DIY Full Size Arcade Cabinet with Basic Tools - FULL LENGTH BUILD LOG and FREE PLANS

hi guys Mike from we build stuff today we're going to start on building a full-size arcade cabinet I built this with mainly three tools I use a circular saw a drill or different types of drills the jigsaw you can do this entire thing with just these three tools or you can do a couple extra ones a little bit quicker if you got a table saw enjoy basically the first thing I did was I had to go shopping and buy stuff Hardware like t-nuts bolts washers lock nuts Etc I think I ended up doing this with about two and a half sheets of three quarter inch MDF now I'm just showing you a bunch of different tools that I've used or you know that I'd like to window shop for and um you don't need to buy all this stuff I bought a lot of my own personal tools for sale on garage sales Facebook Marketplace Craigslist if you still use that you're going to see a lot of these tools used throughout the video and really you got to make your own choices of what you're going to purchase or rent or borrow depending on your situation a lot of these tools I already had in my general toolbox because I've been collecting tools probably since I was 12. it's a bit of a problem but uh you know you can always use more I started by making some sketches on paper and kind of figured out my rough size a lot of this was based on will it be able to fit through a doorway and that was about it I want it as big as I could but could still fit through a doorway this first thing you're seeing me doing is kind of optional I started making a template for this so that if I wanted to build the exact same project again I could just trace it out I already had some half inch MDF left over for some previous projects so I used that and this stuff worked out to maybe 20 bucks worth of material when it was done now what tools do you see me using I'm using a circular saw you'll see me use a jigsaw in a bit but my whole goal with this specific project was to try to build something without the use of a table saw Band Saw and some of the larger tools what could I also replicate in my backyard or in my kitchen if my wife wasn't home [Music] if you go slow enough you can make extremely straight cuts with a jigsaw with minimal filing and sanding after [Music] so while I do have plans available that I made in AutoCAD and the stuff on paper things change as you build I always try to use those initial plans as guidelines for how to get started I kept simple measurements things like three quarters basic fractions and I probably mixed up metric and centimeters in there at some point because that's just the way my brain thinks but really you need to design based on your specific need I added basically every line so I could plan out where all my blocks gonna go what is every single piece going to be and I can get it extremely close to its final size by taking my time and drawing it with a nice sharp pencil not everybody's gonna like this design and that's okay build it the way that you want to build it I've gone and shaded in the areas where I plan on putting my blocking the blocking is going to be the parts that support all my big pieces it also helps that I film this so that if I decide to build one again I can just go back and watch my own video now this is still just my template I haven't even started my actual pieces for the cabinet yet but I want to make it as nice as I can I think I still have this big piece of wood somewhere in the back of my shed now I really tried to take my time to make my template as nice as I could I'm going to be basically either tracing this or in my case I'm going to attach a trim bit to my router clamp it to a piece of MDF and a sense to just cut it out like that without having to think too hard other than you know don't break the tools now in my head to make my life easier I was going to cut out every single one of those shaded pieces make it exactly you know three quarters of an inch wide route it out make it perfect so that I could just drop a router bit down into there and add that easily onto my pieces well that didn't work out I'm still gonna keep it in the video because I thought it was a great idea it make it so much easier for tracing but I wasn't able to get it as exact as I wanted to so today I made a full-size template for a stand-up arcade the spots that you see that are cut out are so that I can use a router bit drop it down and essentially trace it Poncho piece below so this is just a template I'll hopefully be able to use this over and over and over again while I still have some sanding to do these are roughly three quarters of an inch wide I'm gonna this is for transferred onto a three-quarter inch thick piece of MDF and these sections that are cut out are going to be the support blocks for all the pieces that go together this is going to increase the speed that I'm able to build these with and hopefully the accuracy because they will all be the same less guesswork okay so even though I didn't actually end up making it perfect I should try so what you see me here doing is trying to plan out a giant piece of material and not use a table saw to rip it down this is to show that you don't need all these big fancy tools I'm going to be doing this with a circular saw and a saw guide if you don't have a saw guide you can uh basically use a 2x4 some kind of straight edge to run the edge of your circular saw against I'm gonna do just a real rough cut because I know I'm not actually keeping this specific Edge but I am keeping my two outside Parts as reference