The Arcade Build- Part III: Internal Wiring and Control Panel

Remember this photo all the way back from "Seeds of an idea" that was the beginning of the planning?

Well, after a lot of time, effort, weather delays and a host of other interruptions, the idea is almost a reality.

A few steps occurred before this photo after the arcade was moved to the basement.  The cabinet wasn't as heavy as I initially feared.  The casters that were installed were also a major help.  A buddy and I were able to pretty easily move it down the stairs without use of a dolly or anything else.  Once on the floor, it moves pretty easily even on the carpet.  But once in place and it "settles" into the carpet, it's also pretty stationary.  If rambunctious users cause the cabinet to start to move (doubtful), I can still put the door stops in place.  But I don't think they will be needed.

The first step, although technically not "wiring" was to install the t-molding over the exposed edges.  This wasn't too bad, as a rubber mallet was used to gently force the ribbed edge into the grooved cut early on in the construction with a router.  The sharp corners were a bit challenging, but a little snipping of the spine on the back of the molding took care of that.

The t-molding around the marquee was not quite so cooperative. It's a little hard to see in this photo, but it's black instead of blue. The reason for both is that this is only 1/2" molding instead of the 3/4" used elsewhere.  Because of this, it came from a different manufacturer and was only offered in black.  However, this molding was much stiffer than the 3/4" blue and was packaged rolled in a loop, reversed from the way it should have been.  This resulted in the t-molding wanting to pull out of the slot because of the packaging bend.  And obviously I could not beat too hard with the rubber mallet on this portion of the cabinet.  Eventually, I employed the use of the wife's hairdryer on high heat to soften the molding and remove the packaging bend.  Even after that, a little glue was used on the corners to assure the molding didn't eventually work its way loose.  The same black 1/2" t-molding will be used around the control panel, but that won't happen until all other work on the control panel is complete.

First up for the wiring was the administrative panel controls.  This includes, from left to right, the Raspberry PI power on/off button, the toggle switch for the 4/8 way joysticks (if needed), the master volume control and the externally accessed USB ports that will connect to the Pi for updates or use of game pads.

Next up was the coin door.  The microswitch will eventually be connected to the keyboard controller "coin" pins (instead of using a pushbutton), but for now, the illuminated coin slot needs a 5 VDC supply.  The door came pre-wired with a 5 VDC transformer so I can either plug it directly into an AC outlet or I can wire it directly to my eventual 5 VDC bus.  I'll see how I'm doing on my AC outlets and make that decision a bit later.

For now, and to test it, I plugged the transformer directly into and AC outlet.  I'm pretty happy with the results.  Inserting quarters makes a nice, satisfying "arcade-like" sound.  But I'll have to build some sort of shelf to hold a container to catch the quarters.  During this test phase, they simply fell directly on the floor of the cabinet!

Internal Power Sources
The plan from the beginning was to have two AC sources in the cabinet.  One would be connected directly to a house wall outlet and would be "live" at all times (well, as long as the house had power).  The other would be switched, via the external power switch on the cabinet.

The "live" strip was attached to the floor of the cabinet.  Unless testing proves otherwise, it's likely only the monitor and "switched" strip will be plugged into this strip.  Ideally, the external master switch will completely power down everything else.

The switched power supply was installed on the side panel of the cabinet.  Here the wires have been stripped and cut and will be wired to the external switch, also on the same side of the cabinet.  Because the switch is illuminated, it was necessary to run both the power and neutral wires to the external switch.

There are the leads to the external switch.  The switch is illuminated when the cabinet is powered and off when it is not.  To keep the switch illuminated all the time, it would have needed to be powered from the "always on" strip.  I opted not to do this, but could always rewire later if desired.

Next, were the DC power supplies.

There is both a 12 VDC and a 5 VDC, as both are needed for different components.  Everything was labeled carefully so I didn't inadvertently connect a 5 VDC device to the 12 VDC bus!  But already, wire management was becoming an issue.  So, it was time to address that.

Through liberal use of cable ties, adhesive cable clips and lots of label maker tape, I did my best at trying to tidy things up but also assure things were accessible if necessary down the road.  Also note that I added an extra fan.  One was previously installed to circulate air over the Raspberry Pi, but I had a couple of old extra computer case fans lying around, so I decided to add one to move air across the power supplies.  The 12 VDC supply has an internal fan, but the 5 VDC does not.  Both power supplies are also mounted on small PCB offsets to keep them off the floor and to allow air to pass underneath.

Under cabinet "ground effect" lighting
I showed a video in an earlier post of an RGB LED strip that was driven by audio.  This strip was mounted under the front lower edge of the cabinet.

Here the leads from the LED strip are fed through the bottom floor of the cabinet to the small control circuit board.  Audio out from the display is split to this control board and the amplifier (that drives the audio speakers). 

Most of the internal wiring is complete here.  There will still be a few cables from the control board and some final wiring management/clean-up before the back door is installed.  Also note that the "coin box" is also in place.  This can be accessed and emptied via the front coin door without opening up the back of the cabinet.

Control Panel
The first step for the control panel was to mount the trackball and joysticks. 

