Light it up!

Just a quickie for now!

I've finished off the control panel wiring and here is a little sample of the result!

Building a Control Panel Pt 1

...SATURDAY

So now to today and time to make an Arcade Control Panel. If my experience in DIY and general woodwork was low, then my understanding of electronic components is through the floor!

A mass of buttons, switches, dials, wire and little metal things awaits me.

To start with, I tried to assemble the joysticks. Wondering why they wouldnt work properly, I went onto the forum for help and was told that apparantly if I dont use all of the parts provided to me in the kit, then what do I expect!! OK, lesson learned - now constructed properly, the joysticks are working...


Already, fingers are sore from screwing (cordless drill out of charge!) and fidling with springs and washers.

The next part was simple - adding all the buttons to the holes! Yah, something easy and fun :-)


And here is the back of the control panel - with all controls installed. The trackball (large thing in the middle!) went ok in the end - though cabinet purists will not like it. It works for me and is solid, so that is fine. I basically mounted it using bolts through the Lexan - but also through the plastic template part provided - bit unusual I'm sure, but heh.

The next part was installing the LEDs and circuit board controllers. The circuit boards were pretty straight forward - just screwed into position on the board.

The LEDs were provided with the buttons and come on a little tiny circuit board that has a resistor on it to control the volts to the LED and a lead for connection to an LED controller. The LED Controller (and buttons) are very clever - once working, it will not only light up the buttons needed ONLY for the game currently playing, but also the actual colour it was in the original game. So if the game used red, green and orange buttons originally, my buttons will also change to that colour - neat eh?!

The LED controller will also allow for things like 'attract modes' - I'm sure you've all seen in arcades where buttons flash all different colours all over the place when nobody is playing the games to 'attract' you to them. So all in all, looking forward to seeing this in action.

Anyway, this is what it looks like at this stage...


Bit more confusing! Next was to start the actual wiring. I managed to hunt down 2 reels of 18 guage wire to do this - one red, one blue. First job is to wire all the switches 'COM' ports (dont ask - really dont, I dont know either!) by daisy chaining each COM port to each other, then finally to the controller shown above and to the left.

Again, this was realtively straight forward if a little sore on the old fingers again - I'm not cut out for manual labour I'm sure! Lots of wire stripping, crimping, twisting etc. But the upshot is something akin to spaghetti junction!


Quite neat if I say so myself!

Thats about it for now folks - I'll just leave you with a 'money-shot' of the actual Control Panel - thanks for tuning in!

Big Update!

Having had a week off from work, I've had a chance to really crack on with the cab. Got lots done this week, so not had time for blog updates! So without further ado...

TUESDAY

After a bit of a rest from a weekend away, Tuesday afternoon began with cutting out the control panel. This went well as you can see below... or so I thought! The more experienced cabinet makers looking at this pic will spot the deliberate mistake. For the rest of you, just marvel at some fine drilling!


After drilling the wood, I then sandwiched a piece of 'Lexan' (like Plexi-Glass) between a piece of scrap wood and the freshly drilled panel to recreate the holes in what will be the top of the control panel.

From what I have read, this can be tricky with the plastic cracking whilst being drilled, but I took my time (and it took some time!), but again, it came out well.


WEDNESDAY

After finishing the drilling, I then painted the cabinet on Wednesday and left it to dry completely, which lost a day....

THURSDAY

Now then, as I mentioned a bit above, the more experienced cab builders would have recognised a big error - the large diamond shaped hole in the middle of the wood is a space for the trackball unit to go.

Having used the router properly for the first time, I was dead chuffed how this went... until I realised I'd routed the hole upside down!!! I didnt think to check the orientation of the trackball unit and now my neat work was ruined! The only choice apart from starting the panel again, was to make the diamond shaped hole a square and losing some stability in the trackball unit.

So I routed out a square shape and whilst at it, routed out a space for the joystick units to install...



Ah well, its not so bad!

