Madman's Arcade - Contol Panel build

[MadmanDK]

First of all, as you might have guessed from my name, i'm from Denmark, so let me excuse in adwance for misspelling and bad grammar

After being a guest at this great forum for almost two years now, i finally created a user and are going to start a project.
My spare time is pretty limited, so this build will be made mainly in the weekends. I have a 9 month old son, so the days with hours to spend in the garage are long gone..

I'm that kind of guy who plans and plans and never gets anywhere, so i have studied hundreds of other projects trying to figure out the perfect build for me, and i'm still not sure about the final look

I'm starting with the control panel, and have now made two prototypes. The first quickly screwed together so it could be ready to entertain some friends i had over for a poker night.
We call the entertainment area for "loosers lounge" and this time it was "1942", "Paperboy" and "Boubble Bobble" that took the gold.

The reason for the prototypes, was that i wanted to try some different button positions, and wanted to test how close the two players could stand, without pushing eachother too much.

First here is the parts i'm going to use (or planned to use). All bought from gremlinsolutions.co.uk

• 2 Sanwa Joystick JLW-UM-8
• Happ Competition Pushbuttons (12 blue, 6 white, 2 black)
• Happ 1 & 2 Player Start Pushbuttons
• I-PAC2 FS32 Version (PS/2)
• Rectangular Illuminated Pushbuttons (blue) (was planned to use as coin button)

Quickly bashed together with some 13mm MDF i had in the garage to make this:



Obviously i'm planning to do a more structured wirring job on the final build



Luckily my kid didn't see the wirring, as he was busy with his toy-lion Otherwise he would have told his mom, and i would be i big trouble



I didn't have any room in my garage (there is room enough, it's just a big mess) so i used a dryer as a table. The dryer was there because i had to fix it, and i ended up scarring it with my saw :-/





I got the dryer fixed some days later and now there should be room for my build

We took the CP into the livingroom and fired up my wife's favorite game. "Tetris".. Felt a little ironic to play a 25 year old game on a 1000$ pc and a 1500$ tv



The first prototype got my attention to the "Player 2 coin" which i had ruled out, because i didn't see the usage of a seperate coin button for the two players.. Untill i played "Gauntlet" and only could give energy to player one..
So i had to ditch the illuminated pushbutton, and luckyly i had ordered some extra buttons, so i have enough to give each player his own coin button.

When assemblying the first prototype i found out, that i had placed the buttons a bit too close to eachother, so the fastener at the buttom touched eachother. They were placed 3,5 cm appart, so i made another prototype with 4 cm spacing, and also tried to make the joysticks fastened below surface.. Sadly i don't have a router so this was made with a router-bit in a drill-machine
My father-in-law has a router so i will deffinately borrow it for the final build.
This CP was never planned to be playable, it was only made to test the 4cm player button spacing.

I have found a local printing company that can print my control panel and marquee for around 50$, and since they print on 137cm wide rolls, there will be room for two marquees for the price of one. So i plan on making one with "natural" colours, and one a bit darker, so if the light behind it will be too bright maybe the darker marquee will be better?

My plan for the control panel is this:
Dark background, with a pacman chased by ghosts all around the edge of the CP. Maybe some cool (blue) fire in the middle, and a big "Madman's Arcade" logo
I simply can't figure out how to use photoshop, so i'm using the older Paint Shop Pro 5, which has served me well for years of photo editing. The downside of that is, that it only have a few usable filters, so much of the graphics will be painted pixel by pixel.. A very time consuming job, but i can do it in my breaks at work, and on the labtop in the evening when the wife watches some boring show on tv.
This is what i have made so far, the pacman around the edge was just to make some kind of frame for the CP.
Don't mind the colours around the buttons and joystick, they are just to mark up the area around them.



The CP will be detachable, an a size around 80x30cm at the outer edges. The box underneed will be 70x25cm.
With a drawer underneath for a mouse and keyboard for admin access.
Planning to make the whole cabinet around 60cm wide so it can get into my basement room (man cave).

The computer is an old PC i had saved years ago, to use as a mediacenter pc. Can't remeber the specs right now.

I'm planning to make the cabinet from 19mm MDF and start with an old TV (21" phillips).

I know that because this i my first cabinet, i will make a lot of small mistakes making it. Therefore i'm not starting with a perfect plan in my head, because there will obviously be made alot of changes along the way, to make the whole thing fit together

The big plan is to make something similar to what Kman-Sweden did in this build : http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=95205.0;all

..

That was part 1, at least now i have started, and hopefully i can't some constructive critism from the great crowd (you guys)

[Epyx]

Welcome aboard and enjoy the ride...you will be in for a small bit of frustration at times...however, that will be overshadowed by much sense of accomplishment and of course gaming nirvana at the other end

Plans look solid...and after 2 years you know the golden rule CP is last...so leave the wiring where it is at and finish it *later*! 

[ammitz]

Solid start, ględer mig til at se mere

[StefanK]

Hi MadmanDk

Could you tell me where you get your CP and Marquee printed?

StefanK / Esbjerg

[MadmanDK]

Hi MadmanDk

Could you tell me where you get your CP and Marquee printed?