angles that being said I think I cut pretty straight so I can lay my piece on top I'm going to clamp it down real tight and I'm going to use a trim bit now it probably would have been better if I had actually gone and trimmed a little bit with the jigsaw first that would have meant less wear on the actual trim bit itself it's a very tiny bit that I was using to hog through some very big material now tracing up my supports uh it allowed me to get it close I still had to clean these lines up properly with a ruler they weren't as exact as I wanted it to be but they did work out as you can see by the final product so there's a little bearing there just underneath the red part that's going to run along my template and allow me to you know essentially trace it I really should have trimmed this a little bit smaller you can hear the bit really struggling [Music] a big downside to using MDF is that powder you see coming off that stuff is very bad for your lungs I'm wearing a mask maybe three I can't remember and uh probably a good set of ventilation would have helped however this area of the room there was no ventilation there was no fancy sucky machines to get all that off and it really sucked having a vacuum of that carpet later now if you don't have a router to do something like this that's okay use a jigsaw and just go really really slow you can basically put your two pieces together so you cut them out the exact same at the same time and then just sand them smooth you know what I would really like to have more clamps you can never have enough clamps so I just finished cutting these out these outer shapes were done only with a router and a trim bit okay this thing struggled a little bit as we were trying to hog a lot of material out of that three-quarter inch MDF there's only a couple little things I'm going to have to fill from when it slipped I'm very happy with this so far so the next thing I am going to be doing is transferring all my lines my marks from my template onto here are pretty much just measure transfer on measure and transfer on I'm not going to be relying on these that I traced from here just in case they may be off by even a sixteenth of an inch is not going to make it the way I want it to the three-quarter it's a lot heavier than the half inch so this is going to be a nice heavy duty build this is how I know that tracing from my template was not quite as accurate that's off by at least the 16th of an inch or a millimeter millimeter and a half so I'm just going to redraw those all that way I know it's perfect for when I attach my support blocks thank you so I've transferred all my lines onto this first piece I have made a few changes from my original template and I'll just reflect those when I draw them onto my second one really the most important thing is that they are all the same so everything is even nothing's going to go on crooked let's go since this thing is going to be so heavy I need some way to move it around easily one of my local stores at the time called casterland has been really good to me in the past and hooked me up with some nice set of wheels for this thing I was originally going to have just adjustable feet at the front but I end up switching to four casters instead of just two casters and two feet if I was doing large batches of these kind of projects I'd have a template that I could just put on and Trace or you know throw this onto a laser or something however I really enjoy doing this part of the process I don't really play these cabinets that much I actually just enjoy building them and I just like to take my time make things precise I don't know is that an OCD thing not sure as I go I try to make notes on the material or in my diary so that I don't have to remember what everything is meant to be if I label it it takes the guesswork out of everything [Music] this next part right here is me just planning out where the screen is going to go and the thin piece of clear plastic that is going to sit in front of it and the MDF that's going to be holding everything together I estimated the size even though I hadn't bought the plastic yet and I think I made it just a millimeter or two larger and it fit perfectly almost done laying out all the lines needed for the arcade what you can see here is a small skinny piece that's going to be the plastic or Plexiglas or whatever I choose it's going to go in front of the monitor there's going to have another piece of MDF here with the monitor behind it this line is representing the blocks this is represented a big thick piece piece of plastic below here I have a control panel and then below that there's gonna be another block this block is going to have a notch cut out in order to hold the piece of Plexiglas or plastic or whatever it is I really have kicking around I haven't chosen the exact material for that yet should be Wicked so in order to move this cabinet when it's all done it's going to be probably over 200 pounds went and picked up some casters so two for the back and the front will have some adjustable feet I'm going to locate them here that's about four and a half centimeters or an inch and three quarters from the bottom this will give it another three quarters or in this case I guess you'd call it about two and a half inches travel here the front will have adjustable feet so you can level it depending on the room I'm not sure if I'm going to be using these plugs or if I'm going to be using a t-nut sandwiched in between here yet I'm going to see as we go throughout the build now it's time to cut out the rest of the cabinet pieces these