FRIDAY

Few jobs for today - find some wiring (harder than I thought) and get everything ready to be wired. I had decided earlier in the week to not have a 'Control Panel Overlay' (which is basically graphics to go under the plastic top of the control panel - making it look nicer.

I was going to just paint it black ("...I see a red door...", sorry!) with the glass on top and have the silver t-molding round the edges.

I'd toyed with a few overlay ideas, but couldnt really get anything nailed down that I liked. I thought I'd have one last go before I started constructing the panel and I had some time to kill. With Claires assistance, we managed to come up with something we both liked at the last minute! I'm not a real big Sci-Fi fan, but the space scene seems to suit this cab - its mainly black, a bit of silver, some muted colours and of course the old skool Space Invaders.

I phoned up our local printers (Print Hub) and big thanks to them for printing this up for me straight away...

(Click for bigger image)

Again, a frustrating wait now for the overlay to fully dry, so I carried on getting ready for the wiring.

To be continued...

Enter coin for more credit...

After a few (nice) days away, I have a welcome week off and will set about finishing off as much as I can of the cabinet.

For now, I've made the makeshift 'coin-door' - which is infact a strip of wood with 2 coin buttons added to it, the machine will not accept actual money, but this looks as close as the real thing!

Firstly, I drilled 2 holes using my new hole making drill bit.



Then simply connecting the coin buttons makes a nice authentic touch for the machine!


Cool eh?

I've about finalised my layout for the buttons and have decided to just have a black lid (where the controls sit on) and some smart silver detailing - should look very smart.

I'll update later in the week when the action kicks off!

Lastly, over the weekend, I visited some big arcades in the 'lovely' seaside town of Clacton-On-Sea, Essex. I was shocked to see that these places of fun I used to enjoy are now stocked floor to ceiling with fruit machines - I did not see one 'normal' stand up arcade cabinet like I am building now.

In total, in one arcade, there were 4 gimick machines - 2 driving, 1 shooting and Dance, Dance Revolution, and over the 2 levels of the building, the rest of the machines were fruit machines... amazing...

I'm not dead!!!

Its been a while since I've posted as I've bene waiting for my Arcade Controls to arrive from New York.

They finally arrived on Monday and now I can start the second stage of the Project - though I feel that I am back at square one again! After starting out as a woodworking virgin, I was very pleased to come through it relatively unscathed and am proud of the cabinet sitting behind me.

Now though, as I look into the cardboard box of assorted buttons, wires, circuit boards, LEDs, connectors etc, I know I have got to start all over again as I know nothing about electronics!!!

Ah well, hopefully I will take to it as well as the carpentary.

Here is a very early draft of the control panel layout and a sneak preview of the mini steering wheel control!


Till next time...

Scorching Weekend (the weather was ok too!)

In an effort to help return the house to something more resembling a home, than each room a workshop or dumping ground, I've really cracked on the last 7 days and its now beginning to pay dividends.

After the 'hinge-incident', the front of the cab is now looking really good - so the next job was a keyboard drawer. I font some scrap plywood and set about fashioning a frame to affix to the MDF front. For some reason, this all took an age to complete - probably due to me faffing around checking all the measurements etc as I had no plans for this and was making it up as I went along...

The Keyboard Drawer

I tried to make this pretty basic, as I figured it wouldnt be used much (if at all) and it also would not really be seen. I made some MDF battons and glued and screwed to some plywood and then to the MDF front of the draw, leaving something like this (left) - which is pretty solid!

(This is the bottom of the drawer by the way!)

Thoughts then turned to how to make it run inside. I tried to get some plastic runners like you get in kitchen furniture, but couldnt find any locally - so I had to improvise and make some MDF battons covered in a hard plastic finish - this will allow the drawer to run smoothly.

This actually works ok, but I now realise that the drawer is massively front heavy, so will have to fix that with another batton above where the drawer will run to fix it in place - the battons are fixed to the cab with glue and 1.1/4 screws.

