Efran]

I've started cutting wood, so I guess it's official: I'm building a controller.

After probably two decades without a proper game of Assault, I decided to go ahead and buy a pair of trigger sticks and slap them in some kind of box so I could MAME my favorite game with the proper control scheme. Keyboards and gamepads are nothing like a pair of sticks with triggers. I figured I don't need a whole cabinet - I've got a computer, after all - just the equivalent of a USB gamepad, but built to the proper scale. Something I can just barely rest in my lap, or set on a desk.

Ultimarc seemed to be the source for the trigger stick I wanted - the MiniGrip. In typical fashion, somehow by the time I checked out, my shopping cart had grown! Starting with two joysticks for Assault, I found I had added a dozen buttons and a pair of E-sticks (4-way/8-way switchable without tools, and easily rotated for Q-bert diagonal 4-way).

And a MiniPac interface board, and a pre-crimped wiring harness to go with it. (Cheating, perhaps, but that's a huge number of crimps. I hate crimping.)

I'd started out planning to gut an old controller I hate, and solder everything into it. The standard controller mod, no problem. I could have put the whole thing together for the price of the joysticks, filling in with stuff I already had sitting around.

But for the Frankentroller I was now envisioning, I want only the best hardware and, ideally, no soldering at all. I've settled on a two-sided lap or desk controller box, about 18 inches wide by 14. From one side you can play assault; turn it around for a wide assortment of games, including Asteroids, Pac-Man, Defender, Robotron, Q-bert, 2-player Tetris, even pinball.

Oh, and for the complete, compleat arcade experience in your lap, a coin slot too. With a classic "push to reject" button that, in classic style, will not return your coin.

I've got to get back to the workshop, so I'll have to tease you with only that brief description. Pics, drawings, and more mad ravings another time....

[Vigo]

I love the term you coined there, Frankentroller. 

[Dan Efran]

  Thanks, I like it too. Seems apt. I've done a blitz of research, mostly here, in the last few days, but there didn't seem to quite be a single word for this thing I'm building.

I'm still not sure what to call this specific project, either. The working title is SpacePad (as in Spaceport + Gamepad, I guess) but I'm not set on that.

[Generic Eric]

So its like an x arcade on your lap?

Using a wiring harness is not cheating.

[Slippyblade]

...a coin slot too. With a classic "push to reject" button that, in classic style, will not return your coin.

Ok, this made me chuckle.    Gonna put a few cigarette burns into the overlay to aid in that "authentic" veneer?

[pbj]

 

[Dan Efran]

So its like an x arcade on your lap?

Yeah, pretty much.

[johnrt]

[Dan Efran]

Forsooth! 

So. First there was a crude sketch:



Dot dot dot.

[Dan Efran]

Gonna put a few cigarette burns into the overlay to aid in that "authentic" veneer?

  Indeed, it's genuinely tempting to weather the finish. If I was building a full cab, I would seriously, seriously consider doing exactly that. Cigarette burns from a real cigarette; kick the base every time I go by; maybe spill a drink on it.

I'm planning a plastic overlayer, and I was going to use a really beat-up old piece of plastic I had. It would have had a nice pre-weathered look. But then...funny story. (Getting ahead of myself but whatever.)

I was ready to make my first few cuts. Mid afternoon, yesterday. Brought all the wood and tools outside. Then the sky darkened - fast, like theater lights going down - and suddenly wind was gusting everywhere. A blast of wind pulled my antique plexi out of my grasp and dashed it to the ground, snapping off two corners. Bang!

Then the rain started. I hastily moved all the wood under an almost-sheltering overhang, and then stubbornly raced through my most critical cuts anyway. The wind had stopped and I didn't know how much worse the rain would get before it got better. My work area stayed mostly dry, but one board stuck out past the shelter and got a bit rained on.

Dumb idea, really - my longest, nicest board got wet and TOTALLY BENT out of shape.  But only at the far end; I got the pieces I wanted. So far.

Really, I could have just moved inside!  I prefer to saw outdoors, but this is ridiculous.

Anyway, my point is that a stormcloud stole my plexi. So I got a brand new piece of plastic after all, and I think I'll try to keep it looking new-ish.

Now, I've gotten ahead of my pictures. Where was I? Ah yes.

So, I had some sketches and a plan, but I wanted to prototype the proportions. I wanted to feel it before I built it.

I had a cardboard box that was close to the size of the controller I wanted. (It's the box from Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! - a very cool LEGO set, itself an homage to 1980s style. Appropriate.)



I printed out some buttons, put tape loops on the back for easy re-positioning on the glossy box, and started prototyping in 3-D, the cheap way.



I made some joystick mock-ups out of card stock and taped those on too. While my son was at some kid's birthday party, I sat in the car and shifted buttons here and there, until I had a layout I loved.



Then it was time to acquire the necessary parts and start building. I'll tell about that soon, but right now it's five minutes to midnight and I'm going back to the workshop. I've made some progress but there's lots more to do. Stay tuned.

[Dan Efran]

I made some more progress last night, and more this morning. But telling the tale - roughly in order - is part of the fun, so let's go back to Tuesday. My cardboard planning was done, I had some sketches of various corner joins and hinges and other madness I have yet to tangle with. I had a plan!!  I looked over my leftover wood and found that I've got most of the wood I need. Enough MDF that I could have used that, too, but I can't stand that stuff. Real wood for me.

