Plans for just a control panel, not a full cabinet?

[Warborg]

Sooo...  I used to be semi-active on these boards many moons ago, but life and all that ya know?  Anyway, I have an old Xenophobe converted cabinet with an old 23" PC CRT in it that I'm going to junk finally, just too big and heavy for my uses/needs.  I have all the controls and hardware for what I want to build, now it's down to the physical box.  Basically, I want to build a box that will be portable-ish (as in, not going to be as convenient as a console, but possible to lug it to a friend's house to use)...  It's going to have 2 sticks, 7 buttons per player, coin insert buttons and P1/P2, and then a handful of admin type buttons, and then a 3" lit trackball and a Turbotwist spinner (I think 2 shared buttons between them for left/right click).  It will have ports in the back for power, HDMI, and a couple USB ports for accessories, and then an internal MiniPC w/4TB HDD in a USB enclosure (of course with WiFi and BT in it as well).  So the idea is that if I want to take it somewhere, I can just take it to someone's place and plug in power and HDMI and be ready to play.

I've had it suggested to keep weight and cost down to use plywood for the construction...  My question here is, are there any good plans out there for the type of box I'm looking at?  A potential idea is to build it up to look like the navigation/con/front console on the bridge of the classic U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701... no bloody A, B, C, OR D (see what I did there??).  I'm not what I would call fluent in any 3D modeling software which is why I haven't jumped in to try to design anything myself yet.  And failing finding an actual plan for the box, what do you all use for design that isn't overly complicated for a design as simple as this?

EDIT:  Eventually, the idea is to build up a simple pedestal that this could dock on to, so I would have a 39" LCD I have sitting around mounted to the wall, and then to have this pedestal I could stand up in front of it, dock the control panel to it and have a full stand-up arcade for when the mood strikes.

[Warborg]

No input anywhere, huh?

[Phreakwars]

I made one using the control panel from an Arcade1Up pacman cab as a template. I figured out the top layout first, then built the housing around it. It was a pretty sweet contraption. Basically, the (Ms.) Pacman cab was the home base for the control panel. But if I wanted to take it with me, I'd simply lift it up from the Arcade1Up and unplug the connectors and just plug it in to a regular TV for on the go fun. Unfortunately, it got destroyed this last June when our town got flooded. I do have a video though of the original concept for it that I did. Self contained, even had it's own speakers. Jump to 13:29 in the video and you'll see kind of what the finished product looked like:


The one in this video was the concept design, the completed design was much sweeter. Gonna have to build me another one one of these days, but first I need to one day repair the other cabs in my basement that got destroyed. 10months later, I'm STILL recovering from that disaster so re-building arcade cabs is pretty low priority for now.

[Warborg]

Nice...  . What type of wood did you use in it's construction?

[Phreakwars]

Just MDF. I had originally bought several cuts of it because my woodworking skills suck and I totally expected to screw up 7 or 8 times.

[Zeosstud]

I am not trying to hate on anyone, but, maybe just buy a tankstick and your done.. While it does have 8 buttons.. maybe swap one of them out for a spinner or something.. They are made to be portable and many many people have dropped them into a Pedestal..

Just a thought,

All the best with your project!!

[Warborg]

I am not trying to hate on anyone, but, maybe just buy a tankstick and your done.. While it does have 8 buttons.. maybe swap one of them out for a spinner or something.. They are made to be portable and many many people have dropped them into a Pedestal..

Just a thought,

All the best with your project!!

No hate taken from it...  It's a valid suggestion, but as I'm trying to do some other stuff like house the PC in it along with a larger external drive enclosure, some extra buttons and ports in the back, etc. I don't think it would work for me.

[Crazy Cooter]

Have you looked into superguns?  I think those are close to what you're looking for and those builders have been fighting the portable vs playable tradeoff for decades.