Coming out of retirement for a 1-day build challenge.

[Stobe]

Greetings!

Its been a long time since I posted to the Project Announcement forum.  Its been a long time since I frequented BYOAC in general.

But here I am.  Back for some more.  Like a former junkie who suddenly gets the itch again.

Long story short, I was talking to a co-worker about some of the projects I've made in the past, and he thought it was pretty darned cool.  He asked a couple questions, which eventually led to us deciding to both build something.

I suggested we build a bartop from a kit, which is essentially the arcade equivalent to a gateway drug, in my opinion.

So I started listing out the different parts that we'd need, and before you know it, we were ordering parts.

After searching around, we decided to go with the Deluxe Bartop Kit from GameroomSolutions   link
We based that choice on the fact that we wanted to keep this build fairly simple.  The black melamine and cam lock construction satisfied that requirement.  And the kit also came with all the necessary pre-cut plexi.  Bonus!

After picking the kit, the next step was to pick the brains.  This is where I noticed the biggest change in the hobby.  The last bartop I built had a full de-cased PC:  mobo, power supply and hard drive mounted inside.  This time around we decided to try out a Raspberry Pi 3.  What a difference a few years has made!

After those decisions were made, the rest just fell in line:
22" LED Monitor
Pair of 4" arcade speakers (with a cheapo amp bought on ebay)
Superbright LED strips for the marquee light
A pair of "Zero delay" USB encoders
Zippyy joysitcks and some buttons from RandyT @ GroovyGameGear
and misc. power supplies and power strips to tie it all together.

Shopping complete! All the parts started arriving.  The bartop kits arrived with a little problem.  One kit came flat packed extremely professionally in a perfectly sized box, complete with the GameroomSolutions logo.  But the other kit came packed in a huge cardboard box, with all the pieces scattered loosely.  Needless to say, those pieces had the melamine chipped to hell.  We contacted Ryan at GameroomSolutions, and at first he didn't understand our claim.  He wanted to know where the big box came from (we sent him pictures).  We told him the big box is what we received the second kit in.  Ryan checked with the courier, and sure enough, they fessed up that the original box got wet, so they repacked the pieces in their own box. (idiots).  So Ryan was quick to tell us that he filed a claim with the courier, and he shipped another kit out immediately.  The second kit came expertly packed like the first kit.  Big thanks to Ryan for taking care of us!

Next task was to plan out the build.  I'm no stranger to putting these things together.  I've converted cabs, rebuilt cabs, built full cabs from scratch, and built from kits before.  I've since lost my nice workshop, and all my tools are in storage.  So I convinced my co-worker if we could use his basement, we could throw a pair of bartops together in a day.

Challenge Accepted! 

Next post:  Pics from build day.

[Stobe]

First step:  Assembling the Control Panel.

The kit came pre-drilled for a 2 Player 6 Button setup, plus a 4 button "button panel".  You can't tell from this picture, but the bottom was routed out to allow the joysticks to be recessed.



I decided to go with a black suit Spiderman theme.  Applied the vinyl, added the pre-cut plexi, and populated the CP with joysticks and buttons.



After camming the two boards together, we wired everything up to the 2 encoders, which luckily fit nicely under the CP.  The pre-terminated wires from the encoders were all long enough to reach all the switches except for two, so we soldered in a couple extensions.  Added a few tie wraps to clean the wires up a little, but not super tidy due to the length of the pre-made wires.




Next post:  Assembling the rest of the cab.

[Stobe]

Building the Bartop

Started by screwing all the cam posts into one side panel...




Added the control panel and the top panel...




Mounted some speakers to the speaker panel, and installed to the side...





Added the bottom panel and the back panel.  The back has a kinda-weird/kinda-neat hinge action to it.  I would probably design it a little differently, but it works.





Added the monitor mount, the monitor, and the front plexi.  Its a good thing we found some very thin LED monitors.  LCD would not have fit behind the plexi.  There really wasn't enough room for a proper bezel in front of the monitor, so we used some black tape to mask a few markings on the monitor.  Not perfect, but good enough for this quick build.




After attaching the second side panel, we could finally stand them up!




Next Post: Adding the innerds

[Stobe]

Adding the Innerds

Here you can see the LED strips we used for the marquee lighting (you can also catch a glimpse of my theme-appropriate shirt)






Here's a close-up of the cheapo audio amp we got on ebay (and my knee for some reason...)





Decided to mount the amp on the back of the monitor mount.  Easy to reach and adjust the volume as needed.





Mounted the rest of the 'tronics.  You can see the Raspberry Pi, the 12V power supply (which powers the audio amp and the marquee LEDs), and the power strip.





Marquee installed, powered up for testing.  Just needs T-molding now...





Next post: Final Pics

[Stobe]

Final Pics!

Here's the final pic of my Spiderman Bartop





And a picture of both of our builds.  My co-worker decided to add side-art and lighted buttons (also from GGG - thanks Randy!)





The time-stamp on the final photo is 12.5 hours after I arrived at my co-workers house.  This included a 1 hour round-trip journey back to my house because I forgot my encoders (doh!), and a lunch break and dinner break.  So we achieved our one-day build goal.  From flat-packed kit to a fully working machine in less than 12 hours.  The only thing that was done beforehand was designing/printing the artwork, and ordering the parts.  I consider this a success.

Now to start planning the next build......   

[NIVO]

hey Stobe nice work on the cabs. I thought you left planet earth or somethin' LOL

[Locke141]

They look good.

I know a lot of people here don't like the R-pi but they have lots of advantage. I don't recognize that theme. Are us using attract mode as an FE?

[Stobe]

Yes. Attract Mode on top of RetroPi, using Retroarch as the main emulator consolidator.

That's what took more time than building the cab. Trying to figure out how all the layers of software affect each other.  I'm getting close to nailing it all down, though.

[leapinlew]

Awesome. Nice to see you around. What was the tally for this build?

[Stobe]

Hey Lew!  Long time...

I think our tally for these was right around $450 each.  Could have saved a little since I have a ton of monitors lying around, but we got a pretty good deal on the new 22" LEDs (~$74 each).

Also could have saved some if we cut our own wood.  But it definitely wouldn't be a one day project at that point.  And for everything we got, the GameRoomSolutions kit is a fairly decent value (full plexi for monitor, 2 pieces for marquee sandwich, plus CP and button panel).