But I was all out of hinges, and I wanted a big curve for the palm-rest area. Like some big quarter-dowel molding, or preferably a chunk off an old art deco dresser or something. Either way, not something I wanted to pay full price for, nor sand out of a 2x2 myself.

So tuesday I went to Construction Junction. This is a non-profit store, a big warehouse full of donated salvaged building materials - doors, doorknobs, hinges, toilets, paint, a bit of random furniture, sometimes an organ or a colossal stained glass window or some huge doors or something...and scrap wood that used to be all sorts of things. Wonderful place. And it's only a few miles from me!  Off I went.

Sure enough, they had exactly the curved piece I wanted: big, solid, plenty long enough for both sides, and $1. Looks like it used to be part of a nice staircase or a pew or something. Who knows, who cares. I'm going to say it was part of a pew. Pew pew pew!



This will come right up to the edge of the top control panel on each "front" edge, like this:



Which should make a very comfortable curve under the player's hand.



I also picked up some cheap, huge hinges. Overkill, but should work out fine. And a prop rod.



You can also see one of my boards for the main control panels, and the reddish plywood visible below these parts will become the bottom of the box - it's only about 1/4" but seems very stiff and sturdy.

That's all for now, the workshop is calling me.

[Xiaou2]

Had similar idea long ago.   Good to see some innovation.   Not sure I understand what controllers are which...
Some quick advice... make the box like a roof top.  Two a angled panels that meet in the center.  That will be more.comfortable for the wrist... and true to the arcade design... for that very reason.

 You can place pinball buttons on the front face of each control panel... and place a plunger on the side face.

 Wrists shouldn't hang off the  cp,  as that would require muscular effort to maintain.. possibly creating carple tunnel damage from constantly "on "  muscles.  Beveled conrners are merely nice to keep damage to inlaid plexi.. and or accidentally scraping the arms over the edge.   For greater comfort... things like gel or foam cushions.. would be appropriate.   Additionally,  fan forced cooling holes would be good as well.

 And if theres room..might as well toss in 2 bass shakers. You can get some aura bass shakers at parts express.  You will feel every hit/explosion. .. without the need for mega power /  loud  subwoofers.

[Xiaou2]

To better describe this. .. think abould your pcs keyboard.  You rest your wrist flat on your desk. .. well supported, and not much lower than the keys.   Lowering further, wouldcause you to loose mechanical leverage advantage.  Causing more finger power and thus.. straining.   Add a gel wrist wrest.. and you now raise your wrist about 3/4"... and add mechanical advantage. .. as well as comfort.

 Try both a tabled wrist "finger tap".. and a tap with wrists about 1" off the table.... Notice the reduced wrist and finger strain.

[Dan Efran]

Some quick advice... make the box like a roof top.  Two a angled panels that meet in the center.

Good idea. I've considered that, and it's pretty tempting, but I'm pretty sure a flat top will be good enough. It's easier to cut, and the whole box is only going be about 4 inches tall. If I'm not satisfied with the flat top I'll definitely pull the top panels off and angle them as you suggest.

Not sure I understand what controllers are which...
You can place pinball buttons on the front face of each control panel... and place a plunger on the side face.

All will be revealed in good time.

Wrists shouldn't hang off the  cp,  as that would require muscular effort to maintain.. possibly creating carple tunnel damage from constantly "on "  muscles.  Beveled conrners are merely nice to keep damage to inlaid plexi.. and or accidentally scraping the arms over the edge.   For greater comfort... things like gel or foam cushions.. would be appropriate.   Additionally,  fan forced cooling holes would be good as well.

It's best to keep your wrist straight, in line with the rest of your arm, so the carpal tunnel isn't bent when you're using it. (It's like a bicycle brake cable - still works when bent, but with more internal friction. It's that friction that causes inflammation and damage, not constantly 'on' muscles. Note that my wrist in the picture does not hang down. It's straight.)

So for typing you probably shouldn't have your hands resting on anything at all. Hold them up, like when playing piano. Top of your hand level with the top of your arm. I'm not an ergonomics expert but I think that's safest.

So yeah, the curved front is more about comfort between games. This thing will be sitting in my lap; I don't want it scraping up my arms.

No idea what you're talking about cooling with fans.  My wrists? No thanks.

I don't want extra bass shaking my thighs, either - my computer's already got a big subwoofer, and nice headphones for after hours - but it's a good thought. Thanks for the suggestions, keep 'em coming. 

[Dan Efran]

I don't want extra bass shaking my thighs, either

I must say, though, I'm just a little bit tempted to put in a Q*bert knocker, like I just saw mentioned here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,141265.msg1461909.html#msg1461909

I was really blown away by that knocker effect when Q*bert was new  and I still think it's wonderfully clever.

[Dan Efran]

Okay, so Tuesday was hardware shopping. Wednesday was obsessively waiting for my Ultimarc order to arrive. I'm not the first to report, Ultimarc has some kind of super-powers when it comes to fast shipping. Maybe Andy gets them to fly it over the International Date Line backwards. Does that work?     Or maybe Ulti-Marc is actually a real person: a cyborg with jet boots, like Iron Man?

Online package tracking is great if you like to torture yourself with suspense. (I do.  ) When I went to bed my package was still in England. When I woke up it not only was on my continent, it had already left Cincinnati for Pittsburgh. (The last few hundred miles.) After breakfast, it was already on a delivery truck somewhere in my town!

