gooch Posted September 22, 2013 Share Posted September 22, 2013 Wanted to share my first cabinet build with everyone now that it's near finished. When I designed the cabinet, I wanted to create something that was a sit-down style cabinet for long hours of play, but without the usual Japanese plastic look that usually is associated with that genre. Instead I wanted something that used t-molding like the classic cabinets of my childhood, and I settled on chrome and black after seeing a similar color scheme somewhere in my Googles. It has a manually rotating 24" LED monitor for optimal viewing of horizontal and vertical games, and it's a touchscreen for use with some some casino & slot games I have. There's a second 15" USB-powered monitor running or8ital's HyperSpin Helper which gives me dynamic marquees based on game, and when playing Future Pinball it is configured to be the backboard. Sorry, the Double Dragon photos are prior to the second screen being added. For sound, I hacked apart a set of THX-rated 2.1 computer speakers with a Dremel, attached the satellite speakers in some custom mounts I built, then placed the subwoofer in the bottom portion next to the coin door. I don't use it very much for a jukebox, but when I do the system shakes walls. I may be attaching a ButtKicker Gamer2 to the sound system soon in order to provide tactile force feedback to the cabinet. The buttons and controls are all from Ultimarc and I couldn't be happier with them. It has a spinner, 3" trackball, two 6 button Street Fighter layouts, pinball buttons on the side, and menu & coin/start buttons. The 2 joysticks are ServoStiks which have motors controlling 4 way/8 way restrictor plates that are automatically switched based on game using LEDBlinky. LEDBlinky also controls the RGB LED buttons on my cab, lighting up not only the active buttons, but also lighting them to the correct color based on game and/or system context. I'm using a combination of HyperSpeech and LEDBlinky to announce games, controls, and even read from history.dat giving my guests a museum feel to this collection. The cabinet itself has 4 external USB ports, a set of thermally controlled exhaust fans, removable service doors, and of course cup holders. The computer I'm using is a dual core laptop with 4 GB RAM and 2 HD's - disk 1 is an SSD that runs everything, and disk 2 is a SATA disk I use for backups. I've hidden every aspect of the Windows boot & shelled HyperSpin in an attempt to have a more authentic experience, including changing the Windows logo to an animated Ryu and using Resource Hacker to change the typical Windows system messages to my own. I've even got an app for my phone that shows me the arcade's CPU temp and system resource utilization. This has been a lot of fun to build and I thank everyone who's helped me from the forums and everyone responsible for writing the software I'm using. If anyone is interested I can post the in progress build pics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneBadVeggie Posted September 22, 2013 Share Posted September 22, 2013 That's an incredible cabinet, but the cup holders are what put it over the edge to legendary status. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooch Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 That's an incredible cabinet, but the cup holders are what put it over the edge to legendary status. Thanks man. Cold frothy beverages go very nicely with gaming. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joeyjojojjjjjj Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Awesome! very unique! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trnzaddict Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 I love the chrome tmolding with the black and the white buttons...modern looking. Well done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadly Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Wow that thing is crazy. The rotating monitor was well thought out. I often considered talking with some of my code monkey friends and having them right something that would engage a motor to spin the monitor when a horizontal game was selected. That would be awesome. Anyway that machine is a huge monster. I feel bad if you ever have to move that thing! Good job dude - well done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooch Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 Wow that thing is crazy. The rotating monitor was well thought out. I often considered talking with some of my code monkey friends and having them right something that would engage a motor to spin the monitor when a horizontal game was selected. That would be awesome. Anyway that machine is a huge monster. I feel bad if you ever have to move that thing! Good job dude - well done. Here's a construction shot of the inside of the rotation system. Basically it consists of a VESA mount and a lazy susan mounted to various peices of wood. I've seen some software triggered motor driven rotating monitors on YouTube but I dont know how they did it. I think it would be fantastic if there were something like that that worked with HyperSpin, but unfortunately I'm more of a hardware engineer than a code warrior so I wouldn't even know where to begin writing it or I'd do it myself. