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Author Topic: Wa-hoo!  (Read 20108 times)

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NickG

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Wa-hoo!
« on: August 27, 2007, 09:11:26 pm »
Hello.
This is my first and maybe only ever "upright" cabinet. I started this cabinet sometime last summer.

For the cabinet dimensions, I started with Sasquatch's Arcade paradise 3 plans and adjusted everything for my monitor and control panels.  So, yeah, this is just another generic upright...but wait a sec, watch this (click on it!)

Planning on loads of fun with this setup.  It's gonna take a bit of work controlling/automating the marquee change for my computer games and someday hopefully my console games, too.  The internally projected marquee image is bounced of of two mirrors, then it hits the plastic.

here are some more photos:

These speaker covers + grills are the front faces of some satellite speaker boxes I bought from the local electronics junk shop.  I like the screw-less look.  The speaker panel is 1/4" MDF.  This piece is separate from the marquee holding 5/8 piece which is at a different angle.  This is my third try; I did a lot of trial and error designing on this part and the monitor bezel.


The marquee (currently) is a sanded plastic panel.  Trying to detail here how it is supported from the inside by a 3/16" thick strip of , which has been glued and screwed to a 1/2" MDF; it is supported from the outside by  some 3/4" t-molding. 


The top of the marquee panel is supported from the inside by a mirrors edge instead of the 3/16" batten strip. 


I had to build a way to adjust the projector angle, so here is a little stand.  The playing cards on the left are a temporary level adjustment.  The projector's position is very critical compared to the rest of the cabinet.  The slightest maladjustment becomes magnified by the time it reaches the final image surface - the marquee - which I need to keep level and rectangular.  The playing card on the right is also temporary.  I am using it as a stay for the hinged movement of the stand.
The projector is a Mitsubishi PK-20.  I bought it specifically for this project because of it's small size and power consumption.  It is a DLP that uses Colored LEDs instead of using a bulb and a color-wheel.  This makes it very efficient - about 37 watts total.  It is cool and quiet as well.  It cost me $400(USA) plus shipping, I think.


This is the angled rear-top cover piece.


It holds the first mirror.  I will probably just get some miniature clamps for each end of said mirror, so that I may adjust it's angle if I need to later.  Currently it is only held in position by the friction and pressure between the boards.  From this mirror the marquee image is reflected to the angled top mirror.


just a view from the top-rear of the cabinet, with the top-rear cover piece away.


rear access to consoles control panels and stuff.   

AcidArmitage

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2007, 10:32:41 pm »
wow u got the video marquee working. a lot of us tried to make our own but quit due to price, time consumption, etc.

good job, it may seem generic but that video marquee is fecking awesome

KDOG

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2007, 12:14:20 am »
Holy crap $400 just on the marquee  :o  :dizzy:

SavannahLion

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2007, 01:28:16 am »
Wait... what? You're using a projector for the marquee? Did anyone else think of that?

mccoy178

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2007, 01:34:30 am »
You should look in the software forum, show what you got here, and see if any of the old timers might have a batch file or other trick to coordinate your marquees there.  That's HOF material right there.  First time I've seen anything like it and it is quite amazing.  Congratulations on an amazing addition! :applaud: :notworthy:

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2007, 03:30:39 am »
That's one hell of a Marquee.  :notworthy:

Hats off to ya.
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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #6 on: August 28, 2007, 09:14:51 am »
woahhh!

:)

How much did it cost for the marquee?

With the price of everything going down though, and this projector looks tiny too, it may be a great alternative.

KUDOS!

shardian

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #7 on: August 28, 2007, 12:33:31 pm »
Dude, that is frikkin sweet! You got a good price on that projector too. I've seen that projector before and it is SUPER neat.
Congrats on getting it projecting well. Now for my advice: Look into getting some rear projection plexi. ;D
Here is a site that could help you out.
http://www.stewartfilmscreen.com/materials.html

The techplex150 would probably be your best in price point to quality. I have no idea on pricing, but since you will only need a very small piece it shouldn't break the bank - especially for someone paying $400 for a marquee projector. ;) If you play your cards right, you could possibly swing some free samples that would fit your marquee area. ;D

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #8 on: August 28, 2007, 01:43:20 pm »
If you play your cards right, you could possibly swing some free samples that would fit your marquee area. ;D

that's exactly what I was thinking.....