...and then it drove around town all day, until I'd just finished cooking dinner. Good timing in a way - chores all done, no distractions when I finally got the box open - but I think I burned a week's supply of adrenaline just wondering when it would arrive. (For one thing, from my workshop I can hear cars approaching down our street...but can't see whether they're delivery trucks or not.)

Anyway I'm sure you've all been there. Anyway, the parts all looked essentially perfect but I didn't have time to do more than examine them. And roll around in them a little.

[Dan Efran]

So Thursday (a week ago) I cut most of the wood pieces I needed.

I already mentioned how cutting wood in the rain is not recommended. Since then, the weather has been very "April showers" and I've done the rest of the project indoors. Yay sawdust! My workshop's dust collection system consists of me with a broom.

I drew lines on the main control boards to show where I'll be drilling big holes.

[Dan Efran]

Last Friday started with a trip to the hardware store. Screws of various lengths, a 1-1/8" hole saw for button holes, a fresh sheet of plastic to replace the one the storm smashed.

And a set of Dremel router bits to go with my Dremel plunge router attachment. I've had this thing sitting around, still in its box, for a few years now. I picked it up at a good price because I figured I'd use it someday, but I didn't have a project in mind so it hadn't been used. Until now. I got some bits and set the thing up.

It looks just like a Recognizer from TRON.



I guess that makes sense. It cruises around derezzing wood.



So I drilled some holes for buttons.



Cleaned up those rough edges just a bit with a round file. Then I switched to the Dremel router and rounded the edges slightly.



I didn't want to overdo that. It's important that the button bezels have a flat surface to rest on. But this is just a tiny round to make the board comfortable to handle empty. Not enough to be a problem.



(You can also see a burn line around the hole there. I think that was from the guide section of the router bit. I'm not skilled with this thing, having just started using it. Luckily, this kind of imperfection doesn't matter in this context. The holes are in the right places, that's what matters! 

Finally (FINALLY!) I could put some round pegs into round holes, and actually get a glimpse of how this thing will look and feel.



The MiniGrip trigger sticks that instigated this project came with big dust washers, and have fairly short shafts. Not a good combination, and I'm not a big fan of plastic discs rattling around my controls. I read on these forums somewhere that a good alternative might be simply drilling the smallest possible hole for the stick shaft.

So I wiggled my stick for a while - go ahead and laugh - trying to estimate the clearance it really needed. I settled on like 1/2" or something; your millimetrage may vary. It depends on the mounting height because the shaft in motion describes a cone.

Once I had those holes, I could flip the board over (having drilled them from the good side, in case of tear-out on exit) and trace the corresponding position of the joystick mounting plates.

[BorgDog]

Looking good, I like the frankentroller, but I'm afraid you need to add one more button so you can play one of my favorite games, Space Zap, with the proper controls.

Like so:

[Dan Efran]

Looking good, I like the frankentroller, but I'm afraid you need to add one more button so you can play one of my favorite games, Space Zap, with the proper controls.

Hmmm, Space Zap, you say? I kinda like how that extra button looks, but I can't quite remember which game is Space Zap.

...google google...

Oh, Space Zap! With those funky giant buttons, now I remember. Yeah, that was a fun game.

Yes...I think you're right. I should put in one more button for Space Zap.

That group could then also serve as WASD for PC gaming...or IJKM for emulated Apple ][ games. I mean I'd probably just go back to the keyboard for those kinds of games, but having the cardinal directions available seems wise. Anyway, you're correct, Space Zap is reason enough.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll go drill another hole right now.

[Dan Efran]

Space Zap'd.

[BorgDog]

 

[Dan Efran]

Where was I? Oh yes, on Friday I had traced the MiniGrip mounting plates onto the bottom of panel A.

(I've got two top panels: A for Assault, B for Buttons. Panel A is faintly labeled "B" in pencil, and panel B is labeled "A".  But they're different widths and now that they have control-holes it's quite obvious which is which.)



Ultimarc's joystick mounting kit involves these threaded inserts, a good scheme:



The joystick shafts are pretty darn short for bottom-mounting on this 3/4"-thick board. First I drilled holes for the threaded inserts, from the inside surface almost to the outside surface.

Then I got serious with the Dremel router and carved out a cavity for one of the mounting plates. This would wiggle-proof it with side support and more importantly raise the joystick's guts a few millimeters into the board - closer to the outside.



This must be the real-world skill that Qix was preparing us for. The Wood Recognizer just derezzes anything in its path. Intoxicating power, and the results were everything I'd hoped.



Pretty much a perfect fit. I was a bit surprised it went so well.

My pilot holes were deliberately somewhat small; they weren't perfectly aligned with the mounting plate's holes, so I used the Dremel router to widen and re-center the holes. Then I could put in the threaded inserts.



They went in nice and straight, and right under the mounting plate holes. Confident now, I moved on to the second joystick's mounting area.

Remember that scene in TRON where Flynn commandeers a Recognizer, but before he's really learned to control it, it falls apart into its component polygons?

That's about what happened to mine.

This Dremel router attachment apparently has a tendency to shake itself to pieces. Vibrating machines have a reputation for such problems, but this thing has, like, greased plastic screws. It seems designed to shake itself apart. Well, now I know.

