Mini Raspberry Pi Arcade

November 17, 2015

This was a project that was started a while back but never completed so i finally got round to it :).
Hardware

Cabinet:
The cabinet was made out 6mm MDF and screen bezel , marque and edging strip was 3d printed. 3 white leds light the marque this also has a switch on the rear of cabinet.

Graphics:
I printed off images on to large labels and the covered with sticky back plastic and then used custom edging strip to tidy edges up. I did try varnish / lacquer a few times but it made the ink jet ink run and the label to deform.

CPU:
I used a Raspberry pi ver 1 model B as i had it lying around doing nothing with the plan to upgrade to a pi2 should it require more power.

Lcd display:
3.5 inch reversing composite lcd originally 12v but a simple mod removed it’s internal regulator to allow it to powered directly from 5v .
Please note there are several identical screen models but all have totally different electronics inside so you may have to work out the supplies yourself !

Power:
5v dc is supplied via mains adaptor rated 2amps. Although there is room in the rear of cabinet to house a USB Powerbank to make it portable.

Controls:
I used mini push for the top and coin buttons. There is also push button on the rear to send ESC to exit out of a game back to Emulation station.
An Analog stick was used for a joy stick and a simple Adafruit cupcade circuit was used to convert the analog x and y positions into four digital ones.

Most of info was found on the Adafuit Tutorials so this is a good starting point.

Software

I installed emulation station to handle all the games and used retrogame driver to convert the switches inputs into joystick buttons.

Soon i hope to produced a simple python script to copy games from an inserted USB stick on boot .

Finished Pics