Thanks 'DaOld Man' - I like your Jukeboxes... I will be adding some of that software to my cabinet.
Great day of wiring and getting things in place. I started with the marquee LED strips. These turned out to be pretty simple - I had never worked them before and it looked like they could be a pain to solder.
I cut off a the smallest section of the strip, put a little solder ball on each pad a then soldered a lead wire into it. It was as easy as the YouTube video made it look.
My marquee with strips in place ready for connecting wires.
All lit up and ready to go. I may need some diffuser material to flatten out the pattern depending on how it looks behind the marquee.
Here is how I decided to power the cabinet - there are a few 12V items (LED strips, AMP, reject button bulbs) - much simpler to connect them to terminal blocks. The arcade power supply mounted next to the strip kept everything pretty compact.
I borrowed this Velcro strip idea from someone in the forum (Flynn's Arcade maybe?) its a great way to manage wires and create pathways. I ran out of it.. Need to get more to finish cleaning up the cabinet.
A few more wires getting into position on the 12v terminal blocks.
Upper speakers in place - I filled the compartment with insulation and closed it up. The small amplifier works quite well. The best place to put it was right behind the monitor and above the PC.
The top parts in place for the last time (hopefully). Cooling fans are under these grates, but they are a little louder than I expected. So they will stay unplugged until I determine if they are actually needed - or maybe I can find a temperature sensing controller that can spin them up at a variable speed as the cabinet heats up.. The hand holds are working out really nice.. Glad I saw these on someones page.
Here is where I am at the moment - Still need to attach the toe kick and clean up a few items. I'll be in a bit of a holding pattern for a while until all of the artwork is finalized and gets printed up.
As for the sound - I connected the amp directly to my iPhone and ran some songs off my playlist to get the levels balanced out etc.. For an arcade cabinet - this box sounds really good. People said that the subwoofer would need a port so that it didn't sound muted.. I put my hand over the hole where the speaker wire came out and there was a steady breeze - pretty cool. I did cut a hole in the front to let it breath just a bit more and the bass is reasonable. I'll mess with it more once the whole thing is enclosed. Audio off of the iPhone is way better than expected.
Audio from the PC is not not right yet. There is background hiss and other noise that makes no sense.. Its certainly coming from the PC since everything is identical except the source.
While I wait on the control panel artwork - I'll start getting the software set up to auto boot, remote access, etc.. clean the shop - what a mess once you get wiring..
(more to come...)