So suddenly knobs and things are falling here and there, and I recognize them in my peripheral vision as parts of the tool I'm using!  I stopped working immediately.

Protip! When parts start falling off your power tools, don't make "just one more cut" before investigating. 

I put the thing back together, and I've been more careful to keep it tightened up between cuts, but I can't find this one part, the sort of brake-shoe-esque friction collar that turns one handle into a depth lock knob. That was a very handy feature for cutting a flat area like this. The second joystick area, done without it, was harder to cut.



But the tool could still maintain a maximum depth, so the final results were just fine.



Whew!

Meanwhile, one of the threaded inserts had gone missing. So I installed 7 out of 8. I figured the last one would turn up again eventually.

I'm still concerned that these joysticks may be too low, since their shafts are so short. If necessary, I can deepen the mounting areas and threaded insert holes by a mm or 2, by revisiting this step. Maybe twice that, if I'm willing to let the inserts show on the top surface. (The CP art would still hide them, but my goal is to have not a single screw showing on the outside of this whole unit, so I hope I don't have to.)

I could even grind down the threaded inserts to be shorter. They're really pretty tall - see this post's second picture. I think they would still work fine with about 3mm taken off the narrow end.

Hopefully the sticks will look fine as is, without all that extra effort. In any case, at this point I was ready to call these control boards finished, and move on to the box that would support them.

Also around this time, I put little keying notches in the holes for the E-Stik joysticks. These mount in a button hole, and can pretty easily be loosened and rotated 45 degrees (e.g. for Q*bert). They have little keying tabs to keep them from turning when you don't want them to, so I made notches for those at 0 and 45 degrees.



Good idea, but I did that too casually, and some of the notches are way too big. They should really be the exact size and position to grip those little tabs snugly. I want to re-do them.

I was thinking I'd have to Bondo those over and cut them again. But looking at that picture just now, I realized that I can just cut new ones at the 90 and 135 degree positions, and use those instead! Whew!

[Slippyblade]

Love the way you explain the tool self destructing.  Quite entertaining!

[Dan Efran]

Yeah, nothing livens up a project like having chunks of your tools wander away. 

I'm delighted that the workpiece wasn't damaged in the chaos. Nor did I lose any blood or body parts: a good day in the workshop!

Getting those joystick mounting areas recessed so neatly on the first try was a big relief, and it was surprisingly easy. (Yay routers! Without some kind of router, I don't think I'd have tried it at all. Hours with a chisel? No thanks. Probably I'd just have switched to a thinner board, and built up edge bracing around those areas: constructive rather than destructive part forming.)

So all that was Saturday.

Last Sunday is when I cut lengthwise slots in a couple of 2x2's. That was hard. I wish I had a table saw or table router - then it would have been easy and quick to rip these slots. I tried dremel router, dremel router with roto-zip saw bit, and hand saw. A combination of them worked okay, but it wasn't fun and one of my pieces has a bunch of ugly wandering "slots" on the underside before I got one that worked.

(It would make sense to give up on this piece and start again, but it's got a nice smooth front and I'll be carving up the bottom later anyway, then mostly hiding it. So I'm keeping this piece despite having experimented on it brutally.)

By now you should be wondering why I was putting slots in 2x2's. Well I'll tell you.

These extend the front and back edges downward, below the curved pieces I've already talked about. Deepening the box. The slots hold the edges of the art and plastic in place. Screws from within the box will be tightened partway, through holes in the art and the plastic. That will lock them in place; the screws will not protrude to show on the exterior of the box; they just go through the art and plastic and engage the far wall of the slot slightly.



There you can see the plastic going into the front slot, and the back slot's screws ready to lock down an edge.

The 2x2's are attached to the curved pieces, forming the front and back walls of the box. When I did this, I let the curved piece hang over the slot a bit, as a last chance to control the width of the slot. Sort of. I was planning on using pretty thin plastic, and my crudely cut slots were way too wide. Maybe 1/4" instead of 1/8" or something. The overhang restricts access to about half of the slot, solving that problem. I had some stiff plastic in place while I clamped these parts and screwed them together, so the alignment would be just right. Awkward, but it worked.

Now the back wall's bottom edge is where the hinges go. They're too big to be mounted directly to this 2x2, but they'll overlap it. From below. They'll underlap it.

I want the hinge axis to be basically inside the box, so that I'm not jabbing my legs with hinge pins when I put this on my lap. Also so that the box opens and closes without much of a gap forming, and so no hinges are visible when you look at the box, even from a fairly low angle.

So the last thing I did on Sunday was to carve out spaces for the hinges to be recessed into. My mangled slot-attempts gave me a head start.



Not my finest work  but it gets the job done.



So that was last Sunday; now I need to go start this Sunday. (Hint: those slots are becoming very relevant.  )

[Dan Efran]

On Monday I made the side panels.



I used some stiff but bendy synthetic molding left over from another project as a sort of spline, to sketch a natural curve. Then I sketched the rest of one panel and cut it out.

Then, as you might guess, I clamped it to the other board and cut that out to match. More or less.

Then I got out my trusty mouse-style sander (looks like a little clothes-iron) and sanded the edges of the clamped-together panels. Then I flipped one over, re-clamped, and sanded both again until they matched again. That little trick makes the curve symmetrical across each panel, as well as matching between them. I also swapped the clamped panels occasionally - changing which of their faces kiss - so that my edge sanding would be even across the edges, not slanted.



