Bartop Arcade powered by Raspberry Pi (WIP)

[elPaulio]

I was inspired to make myself an arcade after I saw them on the interwebs. I looked into using a Pi because I had one lying around that I no longer used.

The cab itself, I cheated on a bit. With it being my first build, and Im no good with a router or jigsaw... I decided to have a look to see if I could get one made for me.
The result was a bit pricey, but Im glad I went for it since the cut is perfect
Cab is approximately 35 W x 45 H x 30 D (cm) and is standard 1.2mm MDF

I have pics of spraying it black, but I wont attach them

I thought id maybe need to prime the MDF before I went in and just sprayed it, so I did a test piece with primer, and one without - so, just black matte spraypaint
The primer came out with a lot of brushmarks, so I tried a roller. Roll marks....
The spraypaint was perfectly smooth, however it needed around 6 coats to get it to stop soaking up the paint. The wood itself didnt warp or split or swell - so I went with the spray paint simply because I couldnt be bothered to sand it, prime it, sand it, prime it, sand it, spray it, sand it... you get the idea

(You can see the result in the last picture)

Oh, and before painting, I cut joystick and button holes in the MDF to fit my own fingers - so this button layout is my own although there are similar layouts
The joystick is mounted underneath the control panel, so no need to make the 4 holes for its screws.
The control panel itself, has two hinges that mean I can access the buttons easily. The screen pops out relatively easily to give me full cab access

My power source is a 4way power block, with USB 2A sockets on it for the Pi

I used a standard 240V lamp for behind the marquee, although this is overkill because its way too bright! I may replace it
There is a 240V to 12V LED driver that is powering my illuminated buttons - If I replace the marquee lamp, I'll use this LED driver for that too
The screen is a standard laptop 15" with measurements to fit this case exactly. It took me a while to find one!
Screen is powered and controlled by a VGA controller board with HDMI input on it, again, took me some time to find this and ended up getting it shipped in from China, btu at relatively small cost. This is mounted on the left hand side of the cab
The pi itself, is mounted on the right hand side. As you can see, my buttons go directly into the GPIO pins, since this is only a single player arcade.
The blue box on the base of the cab, is the amp for the speakers. Hinging back the control panel, gives me access to volume/bass/treble easily.. and it sounds great!

On the bck (no pics yet) is the power inlet + rocker switch, 2 USB extension sockets that go directly to the Pi, and a network socket, which also connects inside the cab to the Pi.

All the hardware is working sweet, with mame, sega/genesis/megadrive, snes, nes running fantastically.
My only gripe is the software config... but i'll get onto that later once ive figured it all out

Feel free to ask me any questions, I see that most people have not used a Pi, but rather favour the small form factor PC - which is great, but I just happened to have a Pi sat around doing nothing

Also, apologies for not inserting images into the post - I have no idea