Miniature Qbert

[Daan Muller]

I liked building my miniature Galaga and I have some spare Raspberry Pi's so next up is miniature Qbert. 

CNC routed the sides and tried something new instead of small battens I routed an extra inset where the other pieces attach to.



Glued the control panel together.



Congo Bongo is the only other game I know of that needs a 45 degree rotated joystick, and that uses a button. I rearranged the cpo layout a bit to add the button so I can play 2 games on this cab.



That's all for today.

[Daan Muller]

Little paint touch up in the 'spraybooth'.

[johnrt]

Nice!!! 

[Daan Muller]

Thanks! 

Cabinet is done now so this weekend I can wire up the screen and the Pi to the cpo.



Family portrait.

[sfinx333]

great looking miniatures!

I love the look of a mini q-bert cabinet!

[lamprey]

Do you happen to have a part list you are using for the electronics and controls? And do you have a preferred place to purchase them?

I've been debating about building a big (bag as in 4x8' sheets) CNC machine, but I don't really have the room for that in my current house. But, you may have inspired me to start small and buy/build a small CNC machine that I could make some mini's with. Plus, that'd get me some practice with the software.

Out of curiosity, did you try another medium, like acrylic/plexi instead of wood? I was just thinking that one could get some black acrylic and skip the painting process, but wood is probably cooler.

 

[Daan Muller]

Hi,

For the guts I use a Raspberry Pi with an adafruit 2.8 TFT. I wire things up the same way as in this tutorial: Raspberry Pi Gameboy and use the cupcade image for the SD card.

Joystick and buttons are from Digikey

Haven't tried other materials, these two are from MDF, I might try birch plywood for the next, easier with painting. On the Q*bert the sides are a sticker printed on vinyl. But I might redo them with paint and just sticking the art on like on the Galaga it's cleaner that way.

As for a CNC router, buy as big as you can afford. You can do small stuff on a big one but not vice versa.

 

[DaOld Man]

This project is looking very very good!

How much would you charge me to cut out a donkey kong cabinet that size? (PM me if interested.)

[lamprey]

Thanks for the info!!

One more question about sound; I didn't see any speakers and I didn't think the RPi had a speaker. So, just curious about that.

 

[Daan Muller]

speaker is not in yet. I use these small usb powered speakers. Waiting on delivery from china, the one I have is in the Galaga.

[Daan Muller]

It's alive. 



Waiting on some leds for the marque and the speaker and then I can close her up.

[BorgDog]

That is way awesome!  Can you show what it looks like on the inside?  I might try one of these sometime.  Something to keep on the desk at work.

[DaOld Man]

 

[Daan Muller]

At the moment the Pi is just loose in there. I am waiting for some 5 volt led strip and a small speaker. When I have everything that's going in there I tape it down with a little double sided tape and put the back on.

[DaOld Man]

What screen did you use?

[BorgDog]

What screen did you use?

What he said, the only 2.8" ones I see on adafruit are touchscreens, not that there's anything wrong with that.

And thanks for the interior shot.

[Daan Muller]

Yes that's the one I use, the 2.8 touchscreen.

I don't know much about linux and getting these little screens to work on the pi is a bit to technical for me. But this one works out of the box with the cupcade image for the Pi. And that install also takes care of the buttons through the Pi's GPIO and autostarts in a simple menu. It only works on the Raspberry Pi B though, not the B+ or the new 2.

It runs advancemame and that's slower than mame4all. But mame4all doesn't work in these small screens that connect through the GPIO because of some video mode thing from what I understand. But advancemame is fast enough for the classics.

[Yvan256]

Another miniature cabinet. That's just awesome.

Now continue making a lot of them until you have enough to make a scale arcade room, bonus points if you make it look like a mall with two fake stores on both sides.