Really cool concept.... :applaud:

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2007, 02:35:16 pm »
That is greatness.  Using that projector that is lit by LED's with a 10,000 hour life is awesome.  I bet that is low heat as well.   :notworthy:


markrvp

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #10 on: August 28, 2007, 03:35:59 pm »
I'm VERY impressed. 

Is there any way you can borrow a camera and get some better photographs and/or video?  I think your project has a good chance of winning an award.

MinerAl

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #11 on: August 28, 2007, 06:57:40 pm »
Excellent.

I totally thought of that too (yeah right)... but never had the money.  Glad to see it works so well!

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #12 on: August 28, 2007, 07:13:55 pm »
I so want a marque like that. That adds a serious bling factor to the cab . :applaud:

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #13 on: August 28, 2007, 10:06:35 pm »
when you tought you saw everything...

nice one  :applaud:

Jay  :cheers:

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #14 on: August 28, 2007, 10:38:41 pm »
Thats one of the coolest things Ive seen on here. Way to go. See if you can get some better video. Nice job!  :applaud:

Howard_Casto

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #15 on: August 29, 2007, 04:17:17 am »
That's frikkin awesome! Like some of the others had said, I had thought of it (keyword "thought") but the cost and rigging required to do it kept me from trying. 

How well does it work in regular light situations (with the lights on)?

Have you figured out a software solultion yet?  I might be able to help with that.

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #16 on: August 29, 2007, 04:22:29 am »
Btw, I dunno if there is physically enough space in a cab, but with a bit of light trickery it might be possible to have a standard marquee reflected up there when the machine is turned off.  I believe searching for "pepper's ghost illusion" will give the info needed.

Just an idea. :)

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #17 on: August 29, 2007, 08:52:13 am »
oh hell yes.. this is beautiful!! two thumbs up man way up..

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #18 on: August 30, 2007, 02:48:28 am »
 :applaud:

That's one of those projects that a lot of people have dreamed about, but nobody's ever actually done.  Way Cool!

 :applaud:

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #19 on: August 30, 2007, 05:52:42 am »
Really cool  :cheers: As someone who haa a dual screen cab, I would love to find a way to have marquees of the games show up on the other screen, instead of just being blank unless I'm playing Punch-Out and such hehe :)
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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #20 on: August 30, 2007, 09:49:04 am »
I keep seeing this thread near the top of the forum and didn't quite get it until I saw the video.   
:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: Awesome work there dude.

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #21 on: August 30, 2007, 10:34:31 am »
So have you put in a call yet to that company??

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #22 on: August 30, 2007, 12:03:44 pm »
I'm going to wait until they perfect e-paper, then I'll add a changing marquee to my cab.

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #23 on: August 30, 2007, 12:20:25 pm »
Really cool  :cheers: As someone who haa a dual screen cab, I would love to find a way to have marquees of the games show up on the other screen, instead of just being blank unless I'm playing Punch-Out and such hehe :)

That doesn't seem that difficult, isn't that just an image viewer, moved to full screen on the second screen, showing a pre-selected image?

(Now a Marquee... ah... that's way cooler :-))


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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #24 on: August 30, 2007, 02:09:36 pm »
So have you put in a call yet to that company??

I e-mailed a representative about the material.  If he doesn't respond to e-mail I will call when I have enough money to purchase some.

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #25 on: August 30, 2007, 02:48:34 pm »
How well does it work in regular light situations (with the lights on)?
It looks crap compared to a regular marquee.  I will up some better images and/video later.  I am only using sanded Lucite as the final image surface, now.  Ambient light is OK, but direct light reflects clearly off the smooth front surface of the Lucite and washes out the projected image.  Hot-spotting is present in the dark and in the light.  I need different material for the final image surfaces
Have you figured out a software solution yet?  I might be able to help with that.
No, I will be glad if you can help.  I want to have the front-end control the marquee during game selection and during game-play (be it on emulator, console or jamma).  The solution would probably be the same for SodaPopinski's and McCoy's cabinets, too.
I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all.  A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #26 on: August 30, 2007, 03:46:08 pm »
Cool, there's somebody worse than I am at photography. I could barely see a thing in that video but I love that projected marquee idea. That's slick.  :applaud:

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #27 on: September 02, 2007, 07:13:55 am »
How well does it work in regular light situations (with the lights on)?
It looks crap compared to a regular marquee.  I will up some better images and/video later.  I am only using sanded Lucite as the final image surface, now.  Ambient light is OK, but direct light reflects clearly off the smooth front surface of the Lucite and washes out the projected image.  Hot-spotting is present in the dark and in the light.  I need different material for the final image surfaces
Have you figured out a software solution yet?  I might be able to help with that.
No, I will be glad if you can help.  I want to have the front-end control the marquee during game selection and during game-play (be it on emulator, console or jamma).  The solution would probably be the same for SodaPopinski's and McCoy's cabinets, too.
I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all.  A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.

You might want to try to get ahold of a busted rear-projection tv.  The "screen" on those tvs is basically a giant fresnel lense (that can be cut fairly easily) and thus it looks good even in high light situations.  If you are having bright spot issues, then you need to put a fresnel lense in there somewhere.  The page magnifiers they sell at office supply stores work really well. 

I'm not so sure I can help with the software if that's the exact way you wanna do it.  I have nothing against mala, but I have my own fe and I have no intention of writing software for somebody else's.  I was gonna write a dual-screen utility for mamehooker and then mame would automatically switch it for you on launch.  I mean technically you could already do it via the display system in mame hooker, but it currently doesn't support scaling or pngs, so it's probably best I just write a new plugin/utility.  Mame hooker now has dde/command-line support so mala should be able to communicate with it, either out of the box, or via a simple plug-in.

Knowning about the resolution of the images you are using might help a little with that as well.  The marquee packs intentionally have low-resolution images, so it might not be a bad idea to download hi-res scans for your favorites.  Of course I don't know the res of your projector either.


Btw, way to go moderators, you split this topic and didn't put a re-direct message on it.  Took me forever to find it again.  ;)

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #28 on: September 02, 2007, 01:20:52 pm »
I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all.  A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.
Could you elaborate on this.  It is not clear what is being controlled.  Sounds intriguing. 

Great idea on the marquee.  Good luck perfecting the image.

NickG

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #29 on: September 03, 2007, 10:28:25 pm »
I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all.  A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.
Could you elaborate on this.  It is not clear what is being controlled.  Sounds intriguing. 

Great idea on the marquee.  Good luck perfecting the image.

I could power the control pins of many sets of 4066 IC's, power relays, etc. from an LED-wiz output.  This means I can have front-end control of the power, audio, video, and controller ports of each console based on a game or console selection from the menu - somehow.  Not sure if I need to build my own software or not yet.  I hope not.

Some additional hardware I hope to someday integrate control of from the front-end or at least the computer is:

·a stepper motor driven giro-bolt control panel lock-down/release assembly
·4/8 way switching of a joystick such as the MAG-STIK.  I don't own yet own one of these, but it seems likely to be able to interface to electrical switching.  If this was a computer only cabinet then I would use a programmable analog such as the U360.     

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meh-heh-heh, putting Mala to good use...
« Reply #30 on: September 12, 2007, 05:51:35 am »
I set up MALA with an 800*1200 layout (modified from the "Blue" layout) and stacked my two displays in Windows.  Mala is running in the primary monitor with the marquee showing in a small section of the extended monitor (the projector marquee .)  The Mala layout and, thusly, the marquee stay rendered while the emulator runs. 

A short, quick video demonstrating the functions I have so far (click to watch):

I took this video with a better camera and the lights on but Photobucket degraded it a little.  It should demonstrate the marquee changing during game selection and displaying properly when the game runs as well.  I also showed some AVS eyecandy via Winamp at the end.

You may notice in the video that when I start a game, both the marquee display and the Primary display seem to blank for a second.  This is only because I had chosen full-screen startup image in the MALA settings, and have set the image to a plain black bitmap.  I could not figure out how to disable the startup image entirely, and if I use Mala's default windowed image it persists during game-play along with the marquee image.