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polemicist Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Nice. Simple black works. What have you got the buttons setup to do above your trackball? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooch Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 Nice. Simple black works.What have you got the buttons setup to do above your trackball? The 2 buttons closest to the trackball are L&R mouse buttons, the 4 across the top are Escape, MAME/MESS Menu, Pause, HyperPause. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooch Posted September 25, 2013 Author Share Posted September 25, 2013 In-progress pics. Due to the real estate required for the rotating monitor, I essentially started with the rotation assembly and built the cabinet around it. The design was completely my own because I couldn't find anyone else on the web that was doing what I was doing to copy off, and the few I did see didn't have detailed write ups on their design. Once I started to assemble the frame it really began to be clear to my wife that this crazy idea I had may actually be finished one day soon. I went with 3/4" birch plywood instead of MDF so it would be more resistant to moisture that my first floor reportedly got with a previous owner of the house. In front you can see one of the two ottomans I use for gaming seats and are what I used to size the height of the cabinet along with some furniture building web sites online. A test run of assembling the CP once all the parts arrived in the mail. My wife pulled the shades when I was building this because she was genuinely afraid nosey neighbors would think I was building a bomb. I ended up having to take this apart to paint it, but that was expected and it gave me a chance to do real wire management the second go around. And here's a couple pics priming and painting the cabinet. My garage looked like a kill room from Dexter. And two more shots of the cabinet indoors for the first time ready to have a table of parts connected to it. It took days of my vacation to bring the arcade to a playable state, but I finished it in time (mostly) for my New Year's party. I'm still adding to the cabinet, added the marquee monitor just a few weeks ago and ordered the ButtKicker Gamer2 yesterday, but the physical build is done for the most part. I'll forever be adding systems to my collection, and the good folks who write HyperLaunch seem to be adding great features all the time so it'll forever be a work in progress. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonnykool Posted October 3, 2013 Share Posted October 3, 2013 Wow, your build looks fantastic and its great to see that all your careful planning has paid off. I love the second screen idea. Well done. Any further plans for your setup? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooch Posted October 3, 2013 Author Share Posted October 3, 2013 Wow, your build looks fantastic and its great to see that all your careful planning has paid off. I love the second screen idea. Well done. Any further plans for your setup? Thank you! No plans to add anything hardware-wise at this time because I'd be fearful of messing up the aesthetics. I may be building a whole new racing cabinet with 3 screens to satisfy my need for speed though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
relic Posted October 3, 2013 Share Posted October 3, 2013 best arcade idea ive seen in ages love that rotating screen simply briliant and your design is amazing overall Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghutch92 Posted October 3, 2013 Share Posted October 3, 2013 To automate the rotation you probably will need a stepper motor, a controller chip or a microprocessor and a little knowledge of C programming. I know that there are other ways to automate the rotation but the stepper motor is one of the easier ways that come to my mind right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooch Posted October 3, 2013 Author Share Posted October 3, 2013 To automate the rotation you probably will need a stepper motor, a controller chip or a microprocessor and a little knowledge of C programming. I know that there are other ways to automate the rotation but the stepper motor is one of the easier ways that come to my mind right now. This guy did it, and YouTube seems to have a few more examples of auto-rotation. Maybe I'll be adding a stepper motor to my cab at some point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cowbells Posted October 4, 2013 Share Posted October 4, 2013 Hey just saw this and I gotta say, I've been drooling over arcade builds for over 3 years now and this one is one of the most unique I've ever seen! Right up there with this crazy dude! http://1uparcade.rmfx.com/arcade-const-panels.html You two need to get together to build the most insanely well designed multi-game compatible, yet practical arcade cab this world has ever known. Jus sayin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonnykool Posted October 4, 2013 Share Posted October 4, 2013 Lightguns...... you need lightguns now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooch Posted October 4, 2013 Author Share Posted October 4, 2013 Lightguns...... you need lightguns now Hmmmmmmm.... Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.