Ravecade - Slim upright, first build

[bkong]

I've been lurking for months as I worked on my build. I've had countless questions answered and inspiration from so many build threads I thought I would share my build so others can hopefully take something away.

I spent a lot of time researching to work out what style cabinet I wanted. The main prerequisites being a slim design to fit in the house nicely and portability so it can be wheeled out to the garage. I stumbled across the retrospace build and dug the design so did something similar.

 
Spent a Friday night learning SketchUp and tweaking the design.



16mm MDF for the side panels. One side done - trace and repeat.

 

I used pine for the base and braces. Rubber feet for the front and fixed castors for the back so it can be tilted back and rolled like a movers trolly.



Glued and screwed the braces. Always needing more clamps…



I used 12mm mdf for the other panels to reduce the weight and cost. Lots of fiddling with the circular saw angle to get everything flush.

 

Mounted the monitor and added some braces for the glass bezel. I had to improvise some washers with scrap metal I had haha. 


 
With the screen mounted and glass bezel in place I could tape off the screen area and then spray paint the rest of the bezel black.


 
Added another strip of wood to hide the gap at the bottom of where the bezel rests. I also dropped the glass at this point but fortunately only chipped the bottom which is hidden.

 
 
2 coats of primer with sanding (320) in between.



Probably ended up doing 5 or 6 coats of black trying to get a perfect finish. I used a foam roller with wet sanding (600/1200) in between coats. Once I got the technique with the roller down I got a reasonable finish. I think I could get a better finish if i was to do it again but I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with.


Hammered the tmolding in with a rubber mallet wrapped in a rag and softened it up with a hairdryer to bend around the corners.


Wiring up the buttons and joystick. I also added a cheap trackball to the middle of the control panel which you can see in the later photos. I followed this technique to flush mount the trackball.


Used some metal strapping to tie down the speakers, PC and subwoofer.

I don’t have photo’s but for the marquee I routed slots at the top and bottom so 2 pieces of Perspex could slot in with the printed “ravecade” sign wedged in between.
There is also a cheap USB powered LED strip mounted there to light up the marquee




Wheeled it inside, plugged it in and started playing There are still a few small things to tidy up but its 95% complete and totally playable.

It runs off a $100 Dell Optiplex with BigBox as the front end. Retroarch does most of the heavy lifting for the consoles from Atari through to N64.   
Total cost up to this point is roughly $800AUD. Down the track I’ll probably add a graphics card, some usb controllers to enable 4 player and some Sinden light guns.

Cheers!

[javeryh]

Nice job.  It really looks good in that room - not bulky at all.  Any chance you can post slightly larger pics?

How's BigBox working out for you?  I just got it and I've been playing with it but I can't figure out how to hide the options menu.  I press escape to exit a game but when I'm on the front end screen and press ESC again it opens up a menu where you can change themes and configure stuff.  Not ideal with kids/guests.  Is there a tutorial somewhere that shows how to set up the software to work on an arcade cabinet (hide Windows 10, one button power on/off, hide options menu, only use one gamelist/no "systems" lists, etc.)?

[basbase]

Nice build, I like the clean, non-screaming, looks of it.
How do you make sure it does not tip over when 2 players are at the control panel?

(this is my first post as a fellow lurker)

[bkong]

Nice job.  It really looks good in that room - not bulky at all.  Any chance you can post slightly larger pics?

How's BigBox working out for you?  I just got it and I've been playing with it but I can't figure out how to hide the options menu.  I press escape to exit a game but when I'm on the front end screen and press ESC again it opens up a menu where you can change themes and configure stuff.  Not ideal with kids/guests.  Is there a tutorial somewhere that shows how to set up the software to work on an arcade cabinet (hide Windows 10, one button power on/off, hide options menu, only use one gamelist/no "systems" lists, etc.)?

Thanks - I really like BigBox, I found it easy to set up and it looks great. I don't know how to hide the options but for all of my questions I had throughout the process I could usually find a thread either here or on the launchbox forums where someone else had already asked and answered it.

[bkong]

How do you make sure it does not tip over when 2 players are at the control panel?

I was a little worried about this during the build but it hasn't turned out to be an issue. If you are trying to you can definitely rock it around a bit but it's got a small sub plus PC on the base which helps weigh it down.

I played Street Fighter with my wife and had no issues whatsoever. Maybe with some really over enthusiastic kids or drunk friends it would jostle a bit but nothing I'd be concerned about. Worst case I guess I would add some extendable legs that slide out to increase its footprint. Or maybe a french cleat on the wall but no plans at this stage to do either.