Hey all, first time poster life long lover of everything arcade. I am a Swede who always loved everything arcade and gaming as well as figuring stuff out and trying to build stuff myself. Being born in the 70's and experiencing the development of games I remember all to well the joy the arcade halls gave me.
Anyway, I was hoping to get some of your input in my Project since it is getting closer to be executed and built but first a bit of background.
This is the third arcade cabinet I am building and I wanted to address some of the frustrations I have had in the past with the builds I done. First build was a templated build ordering all the parts, second build was a 3d printed wall mounted 50's design case and the third one is my "final solution where I am hoping to address the following:
1. It should be modular
2. I should be able to hot swap custom controllers
3. It should be easy to manage and change wiring as I see fit
4. It should be able to do all the crazy ass shit I want to do (guns, a second screen in a controller box for DS emulation or whatever I come up with in the future)
5. My daughters and wife should be able to start playing without me coming in as a rocket scientist to configure stuff
6. It should be possible to 3d print but still have a "pro" look and feel to it
7. It should be wall mounted and possible to adjust the height of it using an actuator
8. It should be predictable when you connect your different controllers (i.e. all buttons needs to be mapped out and an interface fully defined etc.)
9. An external on/off button that is simple to use…
In short, I want it to do a million things it seems. So from a gaming perspective I want it to:
Play any type of platform using the best possible controller solution. No matter if it is a steering wheel, track ball, spinner, fight controller, secondary touch screen etc.
Over the past months I have done a ton of prototyping and I hopefully have a framework now that I can continue building on. Yay…
So I wanted to share the current design and ideas. Get your input and ideas for improvements etc.
To give you a sense of the work I will post some of the work in progress but keep in mind, a lot of things are still in prototyping and will go through iterations. The case below is designed to house a 32 inch monitor and is 75 cm wide (sorry, I am European…). All parts are designed to be easy to print and fit to a 25cm * 25cm print plate.
First a couple of captures of the blue printing done in Fusion 360.
Since look and feel is important I want to be able to “skin it” and the idea is to separate look and framework so that it is flexible. The images below does not include the speakers yet as is included in the images above. I just decided that they will be side mounted so that it is easy to scale it up, angle the audio and make sure it can be customized the way you want.
This is a sample skin that I will use for my first build. Some old airplane metal attempt…
To give you a sense of the "controller modules"
The idea is to be able to use these boxes and a custom pogo port that is configurable to do what you need (work as usb, pass on buttons, rgb, HDMI etc). These are going to be hot swappable.
An obscene amount of prototyping, testing and frustration has gone into finding the right port. Since I could not really find one that was 100% the way I wanted it and as well easy to integrate and use I ended up with a custom pogo port. It covers most of the typical things I want to connect plus is flexible enough to wire things differently when needed.
I know it might look like a given using the jst-xh connectors and integrate them the way I did but it took a long time to find the right compact design that works. The awesome thing with this is that there is no soldering required, it seems to work pretty flawless by just inserting the jst’s in their designated socket since the measurements are exact enough to ensure contact. But more testing is required to quality assure the design.
Top case has the the modular arcade port and the one below… an old prototype that was to big and clumsy.
Anyway, I just wanted to share and hope you enjoy some of the thinking and way too many hours that have gone into this even before I have a final case to show. Any cool and creative ideas will be considered. Any awesome design ideas might be incorporated (if I have not thought about it already, there is a long burn list of ideas ranging from best way to incorporate light guns, pedals etc).
Also, I have all the hardware already but I think it is not super important at this point. I might share a bit more as I progress. I will NEVER share how much damn money I spent on prototyping and perfecting in case my wife ever finds this post….
Thank you,
Samsonite
Anyway, I was hoping to get some of your input in my Project since it is getting closer to be executed and built but first a bit of background.
This is the third arcade cabinet I am building and I wanted to address some of the frustrations I have had in the past with the builds I done. First build was a templated build ordering all the parts, second build was a 3d printed wall mounted 50's design case and the third one is my "final solution where I am hoping to address the following:
1. It should be modular
2. I should be able to hot swap custom controllers
3. It should be easy to manage and change wiring as I see fit
4. It should be able to do all the crazy ass shit I want to do (guns, a second screen in a controller box for DS emulation or whatever I come up with in the future)
5. My daughters and wife should be able to start playing without me coming in as a rocket scientist to configure stuff
6. It should be possible to 3d print but still have a "pro" look and feel to it
7. It should be wall mounted and possible to adjust the height of it using an actuator
8. It should be predictable when you connect your different controllers (i.e. all buttons needs to be mapped out and an interface fully defined etc.)
9. An external on/off button that is simple to use…
In short, I want it to do a million things it seems. So from a gaming perspective I want it to:
Play any type of platform using the best possible controller solution. No matter if it is a steering wheel, track ball, spinner, fight controller, secondary touch screen etc.
Over the past months I have done a ton of prototyping and I hopefully have a framework now that I can continue building on. Yay…
So I wanted to share the current design and ideas. Get your input and ideas for improvements etc.
To give you a sense of the work I will post some of the work in progress but keep in mind, a lot of things are still in prototyping and will go through iterations. The case below is designed to house a 32 inch monitor and is 75 cm wide (sorry, I am European…). All parts are designed to be easy to print and fit to a 25cm * 25cm print plate.
First a couple of captures of the blue printing done in Fusion 360.
Since look and feel is important I want to be able to “skin it” and the idea is to separate look and framework so that it is flexible. The images below does not include the speakers yet as is included in the images above. I just decided that they will be side mounted so that it is easy to scale it up, angle the audio and make sure it can be customized the way you want.
This is a sample skin that I will use for my first build. Some old airplane metal attempt…
To give you a sense of the "controller modules"
The idea is to be able to use these boxes and a custom pogo port that is configurable to do what you need (work as usb, pass on buttons, rgb, HDMI etc). These are going to be hot swappable.
An obscene amount of prototyping, testing and frustration has gone into finding the right port. Since I could not really find one that was 100% the way I wanted it and as well easy to integrate and use I ended up with a custom pogo port. It covers most of the typical things I want to connect plus is flexible enough to wire things differently when needed.
I know it might look like a given using the jst-xh connectors and integrate them the way I did but it took a long time to find the right compact design that works. The awesome thing with this is that there is no soldering required, it seems to work pretty flawless by just inserting the jst’s in their designated socket since the measurements are exact enough to ensure contact. But more testing is required to quality assure the design.
Top case has the the modular arcade port and the one below… an old prototype that was to big and clumsy.
Anyway, I just wanted to share and hope you enjoy some of the thinking and way too many hours that have gone into this even before I have a final case to show
. Any cool and creative ideas will be considered. Any awesome design ideas might be incorporated (if I have not thought about it already, there is a long burn list of ideas ranging from best way to incorporate light guns, pedals etc).Also, I have all the hardware already but I think it is not super important at this point. I might share a bit more as I progress. I will NEVER share how much damn money I spent on prototyping and perfecting in case my wife ever finds this post….
Thank you,
Samsonite