I tried rounding the edges of these panels with the dremel router but it was acting up - not keeping a consistent depth, of all things! So I just hit the edges with a bit of sandpaper. I'm working with very soft wood, so I can pretty much sculpt it into arbitrary shapes with a bit of hand sanding.

Then I cut a piece of plywood for the floor of the box. I left the front edge long, so I could adjust the overhang once I worked out some more details about the hinges.

I routed out little grooves along the back edge to countersink the cylindrical parts of the hinges. The flat parts of the hinges will be gorilla-glued flat to the plywood, I think. (It's only about 1/4" thick. I'm not going to put screws through it.)

[Dan Efran]

Tuesday I bought some more wood. I'd hoped to make do with mostly leftovers, but I needed to do some internal framing with nice sharp-edged 1x2's. Rather than plan out every cut 100% in advance, I've been building this box from the outside in, starting from the control panels and those curved pieces. There's a certain amount of improvisation going on here with the framing, as I add boards and screws where they'll fit and do the most good, leaving room for everything that needs to happen later.



When I was adding the crucial strip where the hinges attach to the box, suddenly my drill bit started pulling out bits of metal. I'd put the pilot hole for a screw right through another screw. 

After that I started drawing little x-rays of screw paths. I think from now on I'm always going to draw these little lines for screws near where I'll be cutting. It's so handy.



There you can see where the old screw was, right in the way of the new one. The new one won; I moved the old one. (And replaced it, since I'd drilled into it a bit.  Remember when I went to the store for screws a few days back? Got a big box of this size.)

Anyway, frame frame frame, I made the whole thing rectangular-ish, then squared it up very carefully against the plywood bottom and cover plastic and screwed metal brackets into the corners to keep it square. Not very elegant but it's pretty firm.



Then I could attach the control panels. They're semi-modular: Screwed in from below (screws don't reach the surface) but with just a few screws, so they can be replaced easily. Not that I expect to, but who knows what might break someday. Or I could end up flipping the Assault panel over, if bottom-mounting doesn't give me enough joystick height.



Looky! A box with control holes.



Serious progress; it's crossed over from being an assortment of parts to being an unfinished controller. In an emergency, I could start wiring it up at this stage.

You know, one of those...arcade game emergencies.

Don't pretend you don't have them. 

Now imagine this plastic bent and the side panels on...and everything else done.



Antici....

[Dan Efran]

So with a sturdy box at last, and some real momentum, on Wednesday I attached the side panels, felt around for the ideal pinball button positions, and drilled some holes through the side panels and into the main box.

That's two layers of wood: too thick for mounting buttons. So I created larger access holes through the inner (box) layer, so I could tighten button nuts down to the inside of the side panels. Space was very tight where I wanted to put the pinball flipper buttons. To make room, I had to relocate two of the corner brackets and randomly chop away at some of the box structure.



To do that I mostly just carved around with my biggest Forstner bit, as if I was sculpting ice with a chain saw. Not a great technique; pretty dangerous, I imagine. (Remember the Forstner Bit of Death from The Black Hole? That technique.) But it worked.



After the flipper button holes, I put in holes for the 1 and 2 player start buttons. I was going to put the pair of them together on one side, but there wasn't really room where I wanted them to go. Too many screws in the way. So I decided to put one on each side, not far from the flipper buttons. That will let them double as second-flipper buttons for pinball games with extra flippers. I seem to recall there are some like that. Or they could be Tilt buttons, too.

(I'm kind of tempted to put an actual tilt sensor in this controller. I have one: an old-school mechanical tilt switch. It's a plastic box with a little metal ball inside that touches various combinations of wires when the box is tilted various ways. It would be easy to install, but I don't know if I actually want to try tilting this thing! It's very heavy. Anyway I'm not really a pinball guy, so for now I don't really care enough to bother with the tilt sensor. It's tempting from a completist perspective, but I'm not even putting in a pinball shooter. That's extremely tempting too, but I don't really need it. Maybe I'll add one someday...but for now, no.)

Once I had the holes for the four side buttons - two flippers and two starts - I could determine the final exact location for the coin slot. Lots of screws in the way by now, so options were very limited. Indeed, the spot I chose later turned out to have a screw just barely in the way; I had to relocate that.

The coin accept/reject button/slot bezel is not just rectangular but also slanted, so it needs a slanted rectangular hole. First I traced the bezel's slant angle onto some scrap wood, then drilled a hole in the scrap at that angle. That became a drill angle jig, which I drilled through in the four corners of the spot I wanted the bezel to go.



Once I had the corners drilled out at the proper angle, I sawed from one hole to the next with a hand-held jigsaw - smallest blade I had. That made a rough version of the hole, which I improved to a fairly snug fit by, basically, whittling. I figured I'd wind up whittling before this project was done.



The fit isn't perfect - theres a bit of side-to-side wiggle room - but it's probably going to be good enough. Back view:



Front view:

[Dan Efran]

Thursday I worked on the area behind the coin slot mechanism. The coin button bezel only goes through the outer side panel; it reaches the inner side wall but doesn't collide with it.

Well, almost. There's a few mm at the top that needed a bit of extra clearance.

