Back to the Briefcase Arcade

[Semper Why]

Greetings and Salutations! I had so much fun with the briefcase arcade that I decided to do it again! This time this gift was for my nephew for his bar mitzvah. Alas, I only had the one briefcase from my father, so this time I had to buy a new shell. I ended up following adrktemplar's example and picking up a Seahorse case for slightly less than a Pelican price. And this time I decided that making the supports out of wood wasn't the way to go. So I 3d printed them:

This time I decided to go all out on the speaker grills. I found a speaker grill model on Thingiverse and added a couple of video game symbols to the grill. I just now realized that this time the speakers attach from the top rather than being supported from the bottom. Ah, I'm sure it'll be fine.

I learned a lot from the first go-round. Probably the most useful lesson: Always prototype in cheap cardboard:

This was by far the most frustrating part of the construction, as it took like 7 iterations to get the curve of the case modeled correctly. Once I was confident that I had the dimensions saved in the cutter, I cut the plate for the buttons & power plug out of a 3mm birch sheet. It's supported around the edges by 3d printed spacers, and there are two supports for the joystick that go front to back that supports the plate in the middle. There are some grooves in those supports for the joystick plate that keeps it 1mm below the wood. After the photo here, I took it all apart and painted the yellow support plastic black so it doesn't stick out.

This time I decided to wrap it up and go for a modern look:

Now I've wrapped it in a vinyl wrap for a more modern look that blends with the flat black case. I've ditched the tiny start/select buttons in favor of the buttons that came with the kit. The molly lock is still there (not shown), and I've added an ethernet port. If it starts to glitch out, all he has to do is plug it into an internet connection and it will beacon out to a server that I control. I'll be able to get into it remotely and troubleshoot. The compartment between the speakers houses the laptop screen driver board like the last one. But this time the shelf to hide the board is part of the support walls, rather than a spacer I jammed in there.

Under the hood, this one is powered by a 12v 6A power supply feeding a Rasbperry Pi 4 with an SSD hat. This is a significant upgrade from the first generation, which used a laptop power brick and an RPi 3. Again, I was able to procure a laptop from a coworker for the low price of "send me updates as you make progress, I want to see it". The 3d printed supports were printed at 10% infill, which cuts down on the weight of the first arcade. It's still a decent amount of weight for him to carry, but he'll grow into it (the dude just turned 13 after all).

I was happily done with this project with a couple weeks to spare. But I did have one tiny emergency:

We put the briefcase in our luggage and surrounded it with packing material, pillows and clothing. It wasn't enough. The spacers in the lid had been shaken off and the frame, screen and locking plates were loose. So after an emergency trip to the hardware store, here we have me trying to epoxy the spacers back into the lid. The coffee mug is to keep the lid flat and not have it tilt back.

And the final product, as delivered:


I have a friend with a Cricut and she helped me make the vinyl stickers detailing the warnings, the humorous saying under the screen, the labels for the volume, exit & shutdown buttons. The "Shane's Arcade" is actually paint that I put on there with a stencil I made on the laser cutter and never again. It did not come out terribly well. I may need to try some different techniques for this.

Anyhow, the arcade was a hit. He loved it and his jaw kind of dropped when I presented it for him. We were at a restaurant and I ended up answering a lot of questions about it for the waiter.

Thank you all for this great community! I couldn't have done this without you.

[thatpurplestuff]

This is a very thoughtful gift and it turned out great!  Love the custom speaker grills.  Awesome work!