StefanK / Esbjerg

Hi Stefan

It's a shop called "Medie-Shoppen" and they can do pretty much anything.
T-shirts, caps, posters, banners, wall stickers, and also on transperent plastic which i hope will be ideal for my marquee if i put it between two pieces of plexiglas/acryl .

I live in Slagelse, and it's a local shop, who employ some nice people with physical or mental disabilities, and is therefore partially funded by the government.
So at the same time you get that good feeling, by supporting such a fine initiative.

I got a card with a website address when i visited them, but i'm not sure it has any info about the shop. www.vasac.dk

b.t.w. great to see other danes inhere

[MadmanDK]

I've not made any progress for the last 14 days, while my kid has been sick, and the only spare time has been used outside making a woodshed for the 10m3 wood i'm getting in 2 weeks..

But at work (nice) i have worked with the control panel, and i think i am going for a clean look without too many different stuff, and this is the progress so far:


The 5 pac-mans position isn't locked there. they could also be in different positions around the track, and maybe also some fruits (pacman points)


My headache so far is my arrows around the joystick (not even sure i need them, i guess people know how to use a joystick)
my favorite is the un-filled arrow, but not sure if it should be white or black line (or other colour)
maybe with a darker filling like in the button field..


Any ideas?

[Yvan256]

I would use filled black arrows  with the same outline color as the circles around the joystick, but make them ~50% transparent.

[ninjasquirrel]

I would use filled black arrows  with the same outline color as the circles around the joystick, but make them ~50% transparent.

+1
But it might be nice to have the diagonals as simple yellow dots to tie in your pac border

[MadmanDK]

So i finally had the time to get some more work done.. I finished the control panel graphics, and visited the printing-shop again.. They said it would take around 10 days, but she didn't knew what she talked about, because it was ready for pickup already the next day..

This is the graphics:


I ordered 1 piece, and because the paper they print on is 137cm wide, i asked for the leftovers, so i could use it for testing different cutting/sawing methodes, but when i arrived, i found out they made a mistake and printed 2 copies instead of one.
No worries now i have a whole extra piece to test with..

I bought a 16mm MDF and got to work with the cutting..


And drilled some 4mm holes for the buttons and joystick


Made a box to go under the CP


Got the 1"1/8 holes drilled for the buttons, and i chose 12mm 16mm for the joysticks.. they will be mounted under the CP on top of the CP, but under the plexi..


Bought some 3mm plexi and used a jigsaw with a smalltoothed metal blade to cut it. (16mm MDF + 3mm plexi = 19mm ~ fits 3/4" T-molding


Made a little test-template and cut the 1"1/8 holes in the plexi, with the same cup-drill i used for the MDF. The result: nice sharp cuts with only a minimum of sanding left to do.


All the holes done, and some buttons placed.


What the f**k .. the "player start" buttons, and the white push-buttons are not the same kind of white.. the start-button is a little more yellow-ish, and at the same time also a bit smaller... Come on.. they are both from Happ, so why aren't the buttons the same size, and same colour??
Luckily i ordered some extra white buttons, so at this time, i'm wondering if i should ditch the player-start buttons, and use plain white buttons for start also..


That's it for today.. Next up is the routing for the joysticks, and find a place to buy "dark blue" T-mold in europe (preferly Denmark, Germany or the U.K.) .. otherwise i have to go with plain black t-mold..

[Franco B]

I've not used them personally but I found this UK t-moulding vendor when searching for someone the other day > http://ukt-molding.co.uk/

[MadmanDK]

Thanks Franco B..
Couldn't see if his shop still was in business, or shut down long time ago.. so mailed him last night, and he is still going strong..
I think i will start by ordering the around 150cm i need for the control panel, and in some different colours to see which colour goes best with the full cabinet colour scheme..
Black cabinet with CP and Maquee with a mostly blue look..

I'm thinking of :
Black : The classic, but might be a bit too borring with black cabinet and black t-mold?
Light Blue : Just to see how light blue it really is
Dark Blue : My favorite which i hope will look good around the blue fire
Yellow : Might be too dominant, but would fit the pacman track in the CP

------------

Today wasn't that productiv as i hoped. I had to get rid of alot of junk, and drive it to the recycling-station.. That's the downside of having a large basement and garage : you gather alot of junk and garbage, instead of getting rid of it in small bits..

I started by drawing the joystick's body and mountingplate


Sawing the inner out with a jigsaw, and then router the countersinking of the mountingplate


The mountingplates didn't have countersinked holes for the screws, so had to take care of that


The result : The plate is the same height as the wood


I have been thinking if the CP should be a closed box, or you should be able to open it for maintenance, so played around with some brackets from a kitchen cabinet


But somewhere somehow the measurement went down the drain, so had to rout some extra, and mess around with the mountingpositions


But i think i'll skip the idea of the brackets, because it also needs some sort of a lock in the front, so the lid won't open while two guys a playing hard, so i think it will be a closed box, where the bottom part won't be glued, so it can be screwed out if i need to open it for maintenance..

The holes i made kan be fixed with this : Chemical tree.. a two-component filler


..
The plan for tomorrow:
Build a new box, and paint it all black..
I won't mount the top-plate until i have routed the groove for the t-mold, and i don't have the router-bit yet..
I think the £35 for a routerbit is way too harsh, so have to find it elsewhere..