• Welcome to Redshift Project Depot.
 

Arcadia Project

Started by Louis L, January 01, 2016, 07:17:04 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Louis L

Arcadia is an arcade cabinet. The hardware consists of a Raspberry Pi running MAME under Linux, driving an LCD monitor for the video, a simple PC speaker for audio, and an iPac-2 for user console input.

The original purpose of the cabinet was strictly as a gaming cabinet to play old Williams games. The project was then re-purposed to support Redshift in the pit as a display kiosk.

Status:

       
  • 10/25/15 - went shopping for stuff needed to finish the build. Did not get lighting (did not find anything I liked). Still need to get transparency film and USB hub.
  • 10/26/15 - Side panels cut out. Rough placement established
  • 10/27/15 - Four front facing panels cut; glue blocks/cleats added. Panels glued and screwed to one side panel but only screwed to other side panel (still removable).
  • 10/28/15 - Added a bottom to the chamber that houses the marquee. Milled the rectangular piece that will hold the LCD but did not cut an opening yet. Spend a lot of time discussing where & how to mount the LCD display and speakers.
  • 11/3/15 - Milled display panel opening for LCD monitor
  • 11/4/15 - Cut 2+ inch holes for speakers. Disassembled speakers, removed drivers, cut wires and epoxied them to chassis. Milled channel in display panel for power and HDMI cable.
  • 11/7/15 - glued second side panel in place. Removed many screws since the glue is doing the work. Attached 2 fan grills to act as speaker grills. Milled 2 support pieces in pine and glued them to the side panels. Glued the display panel in place.
  • 11/9/15 - Ed's students milled 2 metal beams to interface with mounting holes in rear of monitor.
  • 11/11/15 - planed and added oak mounting surface for monitor beams. Glued pine to side extensions. Planed oak for use as exposed mdf edge covers. Mounted LED light centered in opening.
  • 11/14/15 - paint display panel black.
  • 11/15/15 - painted side panels red on both inside and outside. Top and front bottom are black. Oak trim is black but not yet mounted.
  • 11/22/15 - Painted side extensions red on outside. Soldered wires to speakers and hot glued wires to cabinet running down both sides. Cut user control panel and cut bevel so it meets display panel at proper angle. Remounted light fixture.
  • 11/27/15 - Mounted LCD panel into opening. Attached side extensions to side panels with piano hinge.
  • 11/28/15 - Worked on placement of hardware on user console.
  • 11/29/15 - Conclusion - can't mount both joysticks and trackball with all buttons at the same time. There just isn't room. Will create two console panels. The first one will contain 2 joysticks with 8 buttons. The second will contain the trackball but will require another ipac to handle buttons. Need to figure out how to make console swappable. Located all hardware, drilled holes and mounted all components to console board. Used Dremel to notch some MDF off the display panel to allow clearance for two top-most buttons.
  • 12/2/15 - glued/nailed black oak edging on most of the frame.
  • 12/5/15 - cut down the side panel extension by 5/16 inch so oak edge can be added. Touched up nails with black paint.
  • 12/6/15 - wired up the main console buttons and joysticks. Tested to make sure it all works.
  • 12/12/15 - added 1 and 2 coin buttons. Glued 2 blocks to bottom of console; screwed it to display panel. Tested with games but there seems to be a wiring problem - maybe a short on at least one of the #1 joystick switches. Test printed transparency for the marque.
  • 12/20/15 - build polycarbonate housing for audio amplifier PCB. This is just 2 pieces of 4x4 inch poly and 4 standoffs, mounted to a piece of 4x6 inch pine.
  • 12/25/15 - soldered right-speaker wires to PCB.
  • 12/26/15 - Made pine frame for marque, painted black, with slot to hold acrylic insert. Frame can be opened by removing 4 screws at the top to change insert. Looked over the console for shorts, found nothing - there's still something wrong with up and/or down joystick-1 controls.
  • 12/27/15 - Finished the marquee frame. The final sandwich consists of (back to front): wax paper (as diffuser), acrylic, 3 layers of transparency film in left and right halves, acrylic. The wax paper should have been inside the acrylic but I messed up the assembly order and wasn't in the mood to redo it later - too much work!
  • 12/28/15 - repainted both sides with the red paint. This is to even out the colors of the 2 halves of the sides which were painted at different times and had slightly different shades of red.
  • 12/29/15 - Added the rear-top and inside shelf. Both were cut from the remaining ½ inch MDF sheet. Both are free floating pieces that do not tuck inside the cabinet. When the side panels are folded in for transport, both of these pieces will be used to lock everything into place - hard to explain! Cleats on the folding panels support the two new pieces. Added bottom ledge on rear of unit. Re-routed right side speaker wire to join left side. Added tie-downs for LED light power cord and monitor power cord. Mounted Raspberry Pi to board and board to cabinet. Ditto for power strip.
  • 12/30/15 - Reprogrammed the console joystick1-up switch to "tab" to restore original functionality. Only thing left to do setup mounting holes for the 2 floating panels when they seal the back for transport.

