My Arcade Podium (Picture Heavy)

[oNiGHTo]

Hey guys!

I finally finished my arcade and am having a kickback party tomorrow for its unveiling. I wanted to post here both to possibly give anyone looking to start an arcade some ideas, and also to thank this community as a whole. I have been a quiet lurker for a while now but I have learned an insane amount from so many of you, and I appreciate all of the work you guys do here. I'm by no means an expert on any of this so this is more of an amateur job, but I am so stoked to have it finished. There are still a few emulators I have been unable to get working, some bugs that need fixing, and some art/videos I still need to get as the HyperSync databases are updated, but overall I am ecstatic If anyone has any comments or criticisms I would love to hear them all. Thanks!

Here is the arcade from beginning to end:

Laying out the controller layouts for drilling

Control Panel cut and joystick notches routered

First coat of paint on control panel (I was using spray cans at this time and forgot to primer)

Third coat on control panel.. (I wasn't happy with this outcome)

Third coat of new rolled on paint after sanding and priming (Much better results)

Soldering up the RGB LEDs (so tedious)

RGB LEDs soldered and heatshrink applied

LEDs attached to microswitches

Got the email my artwork vinyl was printed and on its way

Podium crafted

Panel attached to podium with beginnings of wiring done

Picture of wiring before I had looped the ground wires

Front USB wall plates

Side outputs (HDMI/Ethernet/USBx2/VGA and a drop hole for the surge power cable)

Control Panel and Speaker Enclosure painted

Back Side of Speaker Enclosure

Another view into Speaker Enclosure

Speaker Enclosure Lid with Sticker and Clear Coat applied

Inside Cabinet Wiring done

This is the back for the cabinet, I drilled and painted a custom Zelda Triforce that still needs a little touch up (Vent fan will be screwed into the back)

Cabinet turned on for it's first round of debugging

Apologies for the large amount of pictures.

Any questions let me know, I'd be glad to help in any way I can give back.

Thanks,

Justin (oNiGHTo)

[djvj]

Nice job man, but why speakers on the podium? You have ones on the TV or can even put em on the wall. I would think it would sound a little odd with the sound coming from below you rather than where you are looking.

[oNiGHTo]

Nice job man, but why speakers on the podium? You have ones on the TV or can even put em on the wall. I would think it would sound a little odd with the sound coming from below you rather than where you are looking.

Thanks for the feedback djvj. When I first started this cabinet I had a thousand stupid ideas and that ended up being one of them lol. I put the speakers in the cabinet in the event that I would bring my cab to a buddies place, then I could simply plug into his tv via hdmi, however, looking back, I can't imagine that I'm going to be moving it very often. To be honest, I'm not noticing a big difference on the location of the speakers. I end up setting the volume between 40%-50% at max, because they are insanely loud. Then again, I'm not an audiophile and could probably stand to be educated on proper location of speakers.

[MontyQ]

Big and bulky but it looks like you did really well however tho I think you CPO would boost the whole system with a nice set of matching art on it. Not my style at all but it looks well made just the no art on such a huge cpo makes it look abit plain imo

[jq_quint]

good work, love the speak lid streetfighter artwork, where'd you get that from? So did you apply clear coat on top of this sticker?

[oNiGHTo]

Big and bulky but it looks like you did really well however tho I think you CPO would boost the whole system with a nice set of matching art on it. Not my style at all but it looks well made just the no art on such a huge cpo makes it look abit plain imo

I completely agree about not having artwork on the CPO. Looking back I wish I would have. Ah well, next build will definitely have some artwork on the control panel! Thanks MontyQ!

good work, love the speak lid streetfighter artwork, where'd you get that from? So did you apply clear coat on top of this sticker?

Basically all I did was spend loads of time searching google images for any and every piece of artwork I liked, and then narrowed it down and sent it off to be created on black backed vinyl. The clear coat was applied after the vinyl was placed on the wood. I'm horrible at putting that vinyl down cleanly, but at least the speaker lid turned out nice lol

[BiLbOBaggins]

...

Where did you buy your parts?

What would you do differently?

Looks nice!

[oNiGHTo]

Where did you buy your parts?

What would you do differently?

Looks nice!

I ordered most of my parts from overseas due to lack of funds at the time. I also went through suzo-happ for the joysticks, monoprice and mouser for cables/connectors/wire/heatshrink.

Looking back there are a few things I would have done differently and most are noted in this thread. The speakers don't seem to have an impact on sound, but they do overhang not allowing me to fully open the control panel without removing them temporarily. I would have flush mounted them more if I had known, and still may fix this in the future. This will be an issue if I need to get to the wiring for any repairs.

I would have also created artwork for the control panel. It's more aesthetic, but would be more pleasant to look at. Overall it doesn't take away from the experience, as I'm more into the games than looking down at graphics while playing.

Aside from that, I still have yet to fully setup LEDBlinky. I created a few animations to show friends when they come by, but have not had the time to go in and set up intro/etc animations within hyperspin nor per game.

Another odd thing I noticed, that I have had to correct manually so far, are the controls for mame. Using 8 button setup for player 1 and 2 was mainly for other console systems with more buttons, but I'm running into issues with mame. When setting mame up, for example, I set up player 1 buttons 1-4 as a-d and 5-8 as e-h, which in theory should work. Games with six buttons like street fighter tend to not like this approach and need retuning, as button 4 would actually be low kick, so would need to set up 1-3 and 4-6 as the left most controls. I dont think there's any real way around this since there are so many different button setups per game, but it's easy enough to change it on the fly when i notice one is not set up properly that it's not been a real issue.

Thanks for the feedback.

[nailzor]

Another odd thing I noticed, that I have had to correct manually so far, are the controls for mame. Using 8 button setup for player 1 and 2 was mainly for other console systems with more buttons, but I'm running into issues with mame. When setting mame up, for example, I set up player 1 buttons 1-4 as a-d and 5-8 as e-h, which in theory should work. Games with six buttons like street fighter tend to not like this approach and need retuning, as button 4 would actually be low kick, so would need to set up 1-3 and 4-6 as the left most controls. I dont think there's any real way around this since there are so many different button setups per game, but it's easy enough to change it on the fly when i notice one is not set up properly that it's not been a real issue.

Thanks for information on parts, I think in MAME you should be able to setup custom controls for individual games for that type of issue.