My RAD-X bartop project [FINISHED]

[Betafini]

Hey there!

First of all, I apologize in advance if I make any (many) grammatical errors while writing here. English is not my first language so please be kind 

I am a complete newbie in the arcade business but I always enjoyed playing video games by myself or with friends, and used to spend a lot of time and money at a little arcade venue when I was younger. As time passed and the arcade venues closed one after another in my hometown, I kept playing video games on my computer and had a pretty decent collection or oldies, arcade and console titles running on emulators. I also discovered the neo-geo titles, especially Metal Slug, King of Fighters, Garou and Windjammers to name but a few.

Having an arcade cabinet at home never crossed my mind until I watched a youtube video in which the guy was playing with his bartop cabinet. I had never thought of this "option", so used I was to the stand up cabinets, big and too massive for the small apartment I was living in.

I moved to a larger place a few months ago and after spending a lot of time on forums reading the various topics on bartop creation, comparing the different solutions I had (pre-made, half complete, from scratch), I decided to build my very own.

Well, this bartop will not not completely be "my very own" since I am not as equipped as many of you guys seem to be: no garage, no router, just a few tools. Just enough to build Ikea furniture. This is the reason why I decided to buy the cabinet's panels already cut with pre-drilled holes. This highly impacted my budget but I had no other choice, lacking the skills or equipment to cut these myself.

Budget: 500€ (530$).

I chose a 2 player design since the bartop will play a big role in late parties at home...: "who loses drinks his glass" and all that stuff. 
The bartop's final design will (unfortunately) be mainly decided by the wife. After much negotiations, the cabinet will be white, with black edges, and with a black stencil on the sides (still has to be decided: I am looking for something with big lines, few details, video game related or something representing the geek culture).


On to some pictures!

Here are the cabinet MDF panels. They are 12mm thick and look pretty fragile. 18mm would have been sturdier but also more expensive. Time will tell if these are strong enough.


And here are "non mortise joints". I intend to use this stuff to assemble the bartop and they should prove useful if (for any reason) I need to disassemble it. That way, I just have to remove one screw at each junction and the pieces will come apart. Since the bartop should be pretty lighy even with all the electronics inside, these joints should be enough.


I started working on the assembly yesterday while I had some spare time.


I have yet to buy proper hinges for the rear door and the control panel. I want them to be articulated for easy access to the insides of the cab. I am planning on using surface mounted invisible hinges.

- Buttons, joysticks, USB interface and speakers have been ordered at ultracabs.co.uk, they should be delivered on monday (30th) or tuesday (1st).
- Digital amp, pcb board feet and inlet switch bought on eBay
- Primer, paint, joints, screws, brackets bought at a local store

I will keep you updated on my progress (or my absence of) and I'll try to post as many pictures and share as many details as I can.

[mattsoft]

Welcome fellow bartop builder! I'll be curious to see how your kit turns out using fixit blocks. If you haven't yet assembled your cabinet fully, now is a good time to mount your speakers in the marquee "box". trying to screw those in AFTER it's put together would be difficult. screwing/unscrewing wood screws into MDF will eventually weaken the joint too, so don't plan on disassembling/reassembling too often. good luck and keep us posted.

[vwalbridge]

Man, l LOVED [Insert Name Here] as a kid. Pumped a lot of quarters into that game.

[Betafini]

@mattsoft: the fixing blocks are in place. I am indeed waiting for the speakers to arrive to go further: I need to see the space required for them to be mounted before I assemble the cabinet.
Also, I chose these fixing blocks for the very reason I knew screwing/unscrewing to often would weaken the MDF. To assemble the two parts (brown cap + metallic part) there is one screw that is used to "bond" them together. The hole for that is in the center of both parts. So: once the parts are independently fixed on the MDF, they will stay there! 

Second advantage of such fixing blocks: since I can disassemble the panels at will, the bartop will be assembled once I get the screen to evaluate the remaining space below for the motherboard, power supply, SSD and other electronic parts, drawing the areas where installing these components will be possible (taking height into account as well! I have to remember that ); then disassembled to mount everything with all the space required to work properly, without having to screw things in tight spots and so on...

As I mentioned in my first post, I am just worried about the overall strength of these fixing blocks.I hope they will be strong enough to hold everything in place. 