Louis L


       
  • 1/6/16 - The original user console had a trackball front and center and a joystick on either side plus some buttons. When it came time to actually place all that hardware it became clear that not everything would fit. The solution is to build two consoles; each can be swapped out by removing 2 screws. It's time to build the second one. This one is made from 1/2 inch birch plywood. The trackball is slightly to the right of center. To the left are 3 buttons for the 3 middle fingers of the left hand. Far to the top left are the two "coin" buttons and near the center are the two "player" buttons. I ordered and received a new iPac2 from Ultimarc. Physically mounting the trackball is going to be tricky due to tight spacing. keeping fingers crossed.

Louis L


       
  • 1/10/16 - The console board for the trackball has been milled and holes for switches drilled. Oak edging nailed to edges just like the joystick console. This one is actually a little deeper. The top was painted black (3 coats). The bottom exposed portion also painted black.
  • 1/11/16 - Happ switches and trackball are mounted. The console just barely fits into the opening. Removing it requires some patience.

Louis L


       
  • 1/14/16 - connected the 7 switches on the trackball console to the new iPac2. Couldn't find the hot glue gun so wires are not held down yet. Trackball not wired yet.

Louis L


       
  • 1/16/16 - Finished the trackball console. There are issues however. The iPac2 has a trackball input and I hoped that I could use it with the Happ optical trackball instead of using the OptiPac. Nope, couldn't get it to work. So I'm back to using both the iPac2 and OptiPac which means the Pi's two USB ports are both used. That leaves no room for keyboard. The obvious answer is to use a USB hub. I tried an old (unpowered) hub but it didn't work (I was never sure if that unit worked right!). So I need to either try another unpowered hub (ideal) or use a powered hub. The problem with a powered hub is that the power strip I installed has no spare plug so I would have to change that. Ugh. Another problem I totally forgot about is that the trackball console has no way of operating the MAME menus (by default). The iPac2 has a "shift" mode that lets it decode certain programmable sequences as <esc>, <enter>, <tab> to control the MAME user interface. But these rely on having a joystick. So I need to see if I have enough buttons on the console to allow a re-program of the "shift" feature. If this doesn't work there's always the backup use of a USB numeric keypad mounted to the display board. And that would be yet another USB device!

Louis L


       
  • recently - added an unpowered USB hub to the unit and tried to get the Trackball console up and running. So far, no luck. The trackball itself is the problem. It does work - I can "cat" data from /dev/input/mice (or whatever the device was) so it's a configuration issue. What's not clear is how/why this config used to work but no longer does. Also the air in the workroom is apparently more humid than my garage and some of the wood and wood-like parts (MDF) have expanded and/or warped. This was expected though I hoped it would not happen much. The Trackball console needs to be sanded to make it fit better now.