are all going to be either square or rectangular and I'm going to do the entire thing with the circular saw instead of cheating and using a table saw to get nice straight cuts I'm going to use this lovely Kreg Accu cut circular saw track guide if you don't have a fancy guide like this don't worry you can pretty much just strap down a 2x4 clamp down a 2x4 instead and run your saw against it so it gets nice and straight just cut slowly there's my mixture of Imperial and Metric measurements because I can I make all my main panel pieces to be 81 centimeters wide or about 32 inches and I continue to use the circular saw with the track guide to get decently straight cuts again I would love to be using a table saw for this however I wanted to show that you can actually get this done with other tools at your disposal [Applause] all right so today we got every single piece cut out all the measurements were finished so instead of going right for my original plans I've just measured based on what I've created here labeled everything so for example top 23. I'm going to cut that after there's my piece top 23. all of these are cut out this thing is going to be crazy heavy so I think I'm going to rethink my casters on the bottom instead of just having two wheels and front blocks I think when they're doing four wheels for Easy Transport and two of the wheels will have locks on the back let's see how that goes the next thing I'm doing is adding slots around the outside of my pieces for t-molding I'm using this scrap piece a little bit extra to try and make sure my bit is perfectly centered before I actually go to my final pieces do a small adjustment here and there measure it make sure it works good the t-molding slot cutter runs on a bearing so it just goes close to your piece and those three little Cutters dig deep still gotta go nice and slow though so now that everything is pretty much cut out router the edges I think I've planned at least 90 to 95 percent of what's going to be happening next I'm going to start assembling pieces there's going to be at least three to four body panels that are going to be glued in they will not be able to be removed they're fixed I'm not quite sure how else to say that that's going to be a bottom piece the mid shelf or at least that's what I'm calling it and top angle I'll probably do a little piece here that's roughly four inches long I'm hoping to make this top piece the Marquee my speaker panel my screen panel the back door and potentially the front panel all removable by using bolts and a t-nut let's see how this goes so to support everything I'm going to be using these one inch by one inch blocks I have these in various lengths mostly at around two feet or 60 centimeters long to affix them to the board I'm going to be using one and a half inch or 38 millimeter 18 gauge galvanized brad nails it will give me enough bite to go through the block and into my material by about half an inch I have seen videos where people use screws to fit them in however using wood glue is going to be strong enough all right time to set the camera up and you can see me do this stuff oh by the way these casters are gonna switch things up a little bit we're gonna have a locking swivel caster in the back and then just a fixed straight Caster in the front this will give me about oh three quarters of an inch underneath some extra space and they shouldn't be too visible you're not really going to be looking for these anyways this is going to make it easier to move around because this thing is going to be heavy now just like every other step you see in this video you might be able to cut them out in a different way to prove that I'm only using hand tools for well most of the project I grabbed a saw and started chopping these all right so I need to attach these down I'm going to use brad nails and some glue I gotta go find some glue some old glue there let's see what do I got oh okay okay it's uh I don't know if that's gonna be strong enough let's see maybe something bigger ah it's still not perfect oh here we go perfect this is what I need today let's do this most important steps is getting everything is lined up straight as you can if one of these is crooked the whole thing's just gonna be wobbly if you try to force things together that's an extreme example get it as close as you can can use as much glue as you like because you can wipe it off after anything that squeezes out no problem nothing's coming through the bottom that's good let's do this thing this piece is just for a little bit extra support since this is going to be holding a lot of weight that's where my casters are going to go unfortunately I ran out of mustard so I had to switch back to glue so the process shown here is pretty much the same for every single one of those blocks add some glue add some nails but I still want to show every single step that I do because that I'm sure is helpful for some people that are watching this video all right so this slot that's here for when I drop my plastic or my screen protector in we'll see if it works and if not nobody's going to see it anyway so I'm just going to keep on gluing are you noticing a pattern here I'm kind of doing the same thing over and over why wouldn't I just edit that out of the video because I'm trying to show literally every step I took whether that's using a screwdriver like a thousand times or just once I'm gonna show everything foreign so now that I have pretty much all my blocks in minus the screen and my Marquee blocks it's time to start attaching my permanent support pieces now for a lot