The coin reject button has a tab sticking out the back; when pressed, this protrudes beyond the bezel, where it can presumably prod a microswitch or something in the coin mech. In my case, a microswitch I'll just mount to the box wall at the right spot.



In any case I needed to cut a slot for the tab, since it extends well beyond the bezel. And a slot for the coin right next to it. I just made one big slot for both. I drilled the start and end points, then just dragged the drill sideways, as if I was using a roto-zip style saw bit. But I wasn't. Just plain old drill bit carvin'. 



I then drilled a hole for the button's spring. Finding the proper spot and angle was a bit tricky, since it's hidden behind the button when the button is in the right place.



This hole goes almost but not quite through the side wall board - not quite penetrating to the box interior. That keeps the spring in place nicely.



(That glowing edge of the spring hole isn't cut through, just thin; without a strong light you can't see it from the box interior. I think the central pilot-point of the Forstner bit might have made a tiny through-hole in the middle there, but that doesn't matter.)

So does it fit?



Yes.



The button action is good - pressing it feels right, and then it springs back. Of course it doesn't do anything yet.

(I'd show you a video clip of the button in action, but uploading the video is...not workin'. Some other time.)

Next I drilled a mounting hole for the lock. The lock I bought conveniently has a locking bar (hasp?) that can be attached in a variety of positions. (It has several mounting slots.) It was straight, but for this box I wanted one with a 90 degree bend. So...I bent it. Messed up the first time and had to bend the other end, but the spare hole was there so the lock is ready. Nothing for it to connect with on the box floor yet, but that'll just be some little bracket.

Then I tried to bend plastic. It...almost worked!  Then I tried to drill plastic. It...didn't work!  Then I went to the store for more plastic!  Then I did a bunch of research on plastic working techniques. 

[Dan Efran]

Friday. Not much to say, but plenty of progress.

I took off the side panels and put a few coats of paint on those, the plywood box-bottom, and the box interior.

For the record, I'm using Rustoleum rattle-can paint-plus-primer. Never tried this paint before, but it looks promising. Black, of course. I only work in black. And sometimes very very dark grey. 



Widened and cleaned up the plastic slots for my new thicker plastic. I was gonna be all clever and frugal and use thin poster-frame plastic - an interesting option if, say, you have a craft store but no hardware store nearby - but I'm experimenting no matter what. I've messed with plastic before, but not big smooth bends and giant holes. Anyway, for the same price as a poster frame, I got some "Optix" acrylic at Lowes. About ten bucks. It's about 2mm thick I think.

So my slots were too thin, is my point. I shaved out some wood with a box cutter and sandpaper. And drilled the pegging holes in one edge of the plastic.



Oh, and I found the eighth joystick-mounting threaded insert. I'd lost one a few days back when I was messing with my so-called router. I'd left a tool drawer open in my workbench (a trashpicked wooden desk). It was in there with the pencils and rulers. Installed it.   

Even less to report for Saturday.

Mounted the plastic by one edge. Look, ma, no hands!



And I rounded up some microswitches for my ghetto coin mech. 

[Dan Efran]

Okay, that brings us to Sunday (April 12) which is when I bent the new, thicker plastic.

When I bent the thiner plastic a few days back, I let it get too hot, and it started to warp, stretch, and shrinkydink in a few places. I was able to massage it back into place somewhat, but after a few days of research and thought, I decided that's a lost cause. The trick is to keep it from ever (ever!) getting hot enough to really distort.

So this time I went very slowly. With the plastic hanging from the box, I set my heat gun to 'low' and gently warmed up the entire area around where I planned to bend, from both sides of the plastic. I gradually focused on a smaller and smaller strip, finally switching to 'high' and heating just where I wanted the bend to happen.



By flexing the plastic gently from time to time I could feel how flexible it was getting. I found that when the acrylic was still cool enough to touch (or nearly so) it would go from being springy to sort of springy-floppy. Not saggy-floppy like a piece of paper - that would be too much. More like thick vinyl, like kitchen floor material. Like, it's flexible but it kinda wants to spring back slowly.

At that point I found that I could start to make slow, gentle bends. Another few minutes of heat would give a really flexible texture, better for tight bends. And just a little bit more heat than that would be too much! Eek!

I used clamps to hold scrap boards against the plastic behind the bend, and pushed more boards against the plastic beyond the bend to shape it. If you have the patience to build an outer form so that you can clamp the plastic between two forms and tighten them as you heat it, that would probably give great results. I just used a few boards to crudely fake that effect, pressing the sheet down evenly. I had to hold the boards in place (some by hand - too awkward to clamp) for quite a while to let the plastic cool in the proper shapes.

I made each bend in multiple passes, letting the plastic cool in between. Partly to stress it more gradually, partly just to see what each bending session had accomplished. Because the plastic was sort of springy while bending, it wasn't always obvious exactly where it would come to rest, until it had cooled.

All this took a long time and was pretty nerve-wracking, since just a minute or two of extra heat would make the plastic start threatening to distort. It went really well, though, overall.





When I made my last bend (with just a few inches of plastic beyond it) I found that the plastic would rear up slightly when the heat gun passed over it - as if the heat gun's fan were just blowing it upward a bit...except it happened whether the gun was blowing up or down on it. It was just flexing a little from the heating. I found that that weird symptom indicated a pretty good working temperature.