A further issue I have to resolve is, if I want to change the resolution of the primary display for the game, the marquee image on the other display moves around.  This may be possible to resolve by changing layouts per resolution (custom game-lists) or by re-ordering the display identities and/or locations in Windows-maybe)     
« Last Edit: August 11, 2014, 11:44:29 am by NickG »

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #31 on: September 12, 2007, 06:38:02 am »
 :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #32 on: September 12, 2007, 11:37:09 am »
simply amazing... :o
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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #33 on: September 12, 2007, 11:44:26 am »
Really cool stuff there Nick. :cheers:

TTFN

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #34 on: September 12, 2007, 12:16:25 pm »
Excellent work there!

The video reminded me of "The Blair Witch Project"  :dizzy:
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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #35 on: September 12, 2007, 06:46:47 pm »
 :notworthy:

Need to find a projector... need to find more money...

BobA

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #36 on: September 13, 2007, 12:21:44 am »
Wow, neat, great, wonderful, exciting, awsome, and all the other superlatives that you can think of.   I have seen that little projector and never thought to use it for marquees.  Keep up the good work. :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

NickG

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #37 on: October 05, 2007, 04:04:59 pm »
@All: Thanks for the comments.
  I've made a little progress
A further issue I have to resolve is, if I want to change the resolution of the primary display for the game, the marquee image on the other display moves around.  This may be possible to resolve by changing layouts per resolution (custom game-lists) or by re-ordering the display identities and/or locations in Windows-maybe)     
I seem to have resolved my marquee moving around problem by reversing the order of my displays in Catalyst and swapping the menu section and the marquee section in my modified Mala layout.  Now my main display can switch resolutions to fit my games without bothering the Marquee image size/position.

I finally bought some giro-bolt and giro-bolt strike plates.





To securing my control panels' bottoms -

-to my cabinet control panel shelf.


It is a very sturdy connection, but it is still easy to make/break from inside the cabinet:

supporting my cab with a stick to demonstrate <glue commercial style>


I finished routing, trimming, laminating, and applying t-molding to my main control panel.  Home Depot stopped stocking the color pattern of the laminate I was using for all my projects.  I had to special order the laminate for the control panel , which cost me about $30 more than the stocked laminate previously had.  I made the mistake of assuming that laminate was a slower industry than it is.  I had great plans to build much more furniture to match this laminate.  As it turns out, WilsonArt, the laminate sheet manufacturer still makes the same color pattern, but the finish texture is not exactly the same.  I tried to take a picture of the texture difference to make an example, I can't seem to get my camera to capture the detail, so, obviously, they blend together well.  If you are going for a less common laminate than plain black for a project it is probably a good idea to buy it all at once.
     

I still haven't found a good rear-screen material for my marquee.  I ordered some by-the-foot Da-tex last week but I am still waiting on it.  It isn't a rigid material, though, which would be easier to assimilate.  The guy I was corresponding with about the techplex 150 had not responded to my last mail.  I've just resent my response to ask for a local representative's contact information, so I might still work something out with them if the Da-tex is not good enough.   

Today, I ordered a 4-port Ir-learning (electronic) Component Video + Audio Switch for three of my video game consoles.  I hope I can rig it up to Mala via the serial plug-in or to another frontend or launcher.  Otherwise I might mount hidden buttons to the top of my cabinet.  The rest of my AV will connect directly to my monitor which also has a serial connection and IR receiver. 


@Howard_Casto:  Hi, I didn't know you wrote a fully-featured frontend with a GUI and everything.  I will try it out soon, so that I will already be familiar with it when you make your new release.

spacies

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #38 on: October 05, 2007, 06:43:16 pm »
Man that is SLICKER THAN ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---!

I am VERY impressed.

Any chance of a higher res video? Maybe youtube?

Dude, it freakin rules!

atarihomestar

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Re: Wa-hoo!
« Reply #39 on: October 09, 2007, 02:23:06 pm »
Coolest marquee out there.
Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, mankind should be thinking about getting more out of the weapons we already have. - Jack Handy