@vwalbridge: ooops, I didn't even know [Insert Name Here] was an arcade game!     I wrote that because for now I still have no idea about the final design and name of my bartop.

At first I wanted to make it a "Cthulhu" themed bartop but I'm not really sure about how it will come out. I guess I will have to wait until everything is mounted to experiment different design ideas.

Here are some pics of what I am planning to do. I had to quick-learn sketchup to create the model from scratch. It's not at the right scale but it should be close enough to the final render. The font is handmade and the Cthulhu head is a template I got on the Internet and modified to suit my needs.

[tomstewdevine]

@vwalbridge: ooops, I didn't even know [Insert Name Here] was an arcade game!     I wrote that because for now I still have no idea about the final design and name of my bartop.

Congrats on starting a project Homie, (vwalbridge is just f'n with you) Keep up the good work, I say you glue that sucker together for more support than just those plastic blocks. Keep the progress coming.

[vwalbridge]

@vwalbridge: ooops, I didn't even know [Insert Name Here] was an arcade game!     I wrote that because for now I still have no idea about the final design and name of my bartop.

Congrats on starting a project Homie, (vwalbridge is just f'n with you) Keep up the good work, I say you glue that sucker together for more support than just those plastic blocks. Keep the progress coming.

Ha! Yea, I'm just joking around of course.  Nice work so far. You are wise to have a kit pre-cut. That definitly saves you a lot of hassle. 

[firedance]

Great start 

My bartop is also fixed together in a few places by the blocks similar to yours, seems strong even, moved it quite a few times

thread is in my sig 

[Betafini]

@firedance: nice build! I took some ideas from what you did, such as the power On/off button. I chose this one:


Some news: not much was made today. After reading reviews here about the best way to prep MDF, I bought a can of some cheap "spray putty" my local store was selling. Below is the (poor) result. To avoid thefts, the store removes the cans' nozzles and returns them to you at the counter. Aaaaaaaannnd they gave me the wrong nozzle for this can: after installing the cap, there was a continuous spray of paint coming out. I had to manually remove the cap to stop the flow. 


I will have to sand and restart tomorrow, but with real wood primer and a roller this time. 

Spent most of my day entering stores selling second-hand computers, always going out empty handed, looking for a decent screen and CPU. After a lot of wasted time, I looked online and did find a screen.
Samsung, 19", 4:3 ratio, looking brand new, for 15€


Seeing that I could not find what I was looking for (computers were too big - ATX motherboards mainly -, too old - therefore lacking CPU power or RAM -, too expensive - for the ones that did meet my criteria), the wife asked the following question "Why don't you use a Rasp Pi?"

At first I started to answer that it would lack processing power to run the emulators smoothly and that I needed the computer's power supply to power the LED buttons and marquee.... But then, after second thought, I did investigate the "Rasp Pi 2" option, and I went for it. (or at least, I'll give it a try)

It will look like this:
- Rasp Pi 2 powered by a 5V 2amp USB adapter
- 12V 5amp 60w DC converter to light the buttons, marquee and power the D-amp I will be using. The DC converter comes with a jack output, so I purchased a jack splitter (the one with 4 outputs here: http://www.amazon.com/niceeshop-Female-Supply-Splitter-Adapter/dp/B00FGLT0C2) and these adapters: http://www.amazon.com/ZITRADES-12PCS-Female-Adapter-Flexible/dp/B00B7BAEE8.

All that will be plugged into a power strip, connected to an inlet switch.

The power button purchased earlier will be used as a "safe" power down switch for the Raspberry.

More news tomorrow! Hopefully. 

[firedance]

Glad to help 

my build isn't perfect by any means,got there in the end, almost 

[Betafini]

Hi!

Here are some new pics after the second layer of white gloss paint: not perfect, I will have to puchase new rollers because the ones I bought left lots of strands of fiber  (as you can see on the last pic). So, after some sanding and a new layer of gloss paint, the result should be pretty good.




I also received my Raspberry Pi2


And I installed Recalbox's frontend. It was quick and really easy! Just download the zip file from their website, unpack it on a micro SD, put the card on the Rp2 and fire it up. It installs by itself and I was ready to go in 10 minutes. All I had left to do was add the games to the right folders.

