Tablet ARCADE Controller - Small Portable Battery Powered

[bubbleblasto]

Hi, this is a small portable ARCADE controller. It uses a SAMSUNG Galaxy Tab S4 as the computer, monitor, speakers. An ipac keyboard encoder is plugged into the usb-C port of the Tablet. It runs Mame4droid with v139 roms. It plays all the games full speed, i havent noticed any slowdowns or lag. I usually play 20 minutes to an hour and the Tablet battery barely goes down a few percent. It has Industrias Lorenzo push buttons, Sanwa JLF joysticks with cherry microswitches and oversized actuators. The 4-way joystick has an 0.5mm oversized actuator and the stock square gate set to 4-way position. The 8-way joystick has an 1mm oversized actuator and a circular gate. I made a youtube video that goes into great detail. The project started because i wanted to play the early 80s gambling type games from company GrayHound. Those games give off a goldern era vibe. Eventually it turned into this laptop playable controller that plays many types of games. I mostly play it sitting on the couch, its very comfortable to use. My main area of interest is arcade games from 1978-1984. Im an old dude, and during those years the cool thing to do was go to the arcade. Thanks

I made a Youtube video that goes into great detail.

[Cynicaster]

I will admit, my first reaction was "WTF is that thing?"

But I watched your video and it's clear you've put a lot of thought and planning into this design to make a "Swiss Army Knife" of a MAME rig.  Very clever, indeed. 

Personally, I'd never devote controls to those old trivia and card games but if you enjoy them, then go for it I guess.  I also don't think I'd ever be able to get used to having a joystick on one side of the screen and buttons on the other for horizontal games, but the setup for vertical games looks great.  For horizontal I'd probably sooner play them on the vertical screen with the better control layout, and just suffer with the black bars above and below the game image. 

Is that tablet a standard size?  I'd be worried about what to do if the tablet dies and I couldn't find another one that size.  Perhaps a way of future-proofing would be to have a rectangular opening in the top plate that takes in different adapter plates that have a common exterior dimension but can be fine tuned on the interior dimension to snugly accommodate a range of slightly different tablet sizes. 

 

[nexusmtz]

Nice variety and flexibility!

[bubbleblasto]

I will admit, my first reaction was "WTF is that thing?"

But I watched your video and it's clear you've put a lot of thought and planning into this design to make a "Swiss Army Knife" of a MAME rig.  Very clever, indeed. 

Personally, I'd never devote controls to those old trivia and card games but if you enjoy them, then go for it I guess.  I also don't think I'd ever be able to get used to having a joystick on one side of the screen and buttons on the other for horizontal games, but the setup for vertical games looks great.  For horizontal I'd probably sooner play them on the vertical screen with the better control layout, and just suffer with the black bars above and below the game image. 

Is that tablet a standard size?  I'd be worried about what to do if the tablet dies and I couldn't find another one that size.  Perhaps a way of future-proofing would be to have a rectangular opening in the top plate that takes in different adapter plates that have a common exterior dimension but can be fine tuned on the interior dimension to snugly accommodate a range of slightly different tablet sizes. 

 

Hi, yes i will be limited to a tablet that fits in the central rectangle. The current 2020 Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 will fit if i ever need to replace my S4tab. But replacement tablets of compatible size should be available in the future. I have phones going up to 10 years old sitting in a drawer that still work so the S4tab should give at least a decade of use. I also find it useful that the tablet can be unplugged and used for other things when not installed in the arcade controller.

After about a month the main place this arcade controller is used is sitting on the couch or sitting up in bed late night while watching the news. Its fun to play while reclining and easy to get a quick game of Moon Patrol, Jungle Hunt, or Sky Skipper. The Grayhound gambling and trivia games are fun as well because they dont require lots of button mashing, they are very casual entertainment. In the future I plan to build a Stealth RV from a high roof cargo Mercedes Sprinter Van, and this will be used as my arcade game entertainment, small and portable.

thanks for viewing my project. your swiss army knife description is very accurate, when i was testing out the mame4droid app on the tablet i imagined how a controller could be made becuase tilting the tablet switched viewing angles to all 4 sides. I originally was researching a raspberry pi but this tablet seemed so much easier in the end, it has all the parts in one unit.