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MEEP: A Minimal Mini-VPin Project [Completed!]
jeremymtc:
Current status: Completed! Finished photos in last comment.
Hot on the heels of my previous bartop project comes another one, this time a mini virtual pinball cabinet built in minimalist fashion from scrap wood and mostly recycled materials.
Friends and guests who've played the bartop have frequently commented that a pinball game would be a fun addition, and I agree with them. In the long ago past I had played around with Visual Pinball and VPinMAME, and I'd seen many of the wonderful machines that people here on the forums have built over the years, so I knew that it was an attainable goal and was eager to join the club.
This machine will be running a 21.5" 1080p LCD for the playfield, an 11.6" 720p LCD for the DMD/Scoreboard display, and powered by a Firebat T8 Plus/Pro Mini-PC with Intel N100, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD. Input is handled by an SJ@JX USB encoder, and audio via the guts of an old bluetooth soundbar.
The software being used for this project is Visual PinballX Standalone (the SDL port of VP) via Batocera Linux, with all of the console junk stripped out of it.
Once committed, the first order of business was to come up with a design for the machine. I wanted to use the same design language and finishing materials as on my bartop build both for aesthetics and economy (mostly economy!) I was able to reuse the template I had made for my bartop cabinet to define some of the shapes and angles, although the proportions are way different.
This cabinet will not have a backglass display, only a DMD hemmed in by speakers in the rise at the rear. The speaker/DMD panel will have an acrylic overlay which should meet the playfield overlay fairly seamlessly.
This was the non-scale design sketch I ended up with (please disregard the weird colors):
With a set design to build toward, I focused on the computer hardware and software aspect of the build for a couple of weeks. Once I had more or less settled the question of hardware and had a running prototype of the system in pieces on my workbench, I sketched out an internal layout image just to help keep my thoughts organized as I transitioned into building the actual cabinet:
Once I had convinced myself that I had enough to move forward with building the cabinet, I started planning out the dimensions using the various bits of hardware that I needed to accommodate. There were still a few unknowns, but only of the sort that become easier to figure out as you go, once you have the first basic cuts established. So with that, I picked out some wood from the scrap pile and got to cutting.
First mockup using the initial cuts below. The wood used for the sides, facia, and header is 1/2" plywood salvaged from a staircase template used for a previous home improvement job.
The cabinet base and rear panel were made from an exceptionally grody and waterlogged piece of 1/2" T-111 siding. I had to cut away a lot of material from the edges to get to the "heartwood", but not a big deal since I only needed a slice 11.75" wide for both panels. A ton of sanding took care of the rest.
I realized too late that I had screwed up a little when cutting the interface between the back panel and header panel (the piece that goes over where the DMD will live). I should have extended the header panel to cover the join, instead of having the rear panel butted against the header. It's an easy fix though, just need to cut down the rear panel a little and cut a wider header to fix it:
I had to trim the monitor bezel slightly for it to fit within the cabinet symmetrically, and it's visible in its approximate future location in the cab. The monitor uses the bezel to retain the LCD panel, so I don't really have any choice but to use it. The rest of the monitor assembly is decased, and will hang from the bezel which will be situated on ledges for easy removal.
That's as far as I got for today. I still need to do some wood filling, radius all the corners, do a seal coat with urethane, more sanding, and fix the header panel before I can move on to the next steps: cutting battens, ledges for the playfield monitor and DMD display, speaker and amplifier mounts, and all the rest of that. Will update as I go!
markc74:
Very cool idea. I had sketched a design out remarkably similar a few months ago but stopped myself from going further with it until I finished the last pinball cabinet (6 years and counting!)
I was even going to use the same type of mini pc (n100) but found performance in vpx pretty poor so I'll be following to see how well yours runs.
Otherwise love the design so I'll be following ;D
jeremymtc:
Thanks, Mark! I actually owe you a debt of gratitude - your Polybius Mini has probably been the single greatest design influence for these projects :cheers:
Yes, the N100 system is just about minimally adequate for VPX. Still, with v-sync and frames locked to 60fps at 1080p it works well enough for what I'm doing. I'll probably only ever have a curated collection of maybe 15 classic tables on this machine, and the only one I've tested so far that doesn't stay locked at 60fps has been Twilight Zone. In general though, this machine is intended more for use as a fun novelty at parties than as any kind of serious pinball simulator, so if there are tables that it just won't run that's unfortunate, but ok with me.
I do have a question for you, and/or any of the other experienced vpin builders: For monitor positioning, do you think it's better to have it mounted near-flush to the top rails of the cab, or recessed at a slightly greater depth? I had planned to have the playfield overlay mounted near-flush to the rails but with maybe about 1" separation between it and the playfield monitor.
Alejo I:
This looks so cute.
jeremymtc:
Thank you, Alejo!
Day 2.5 of the cabinet build: I've made some progress.
The main box has been glued up, and the header panel/rear panel joint has been fixed. Now it's properly mitred and fitted:
The great Nigel Tufnel once boasted that his Marshall 'goes to eleven'. I may have him beat with this amplifier robbed from a cheap soundbar - this one goes to 'Chinese woman yelling at you'. When the volume knob is turned to whatever the arbitrary maximum value is, the user is rewarded by what I can only guess is a severe scolding in a language foreign to me :lol
I made and fitted a little acrylic mounting plate for the tiny amplifier board:
And bored a hole in the rear panel for access to the control knob:
This is the aluminum lockplate/palmrest, which was salvaged from the broken lid of an old Dell laptop and cut to size. The radius at the front was fortuitously part of the original laptop design, and I matched it for the radius applied to the front corners of the cabinet. Also visible in this photo are the monitor mounting ledges, which I had initially glued in the wrong place:
...And this is me gluing the ledges a second time, in the correct position. I had stupidly neglected to account for the 1/2" thickness of the bezel the first time around.
I roughed out the front control panel button layout. This panel is not permanently installed as of yet since I might want to make some layout changes, but being able to install some buttons there will allow me to confirm whether the plotted positions for the flipper buttons are workable with regard to inside clearance. The current layout is a stacked coin and start button on the left, exit in the center, and plunger on the right.
Radius' (radii?) were applied to all of the corners, and some amount of wood filling has been done, but there's still a lot more to do. It's starting to look a little bit like the drawing!
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