Here are some pictures:



Playing Garou - Mark of the Wolves (by far my favorite fighting game):



This game is probably among the "heaviest" to run on the Pi2. It takes 5 to 10 seconds to launch, but once started it plays perfect.

The aspect ratio has since been corrected to fit the entire screen. I am just having some trouble with the controls: the keyboard I use to test the interface and the games sometimes "disappears" while playing... I will have to find a solution to that problem before the system is in place in the bartop! I don't want to resort to hard resets too often with the Pi for I know it can easily corrupt the system data.

I am still trying to find a good idea for the design on the side of the cab. The Cthulhu head has been ruled out, I found it did not match the bartop's "spirit". I am looking for a single and simple shape, game related. Not too many details, a silhouette or something like that.

[Betafini]

Ok. So, after some more sanding and buying a new roller that wouldn't leave fibers on the drying paint, I'm pretty satisfied with the end result. It is far from the mirror like glossy finish of Ond's builds but it is good enough by my own standards. As you can see, there are some imperfections and level changes on the paint. It gives a "handmade" touch to the end product 


I also did some thinking about the bartop's theme and came up with an idea. This theme has already been used in here but the guy never posted the end results of his cab. 

Here's a teaser!


More pics when the paint is dry :-)

[BorgDog]

  tease   

[Betafini]

And voila!


Yes, it will be a Fallout themed bartop. I'm a huge fan of the games (particularly 1 and 2 ; the others are ok but it's just not as fun in the end... they play more like FPS but with dialogue options  ).

I did hesitate with this design:


But since I wanted to keep it simple, I ruled it out. Anyway, I still have some room to add the gear at a later time if needed.

I am still working on the marquee, I'll post some ideas later.

[Betafini]

Some news!!

I have not been doing much these last days: been away to spend christmas with the family and just came home today. I did however find a few hours to make some progress on the bartop.

Parts:

- Molding. Not exactly "t-molding" but once glued to the sides of the cabinet it should look good.




- D-Amp. Small but with a 2x15w output power, which will be way enough for my 2x5w speakers. Powered by a 12v input.




- Speaker grilles.




- Buttons installed and ready for wiring.




That's it for now!

[Brouhaha]

Looking good! 

How did you achieve the glossy finish? Wet sanding and buffing?

[Betafini]

Thanks Brouhaha! 

I got the glossy finish using this paint:


And this roller:


I did wet sand two times but I did it just because the previous coats were messed up. The roller I was using left a lot of fiber strands on the paint. You can see that on a picture I posted earlier in this topic.

Once I used a proper roller for this paint I got this result. No buffing required. 
The result is not perfect as you can see on some of the close up pictures: it gives some kind of "wave" effect but I like it the way it ended up. I also did not want to put another layer of paint: this thing takes a lot of time to dry and the smell stayed for days even with the windows wide open. My wife will not let me open that can again. That's for sure.

[firedance]

Looking good so far 

Guess the chrome trim is used for cars, such as - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Applied-3m-Chrome-Self-Adhesive-Car-Edging-Styling-Moulding-Trim-Strip-12mm-Hot-/200971420587?hash=item2ecad483ab:g:oZIAAOSwWnFV-7Ge

[Betafini]

@firedance: Thanks!
As for the molding, that's exactly the stuff I'm using. I don't know yet if it will keep its chrome color or if it will end up black. Still trying to decide that part.

[Betafini]

Been busy this week-end!

I started mounting the pieces together. Took me only an hour or two to get it done thanks to the mounting blocks. As the bartop was assembled, the wife came next to me and said "Hum, that's not so bad after all... It's ok if you want to keep it on permanent display". 
Also, if you followed my explanation as to why I wanted to use only mounting blocks to build the cab, you will notice that I ended up using metal mounting brackets: the mounting blocks were sturdy enough to hold the whole thing together but they are expensive (even the cheap and no-name ones) and since now have the permission to "keep it on permanent display", I figured there was no need to dismantle it once fully built.

So, the assembly was easy: all I had to do was plug the pieces together and tighten a single screw per board. Once done I added the metal mounting brackets and used door magnets to keep the back door locked, as well as to maintain the control panel in place.