Now with the drawer in place and the new front (painted by Claire - far better than the paint jobs I've done so far!) we are looking in good shape - its looking like an Arcade Cabinet!!


Let There Be Sound!

My thoughts now turned to the speakers - I've been waiting for some Labtec speakers to come into stock at Argos due to the fact they (are cheap) have a remote control on a wire for volume and power - allowing easy access to wherever I decide to mount it. I finally got them on Saturday and set about immediately destroying them - which feels weird when you've just taken something out of the box!!

From This ........ >>> ................... To This!

Claire had previously painted the speaker shelf (which I had finished drilling the 'sound hole' patterns) and it looks really good! Will mount the speakers when the paint has fully dried.

Control Panel

Late on Sunday morning, I was about ready to pack in for the day and do some proper work, but I thought I'd make a start on the control panel box (where the joysticks, buttons etc will go).

It was hot and I'd had about enough so wasnt looking forward to it, but it was one of those jobs which went really well and I had finished it in about 15 minutes! So I excitedly dashed upstairs to put it in place and witness the closest I have been yet to completing this project!




















Thats about it for now - its too f**king hot!!

I've had a great suprise from my Dad who sent me up a present of gold (or a cheque) and I can now go ahead and order all my control panel parts - so big THANKS Dad! All I need now is a 27" screen, all the artwork, a new fast PC etc etc etc... I'll send you an invoice :-)

Peace out till next time...

The doors are coming off!

Its been a few days of frustration since I last posted. In that time, I've started putting the finishing touches to the cab - including affixing the back of cab and cutting the speaker shelf to the right size.

I've also been looking at a solution for the front of the cab. This is quite a large (heavy) section - which some people hinge as a big door - whilst others fix the whole section to the front of the cab with a hole in the middle for a coin door.

Its the hinges that have caused the first real DIY headache on the project. If people do hinge, then they normally use what are known as 'European Hinges' - which are large metal hinges, sunk into the wood that you would most probably have on your Kitchen cabinets. I did not feel competent enough to start drilling out large holes in the side of cabinet though as I felt I may go through the other side - ruining what I had done so far.

I looked at a variety of hinges and finally settled on some 'hidden hinges' - which when I got home and gauged the weight of the door, realised they would probably just rip out of the sides...

THE BAD IDEA

Hmmm... in a flash of madness inspiration, I decided to slice the big panel into 3 pieces. One at the top for a keyboard drawer and the remaining 2 pieces to be smaller hinged doors which the hinges would support. Ok - good... or not. My door hanging expertise leaves a lot to be desired and after plenty of swearing, I ended up with this abomination...

Damn, that sucks. By deviating from the plan, have I started to get ahead of myself? What was I thinking - am I some sort of 'Carpenter Freestylist?' Luckily I have enough spare MDF left and decided to trash the doors and think of a new solution.

THE NEW IDEA

So a new plan was needed - I decided to go back to one solid piece (but still with a keyboard drawer) and have it affix to a frame by - dont laugh - velcro... I'm sure this is a good idea, yes, this is a good idea, there is no way that this is a bad idea.

So I cut the wood again tonight and I think its going to be ok. This will also be stronger as I am making a frame for the panel to sit in that will be glued and screwed across the sides of the cab front. Also, you may be able to make out a thinner piece of baton that will sit between the new lower panel and the keyboard drawer space - on here, I will affix some 'Credit Buttons' to mimic the coin buttons on a real cabinet.



HOLE-Y SPEAKERS

The final piece of this bloated update is that I have started work on a speaker shelf idea. Most people (i think) just cut a space in the shelf to put the speakers over and then cover the hole the other side with a grill or mesh to make it look nice. I had an idea of just having holes for the sound to come through in the wood and whilst browsing the arcade forum I found this solution which is perfect.


Drilling the holes is a boring and arm aching job, but I think its going to be worth it once painted!

Thats all for now (folks) ...