When the cover was mostly bent into the right shape, I cut it to length and drilled pegging holes at the far end. That didn't go perfectly - I used a nice plastic scriber but the edge didn't all snap off cleanly. (More than half of it did, though.) So I tried to clean up the edge, made it a bit worse, and ended up with something usable but far from perfect. Luckily this part will be hidden inside the slot.



The pegging holes (as I call them) are meant to be locked in place tightly by screws. Which means the screws don't actually fit through the holes, they're supposed to just wedge into them partway. And this has to happen where I can't really see it. Tricky.


 
But it worked pretty well. I was able to take the plastic off and put it on, peg it and unpeg it, several times, without any real difficulty. (Had to, to properly deal with various next steps.)  I did a bit of bending to make the plastic fit snugly into the slots.



There's actually a tight little bend right where the plastic leaves each slot, so it mostly doesn't come out unless you tilt it first. Kinda locks into place.



After hours of bending, I had a nice piece of plastic. Hugs the box pretty well, with (more than) enough room for an art layer below it.



Then it was time to risk it all, cutting the control holes....

Worked fine. Dremel router to cut and slightly chamfer the holes. Medium speed.



Results: not perfect, but good enough.







Once the plastic was all finished, I was pretty impressed with how clear and smoothly bent it looked.





Just for kicks, I put the buttons in...



It's Wonder Woman's Invisible Arcade Controller!  So tempting to make this my next project, but it'd need even thicker plastic to be strong enough to play on.

It also looks awesome backed by some chrome-like posterboard I have. (This isn't the regular silver-colored posterboard but an almost mirrored finish. Great stuff...and all I have is this one beat-up old sheet of it. No idea where to get more.)




I also put my draft art layer - simply a sheet of black gift wrap - between the box and the plastic, and cut out the control holes in the paper, with an X-acto knife.

[Dan Efran]

Monday, with the plastic bending behind me, I figured this project was almost done and the hard parts were over.

 

Well, sort of. Maybe.

Monday I sanded and painted again, switching to gloss black. Satin black wasn't going anywhere interesting; the painted wood parts need to compete with the main section, which is acrylic over black. Thus, gloss black.

I'm undecided about how smooth to make these panels. I could spend another week to Bondo and sand them to perfection, but I think I'll probably get lazy and leave some hints of wood texture. I can always improve it someday if it bothers me - unwire everything, take off the side panels and acrylic, and repaint - but for now I'm impatient to get this thing finished and start using it already.

I got some "crafting tape" at the craft store, and started applying pinstripes and little colored rectangles to the black paper. I figured this would be an easy way to evoke a classic Defender-esque control panel art style without having to print anything.



Then I started printing stuff. I realized I could print little graphs and scanners and things on 4x6 photo paper and glue them to the black paper here and there.



That plus the tape pinstripes was looking pretty good, so I designed and printed a few more scanners and buttons and things, and played with various arrangements of it all.

All this artwork was created in Inkscape, exported as PNG and then postprocessed (very slightly) in PhotoShop. (Inkscape doesn't talk to my printer as well as other programs, so I almost never print straight from there, but it's pretty good for actually drawing this kind of stuff.)

[yotsuya]

I know this is late, but props to you for the Black Hole reference!

[Dan Efran]

I know this is late, but props to you for the Black Hole reference!

Not the greatest script, but the robots were so cool. The Hole Saw of Death made a huge impression on me back then - I was eight when the film came out - and I built model kits of V.I.N.CENT and Maximillian, so I had a good opportunity to study them. Such great designs, really works of art in themselves.

Tuesday I continued decorating the art layer with stripes and a variety of scanners and readouts. Though intended to evoke the imagery of some classic arcade control panels - such as Defender, Battlezone, and Star Wars - in fact the specific designs I used were largely based on iconic (pun intended) computer displays from classic movies. The green blipper, for example, is inspired by V.I.N.CENT's.



I also used tiny pieces of the crafting tape to make control grouping stripes and semi-abstract control icons for some of the buttons. Three dots in a line for "Fire", etc.

It was too rainy for painting, so the previous day's coat of paint got to Dry Another Day. (007 reference?  Sure, why not.  )

[Dan Efran]

Wednesday, another round of sand-and-paint. Printed some more art panels and tried some arrangements, but didn't glue any down. Added a bit more colored tape.

Thursday, more printing and I glued down all the art. Art layer's done.

No pictures of the final art just yet. You'll see it in context later. Antici....

Friday, I decided I'd had enough painting, and put the side panels back on. They're not perfect - they look like painted wood, not like molded plastic. But they're nice and shiny and very black; I'm satisfied.

I had to carve out some extra space for the E-stik Q*bert rotation. Things are very tight in that area. I wish I'd been more careful about this when placing the side buttons: maybe I could have freed up a few more mm.



Maybe not, though. Space is tight everywhere inside this thing.



As it is, I'm bending the joystick microswitch tabs in new directions to make them fit. Makes me nervous, but microswitches can always be replaced.

Anyway, this was the point when the project's big disaster struck. Yes, things had been going too well for too long. Zeus was getting bored, or something.

As I was holding it up and working inside, the entire unit slipped from my grasp and fell over. Right onto my coffee cup.

It knocked the bottom right off the cup, and the handle, and dumped the whole mess on the floor.

Look, I can make a sad face with the pieces:



And sure enough, it CRACKED THE PLASTIC.