As you can see in the following picture, I added metal brackets to support the control panel: they go deeper into the cab because they will also serve as bezel mount. There are 5mm left between the top of the screen board in front of it, it will allow the bezel to slide in before being locked in place by the CP at its bottom.


Bezel and marquee will both be plexi, respectively 1x3mm and 2x1,5mm thickness. They have been ordered and should be there before the end of next week! 

To correct some of the "gaps" remaining between the two top boards, I used white silicone sealant: it looks great!

The one major problem I encountered happened this very morning. After making some wiring tests with the inlet switch (without problems), I decided to plug everything for a live test (and to play some games  ). It started up ok but after 4 or 5 seconds, it all shut down. 

Here is what I tried, with no results:
- turning it off then on again
- checked the wiring
- new fuse
- new power cable...
In the end, I thought it could have come from one of the devices inside the cab (D-amp, screen, raspberry...) but everything started up ok.

And then I just sat there, looking at the thing and noticed one little thing was off: the LED of the inlet switch was not alight although it should have been. Well it looks like I killed my inlet switch at the first try...

What's left to do:
- get the bezel and paint it
- get a working inlet power socket connector (one without any fuse or switch or LED)
- decide what design I'll use as a marquee. All ideas are welcome but remember, this is a b&w Fallout theme. 

Edit: oh and yeah, I still need to figure how the molding is going to stick to the cab. It does come with sticky tape underneath but that wont be enough and can be easily removed. Ideas?

[Betafini]

Okay, so there IS something wrong somewhere in my cab... I just burned another plug. Can't be a coincidence. 

Edit: there was NOTHING wrong with my cab. But I did discover I have ---smurfy--- wall sockets. My inlet power switch is fine too...

[Betafini]

Hello BYOAC!

Just a (very) small update:
The system is running like a charm. I had a small problem with one of the joysticks due to the restrictor that was preventing me going the "down+right" direction, solved it by removing all restrictors.

I received the acrylic panels for the screen protection and marquee. The bezel is almost finished: I recycled an old cardboard calendar I had laying around and cut it to size then painted it black. I will post some pictures once finished.

I am now trying to make some progress on the marquee. I have an idea of the global design but I'm struggling with the name.
As a tribute to the original Fallout series, I would like to make an acronym out of a list of word, sounding like the "G.E.C.K" (Garden of Eden Creation Kit - from Fallout 2).
Here is my list of words:
Vault Tec
Advanced
Gaming
Arcade
System
Terminal
Interactive
Digital
Entertainment
Post Nuclear
Kit...

Since I'm not a native english speaker, I find it difficult to make something with meaning out of this selection of words... For instance, I thought I had something with "D.E.C.K" (Digital Entertainment .... Kit) but I can't find anything starting with the letter "C" to fill in the blank.

Well, if you guys have any ideas, I'm all ears!

[mattsoft]

Looking good! Nice to see another 2-player bartop build.

[Betafini]

Hey there! Thought I'd stop by to make a quick update: I'm making some progress on the marquee and thought I'd share my ideas with you.

As mentioned earlier, I want to create an acronym as the name for my bartop that would be part of the fallout universe. I spent a lot of time completing my word list and playing the games to get some ideas.

And I decided to use "RAD-X". I thought it could be fun to name the cab with an actual name coming right from the games.

Here are my options:
1 - Recreational Amusement and Digital eXperience
2 - Retro Arcade Digital eXperience

I like the second option better. What do you think?

Also, here is a quick attempt at creating a visual for the marquee:




RAD-X: a dose a day keeps the boredom away. 

[vwalbridge]

Just some honest feedback, no ill will of course, just from one builder to another:

Generally speaking, if you have to take the time to explain it, then it's usually lost on people. Not only does RAD-X have an acronym but you also have to explain the pill in the gear. I get what you are trying to do but it's a little too much. I feel like I say this all the time but "less is more" for me.

Full disclosure: I'm no art guy so you can tell me to stick it where the sun don't shine and that would be legal. 

[yotsuya]

I like the idea better than 90% of the ones I've heard recently. Good job.

[tomstewdevine]

I say call it Rad-X without the acyromym.  It's a Fallout thing right?

[Betafini]

@yotsuya: thanks! 