of these little cuts that I have it's mostly just straight pieces but some are going to acquire an angle cut this is not required when building your own arcade cabinet I've done my best throughout this entire project to only use hand power tools things like a jigsaw skill saw drills stuff like that but I'm gonna cheat I'm going to do one cut or two on my table saw this is not required when building an arcade cabinet especially when these are areas that nobody can see but for me I've got one angle here it's my top angle piece where I kind of want to do an angle just to make it look really nice one thing I might do is actually cut my angles a little bit more so if it's 15 degrees I'll cut it at 20. just to keep my fit because from the outside you're not going to see a thing this will allow me to figure out exactly what it is for future projects I unfortunately shouldn't have put my blocks in yet I should have done my measuring but this seems to be about 15 degrees so I'm going to cut it around 20. now you can also do this on a circular saw or skill saw you can just change the angle on it put a straight edge against and still do your cut but I was running out of time for this project and I just wanted to get a couple of these things done before I went home tour the night [Music] like a glove now just another quick angle on the other side of that same piece [Music] so now that I have all of that done it's time to start attaching these solid pieces and it's just dawned on me just how big this thing is I'm going to need some help moving this off the table later but I'm going to do the most I can here before I attach the top piece this is my mid-shelf piece if I don't router it now I'm gonna have a real hard time putting a router in it after that's for the t-molding again decorative but optional all right [Applause] foreign now this little piece is going to be for the casters this is going to just give it a little bit more strength instead of having to lay out more measurement lines I just found a block of wood to use as a spacer and that just makes it a whole lot easier for laying out the location of the casters now the rear swivel instead of it being right up here it's kind of useless if it can't quite do all of those turns so I know you're dropping it down enough for at least that much I think I don't think it's going to need to be able to do full corners and this way it doesn't get stuck there either so I'm going to draw that in right about there foreign [Music] that's going to give me plenty of motion and if it doesn't I will drill this out move it down now we get a full swivel but I think this is going to be just fine so this is exciting I didn't think I'd be able to build this this quick but it's working out great wooden blocks here go forward that's just some scrap MDF and that is just to give it a little extra bite to the screws that are holding the casters in place I'm going to start assembling other pieces all the other panels we'll go from there now all my cuts were based on my perfect AutoCAD plans sometimes you have to trim stuff to make it fit you'll see what this part's for to hold on this piece this back panel to the arcade I'm going to be using t-nuts machine bolts these are number 10 by 24. these are two inches long they match these I'm going to measure in half an inch from the edge straight line five inch from the bottom five inch from the top drill some holes I'm going to be using two different sizes of drill bits so the smaller drill bit is meant for the bolt that's just a through hole and the other drill bit is going to be used for the t-nut as this outer part here is slightly larger diameter than the bolt itself it'll make sense when I do it foreign use my larger drill bit for here and install the t-nuts so next the t-nut is going to go on the back of it some people are content with just hammering it in and leaving it I'm going to put a little block of wood just behind there to prevent it from falling out I'll show you that in close up after the nail in a small wooden block just enough still let the the bolt go through but just to hold in that t-nut prevent it from falling out I've had that happen in the past it's quite annoying to have to open everything up just to reinstall a Tina so a little bit of glue nail one or two is good and now it's going to stay in place no problem I'm gonna do that to the rest of them so I've done that to all four one two three four let's install the back panel now almost any time that you're gonna see one of these I'm going to put a finishing washer on it I've got these at Home Depot or just about any other hardware store that'll sell fasteners like this it just gives it a little bit of a nicer touch so there's the back piece on don't those look nice oh yeah I'm going to do the same thing now with the front panel now why on Earth am I making these removable if I'm not putting anything in there this is for future because what if you want to put a mini fridge in down below or customize something or take that off and install it a 12 inch subwoofer so many choices [Applause] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] all right this has been a awesome day building front and the back panels on thank you the control panel is mocked up just about all the hardest stuff is done I'm really happy that I took my time to do proper layout and then really tried to think about everything I could so yeah this is pretty exciting it's got wheels on the bottom so it's super easy to move around and I think I'll be using this little amp right about there leave me a comment what