 

 

I couldn't believe it! Another inch and it'd have missed the cup. Or I could have put the cup somewhere else in the first place. But no, that plastic I spent hours bending is now CRACKED.

 

So, hey, battle damage. It's in a non-critical spot, and I'm pretty sure I can just glue that flap right back into place and it'll be very subtle. (Worst case, I bend a new sheet of acrylic. Just $10, and now I know how.) Still, I'm...a little bit annoyed.

 

[Dan Efran]

Saturday I started to plan the wiring in detail.

The controller has 34 controls (including coin slot and coin reject button) and the MiniPAC has 32 inputs. I would have to pair up a few.

The MiniGrip joystick has both a trigger and a thumb button. I decided that each thumb button (which I don't care much about anyway) would be the same input as the tilt/second flipper button on the same side. That conflict should never be noticed - why would you ever try using those controls together?

I tried to assign controls to the inputs intended for them - the coin slot to COIN 1 (key 5), e.g. But with a somewhat unusual mix of controls and just barely enough reach on the longest wires, ultimately I had to wire up some of the controls at random, trusting that I could reassign them (via the WinIPAC utility) to keys I could then reassign (via MAME) back to controls per game.

For example, consider Player 1 Button 1. Is that the Williams-esque section's button 1? The first Assault trigger? Which of the four sticks should be the arrow keys? Or should the Space Zap D-pad do that? Lots of questions with no "right" answers, so in some cases I just ran the wires where they'd fit neatly. It rarely matters which keyboard key represents a control; I'm still trying to decide where to assign Tab, Enter, and Esc (for MAME menus).

I'm thrilled with the MiniPAC. It's compact, does exactly what I want, and changing the key assignments with WinIPAC just works. Dreamy!

At about this time, my tokens arrived. Now, I always preferred quarters to tokens. And I intend to use this controller as a piggy bank, collecting my own quarters from myself.

But I don't want to charge my friends to play, tempting as that is. So I wanted some tokens for guests.

I found a very affordable lot on ebay that not only had a handful of nice tokens of the size I wanted, but also some other weird tokens and coin-like objects. I collect this kind of stuff (not very seriously) and I was thrilled to get more big aluminum dinosaur coins. I've had just one of those for ages. And there's even a blank token! Pretty cool.



That's the seller's picture and sure enough, when I got the stuff it looked about like that. Just what I wanted...



...but rather brown. I don't normally polish old coins - it's bad for their authenticity, of course - but these aren't coins and I'm not collecting them. They had a lot of pretty detail that was hard to see at a glance. I decided I'd pretty them up as best I could. I started by washing them in a bit of dish soap and water, then drying them off well....

[Slippyblade]

Love those dino coins!  Neat batch.

[Dan Efran]

  Yeah, those are pretty cool. They're about the same size as old silver dollars...which are about the same size as Pieces of Eight, the equivalent coin in earlier times. So I like to imagine that these Dinosaur coins are real antique dollar coins from the age of dinosaurs, bearing the portrait of, say, President Triceratops.



But I digress.

Sunday - ten days ago - I started on the wiring. Finally!

First, I set up a velcro strap as strain relief for the USB cable. Should protect the interface board from most cable-related user errors. (Yanking.)



Next came the daisy-chained ground bus.



Hot glue keeps it out of the way of subsequent wiring. The hot glue doesn't stick very firmly to the black paint, but I don't care. It's good enough to keep things neat.

Then I started connecting up signal lines, trying to maintain a general sense of order but not gluing everything down right away. Some groups are bound with 3/4" snippets of some nice twist-tie wire I had lying around.



Wiring went pretty slowly, because my wiring harness has the right size connectors for most, but not all, of the controls. I could have resolved that issue in various ways, but I decided to make little adaptor cables with crimp connectors and bits of wire.

But then I couldn't get hold of the proper size connectors I needed to do that right.



So I took some big ones and snipped them down to fit. Inelegant, but it worked fine. Because they're tapered now, they'll fit a range of sizes and can be jammed in pretty snugly.

[Dan Efran]

Monday I wrapped up the wiring. So to speak.



I continued to use hot glue and little ties to keep things mostly organized, but it's not the neatest wiring job in the world.



Things are particularly chaotic around the E-Stiks, because the microswitches need to rotate. So the wires need some slack, which I'm still trying to decide how to manage responsibly.



The E-Stiks weren't working very well in 8-way mode, and I'd read that omitting the included rubber washer might improve the responsiveness. Well, I didn't have room for the washer in the first place; the nut barely got all the way onto the threads. It was just barely not in the way of the rotating switch plate. Apparently 3/4" of wood plus 1/8" or so of plastic is a bit too much thickness for these.

So I carved out a section of the wood there to make more room for the nut to tighten. Hammer and chisel, since it didn't have to be perfectly flat like the MiniGrip mounting pads. Just approximately flat.

(No picture of that yet.)

I also continued polishing my new tokens. On some of them, I was able to polish just the highlights, for a cool antique look. The rest I just tried to shine up, overall. Varied results, but generally they look great. (The Chuck E Cheese token is hopelessly tarnished, but I didn't want that one anyway.)

[Vigo]

I recognize the worlds largest carousel one. House on the Rock, baby! 


https://roadtrippers.com/stories/the-house-on-the-rock?lat=40.81381&lng=-96.70166&z=5