@vwallbridge & tomstewdevine: I get your point. To be honest, the more I see the acronym, the more I think about removing it. Not because I don't like it, on the opposite I'm quite proud of the reference to both the Fallout games and my bartop, but because it does (as vwallbridge said) seem a bit too much, purely on a "looks" point of view.
The simple pill in the gear and RAD-X should be enough. I will probably add the acronym somewhere visible on the fronted.


Yesterday I had the opportunity to discuss with a colleague of mine who happens to work in some kind of "printing shop". He gave me lots of ideas for the marquee, I just have to make a choice among all the possibilities:

A - Regular printing on white paper or vinyl (sticky or not)
B - Laser cut aluminium foils with a lot of color choice (silver, black, red, gold...)
C - Laser engraving directly on the plexiglass (much like Locke141's Afro Khon marquee HERE)
D - Order my marquee online, printed on special paper (I can't remember who or where it was posted on BYOAC): it is a special vinyl for backlighting...

Right now, I have 2 identical plexiglass panels cut to the marquee's size. My original idea was to simply print my marquee on white paper or vinyl. But after some trials with my colleague, I was not convinced with the result. So, solution A has been already ruled out.

With solution B, I'm afraid it won't look good (didn't try, didn't want to make the colleague waste one of his few aluminium foils he had in stock): light would only come through the laser cut letters... But placed between two plexi panels, with the back one being sanded to opacify it have a more diffuse light, it could also look good. So far, I haven't seen any project here that used this solution. So maybe, maybe not.

With solution C, I can have a very cool result. But. Afro Khon's marquee is almost transparent and even with the right lighting I'm not sure the end result would look good.

Solution D is the more appealing to me: translucent vinyl looks really good. But it's also the "easy" solution.

Can't decide. Any input or advice?

[vwalbridge]

D - Order my marquee online, printed on special paper (I can't remember who or where it was posted on BYOAC): it is a special vinyl for backlighting...

Contact BYOAC member stpcore

He does translite prints that look very good for marquees. Here is his thread.

I used his translite in my mini Q-bert and it looked very nice. I also had him print all the artwork. Very reasonable prices.

I also HIGHLY recommend BYOAC member Lucian045 He does every kind of printing. Good prices. And he just recently started doing reverse plexi printing Here is his artwork thread.

He prefers to be emailed at bjbowman045@gmail.com

[yamatetsu]

I would go with option E - don't light the marquee at all. The dominant color in that marquee is bright, you don't need to make that any brighter by lighting it. If you light the pill and the text, you change the black to something lighter, thereby losing contrast and straying from the white/black theme.

For the marquee, I would just take a piece of MDF/wood, paint it the same way as the rest of the cab, and then spraypaint the pill and the text onto it. Or maybe your pal could lasercut them out of black adhesive vinyl, which would be easier.

I'm thinking of something like this :



I would use black t-molding, as it fits the theme better. I also would replace the red joystick balltops with black ones. I would even go over the top and replace the player buttons with black/white ones. But that's just me.

[Betafini]

Hey, thanks for all the advice!

@vwallbridge: thanks, that was the kind of vinyl I was thinking about! I will have to ask stpcore for his shipping fees though... It might come expensive to have it sent to France.

@yamatetsu: I made my choice with the molding's color and it will be chromed. That way it matches the buttons edges and the handle on the back door. I do not think I will use your solution though. Despite being quite appealing because it could save me some time and money (I'd just use some heavy paper with a nice laser print on it, with just a single layer of plexi on top of it), but I like "shiny" 

I want the damn thing to hurt and blind my eyes when I turn it on, but not too much, hence the black bezel (notice that I will probably add some touches of black sharpie where the screen edges are visible)


That's why, with white marquee retainers, I still have the option to use a mostly black marquee, with white lettering.

Also, I watched some videos of "infinity mirrors", like . And I wondered what it would look like with a laser etched sign on the plexiglass. I could not find videos showing such a result.

Keep in mind that I am still not completely satisfied with my marquee design. I might change it or add just a tiny bit of details on it. Or not. 

[yamatetsu]

Using a black marquee would work, lighting the white logo and the text would make sense.

[Betafini]

@yamatetsu: thanks a lot for taking the time of making visuals of the possible marquee's render. It's kind of hard to make a choice...