Both the trackball and joysticks are meant to be mounted from under the control panel so there will be no exposed screw heads on the top.  This is done via small expanding brass inserts (you can see the inserts and bolts for the trackball in the lower left corner of the above picture).  The problem here is that the inserts for the trackball are 3/8" deep and the ones for the joysticks are 1/2".  With a 1/2" thick control panel, extreme care will have to be used for the trackball so that when drilling for the inserts, the bit doesn't pop all the way through.  For the joysticks, it was necessary to glue 1/4" panels to allow enough depth for the inserts.  This was offset by adding 3/4" shaft extensions to the joysticks.

Here the trackball and joysticks are successfully mounted.  Well, successfully enough!  I did crack the top surface a number of times in the process of drilling and installing the expanding inserts.  But with the vinyl overlay and plexi on the top, I'll be the only one to know about it!  Also mounted at this point are the servo motors at the top of each joystick to rotate them from 4-way to 8-way and the Ultimarc Ultimate I/O keyboard encoder.  All controls and LED lighting will connect to this board.  Oh, and also installed are the small LEDs under each joystick to indicate when the joystick is in motion and switching modes.

This completes all the controls, including the spinner control and the small control board for the joysticks.  Since each control will have a daisy chained common wire, a control wire and RGB wiring that all have to connect to the keyboard encoder, wire management will be key. Wires also need to be kept clear of any moving parts, such as the joystick servos and the spinner. Note the pencil lines.  This indicates where the control panel will rest on the cabinet, so all wires must remain inside these lines too.

Ok.. at this point, the common wire daisy chain and control wires are all connected.  The wiring harness that comes with the encoder board has leads that are only about 9" long, so it was necessary to make extension wiring for many of the controls.  Last up was to connect the LED wiring to the left and right side pins on the encoder board.

And here it is!  All wired up and wire managed as best as possible!  A quick connection from the encoder to a laptop USB port and a temporary 5 VDC power supply (for the LEDs) allowed me to verify everything was connected properly and as expected.  Just in case something comes loose or needs to be changed later, I recorded each pin connection, wire harness color and function into a spreadsheet.  

The completed panel installed on the cabinet.  The t-molding still needs installed, but uh oh... I also wanted to label the buttons.  I forgot this step!

Good thing my plans called for mounting the control panel with a piano hinge on the front edge.  This allows me to access the underside, along with the Raspberry Pi and the display controls should it be necessary (or to access the buttons to add missing labels!).  Ideally, I won't need to access the rear of the cabinet unless major works need to be done.

Let's try that control panel picture again, this time with the buttons labels.  For the labels, I used transparency paper and a laser jet.  Each button had to be disassembled, and in the process I disconnected and broke one other that had to be spliced.  

That's it!  The cabinet build is complete.  A few hours of programming and configuration was necessary to get the LED lighting, joystick controls, etc. working, but the end result was well worth it.  Here's a 1:30 video that shows the completed arcade in attract/demo mode:

Final Thoughts
It has been quite a journey for me.  At times it was challenging, at others a bit frustrating, but I'm really happy that I opted to tackle building my own arcade cabinet as opposed to purchasing a commercial "multicade". Not only did I get all the games I wanted, but I gained invaluable woodworking, planning and electrical skills.  And if something goes awry down the road, I'll be in a much better position to fix it myself since I know the cabinet and controls inside and out!

The most common questions I am asked are how much did it cost, how long did it take and would you build me one?

Cost:

Originally, I was trying to keep spreadsheets of all the costs... one for materials, one for controls and one for tools.  But often you have to buy things in quantities beyond what is needed, like the volume knobs only came in a pack of 10, although I only needed one.  I bought all sorts of various brackets and only used a small portion.  So an exact cost is hard to specify.  But here's "about" what I spent from the categories above:

• Controls:  $650
• Cabinet materials and parts: $1,100
• Tools and other: $250

So all in, that's about $2,000.  But if I were to build another one today, many of the items I would already have and could reuse.  I would also know more precisely what I'd need and wouldn't overbuy (like I did with MDF). I'd say I could likely build another identical cabinet for around $1,300-$1,500. 

Time:

Again, this one is hard to specify as there was a lot of evening work, some long weekends and one full week off of work... not to mention uncooperative weather and the flu!  From initial planning to completed cabinet was almost four months.  The actual build, from the first cut into wood until the final arcade shown above was about 7 weeks... only of which was "full time".  But someone more experienced with woodworking could likely cut that amount of time significantly... I spent a lot of time in trial and error and watching how-to videos!

Will you build me one?

Not only am I not talented enough, or quick enough, or have the time, or the proper space, but there is something special about building one of this arcades yourself... and showing off to your family and friends.  Besides, my wife would likely serve my head on a platter if I even considered building another one of these cabinets.  I don't have a workshop and made quite a mess of the garage for about two months... it still needs to be cleaned up and reorganized.

However, if you would like to tackle a project like this and I can offer any advice or help out with do's and don'ts or lessons I learned, I would be more than happy to do so.  Just drop me a note in the comments and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Along those lines, I want to thank those that really helped me out... even if they didn't know they were doing it, by posting videos, blogs or other websites that likely saved me a lot of headaches and probably money.  Here are the ones I found most useful:

Chuck at Maverick's Arcade
Andrew Dupont and his Nostalgia-Tron Painfully Obvious Website
Andy at Ultimarc
Abs Delfuego and his complete YouTube video of a cabinet build
Gijsbrecht De Waegeneer for the outstanding RGBCommander
All the folks and forum posters at RetroPie

My cabinet would not have turned out the way it did without everyone's help that went before me!