A translite marquee in black and white, I'm not sure it would be relevant. But I may be wrong.

[BGoulette]

I think if you're going to have a space for a marquee, you might as well light it up. To that end, I like the black version with reversed text, though if the light was faint enough, the white version would look good, too. Just my two cents.

[yamatetsu]

I would go with the black one. I think it would 'pop' more to have the lighting concentrated on some parts of the marquee vs. just lighting the whole thing up.
I don't know the cost for these translite marquees, maybe you could just buy both versions and then decide which one looks better.


I'll toss in another idea. Have your pal do the black version, cutting out the logo and the text. Get a piece of plexi, put some chrome/mirror foil on it, put the black marquee on top of that so that the logo and the text are now in chrome/mirror. Put a clear piece of plexi on that. The marquee retainers could be black or the marquee might be held in place by chrome t-molding.

[Betafini]

Guess what?

It's done. 

I took some time to think about the marquee and finally made up my mind. In the end, I went with the "reversed text" option, but with a slight change in color. Since I used chromed buttons and molding, a black marquee would have been too heavy on the front of the cab, even with the black bezel.

So I went to see my pal and he had a silver grey panel that was just right. The material in itself was made for "reverse engraving". Here it is being laser engraved:


The laser does not cut through all of the material, only through the first opaque layer, leaving some transparent plexiglas only.

We did some tests with white paint but the result was not convincing, the light could not go through. Quite unfortunate for a marquee...

The solution I found was to use one of my plexiglas panels I ordered a few weeks earlier (two of them were supposed to keep a vinyl marquee sandwiched in between), sanded it to try to make it more "opaque" and put it behind the engraved panel.
I also built a marquee box out of spare cardboard, glued some aluminium foil on it, then added the LED stripe. I used about 2 meters of lights.

All I had to do then was assemble the marquee and add the retaining bars. Here is the result:


Close up:


How it looks like on an angle:




And of course, with aaaaaaall the lights on:



With games running:





Also, if you want them, feel free to take and use them. The following images are the "wallpapers" I created to use on recalbox. 1280*1024 to fit a 4:3 screen. They are voluntarily dark, just because I like it that way 






I will also upload some pics of the insides: the marquee, buttons and amp are all powered by a single unit, a 12V adapter you would typically use with a computer, but with a "spider" adapter, splicing into 4 different 12v outputs. I still have one of these outputs not in use and I might be tempted to purchase an 12 to 5V adapter to power the raspberry and make sure it receives enough power. I fried a 5V 3A charger (chinese noname bought on the bay) and the USB adapter I'm currently using is only 2A max in output so I sometimes have the little colored square on top of screen. Strangely, it only appears while on the frontend, not during games...

So, now it's time to rename this topic "RAD-X bartop [FINISHED]" ... And time for me to play some Super Hang-On. 

[johnrt]

A nice clean build! Good job! 

[yamatetsu]

Looking good.

[firedance]

Very nice

Did the chrome trim stick ok or did you need to use some other glue ?

[Betafini]

@johnrt & yamatetsu: thanks guys! 

@firedance: the chrome trim came with some double tape already on it. The problem was the double tape is thick and would have left quite a gap between the cab and the molding. Therefore I removed all of it and used heavy duty glue. The kind you find in tiny tubes. Used 3 of them. 

It was slow and boring, and left me with fingers covered in dried glue. But the molding is now definitely part of the cab, can't remove it.

[firedance]

Thanks for the reply

[Malenko]

I like the marquee and I like that your cab references FallOut without being limited by it.  Im not a fan of the chrome around the buttons , but I can see the appeal of it.  This is definitely a cab to be proud of, and you should be!

[Betafini]

@firedance: you're very welcome. After reading so many interesting tips and "how-to" from you guys, I guess the least I can do is answer all the questions you could have on my build, no matter how "simple" it is in its design.

@Malenko: thanks for the comment! I'm definitely very proud of it: we had a party at home last week and I could not resist showing my cab to the guests. I fired it up and in no time there was a queue of people waiting to try it out and play some of the games they used to have at home, on their old console.

The fighting games (especially Street Fighter) got most of the interest... Much more fun to play with a joystick and arcade buttons than with a console pad.