do you guys think [Applause] [Applause] foreign [Music] there we go back thank you [Music] so I'm basically planning out how do I make a cut while only showing the screen part of this television I want to hide the border and all that stuff going around if we're pretty close so I'm taking my time measuring it make sure it's in the middle even [Music] all right using this cool chamfer bit is going to give me a nice angle on the inside [Music] I could have just left it straight but this does make it look a little cooler unfortunately I screwed up on a couple of my cuts you can see it right there so that just needs some wood filler and when I paint over it it'll hide everything [Music] my top piece on my speaker hole is cut out the panel attached cut out the screen Marquee I guess you can call it that I still have some filler to do I had some couple cuts I went just a little bit deeper than I wanted to using an awesome little router bit to give a cool little edge here tomorrow add some blocks that will support this whole thing and then the blocks that are actually going to hold the screen in place overall I think this thing is looking sweet [Music] now I started doing this method for attaching monitors a few years back and I've kind of just stuck with it change it up for each screen because every screen has a different shape on the back but overall I find this works out pretty good I take a couple more pieces just like the blocks I use for support on the inside figure out my measurements for where they're going to go and where they're going to attach to the TV lay it out glue them in maybe add another Tina the t-nuts are going to allow for some removable clamps that I custom make based on the size of the TV you'll see that in later detail as we go thank you [Applause] foreign old scrap two by four I had to get some longer machine screws these are 10 by 24 two and a half long that way they're just long enough to go down there to the t-note at the bottom same thing over here these are just again simpler pieces they will work just fine this is not going to be under a lot of forces so it shouldn't be going anywhere so this is the simplest way that I found for mounting for cheap material I still can't believe that I used up all my mustard already having to use regular glue I guess it's okay I'll be all right [Applause] [Music] I'm leaving a small space here for the Plexiglas that's going to be going in front of all this and there's a little block down there to stop it from sliding [Music] all right [Music] [Music] Jesus let's try a little more Turn It Forward [Applause] [Music] [Music] so I'm building just a very simple door for the back this is going to give you access to change things Etc you can put a lock on it I'm gonna end up just using a magnet to keep it shut and I picked up a very short hinge from Home Depot foreign so many of these pieces are never going to come off however I wanted everything to still kind of match so I kind of like that tea Nutley [Music] all right what I should have done was put a small shim under the door so that it doesn't rub when closed later on I'm having to sand it a little bit so it doesn't rub oh yeah [Music] thank you [Music] this is totally one of those special jigsaws that makes fun sounds you know [Music] I got everything filed and sanded and smooth and the little amp slides in perfectly I'm just gonna hold that down with some screws so now that the whole thing is pretty much built I went to go get some paint I ended up using interior eggshell style paint because I kind of like the texture of it on the outside of the arcade cabinet instead of that smooth smooth perfect look I like the little bumpies it reflects light and looks really nice give everything a really quick sand to make it smoother and then fill up all the little uh scratches and mistakes if the paint won't bite all right time to prime it all so the good paint sticks to it so if you look closely you can see the little bumpies on top with the red there I really like that reflection um it just it's a cool little texture personal preference paint it the way you want to a lot of people just do a basic base coat or none at all and put a giant sticker or some kind of vinyl artwork attached to it not for me on this one though so today priming's done first coat of paint on the arcade and all the important spots there's no need to paint the inside that's a waste of paint the other parts have been painted as well they are currently drying color scheme is black and red now in the past I have used angle iron and just use that to hold on my upper Marquee that's the cool part with the artwork I decided to make my own out of some sheet metal this is just some 22 gauge galvanized and because I have access to it I made my own this is just very simple rectangles bend a little bit drill some holes foreign so just like everything else in this project I am customizing every single piece that's kind of uh a curse but it's so much fun to make these time so if you're looking for a socket like this I believe it is called an IEC c14 320 something like that you'll see me wire this up later in the video [Music] thank you I find if it doesn't fit I just drill it or hit it with a hammer whatever one works best for you now while I'm not sure of the exact same speaker setup I pretty much just looked up for the speakers with a grill that was about the size I was looking for something between a four and a five inch is going to have plenty of power for those you know really high tech fancy retro 8-bit audio sounds foreign that's drilled here in the front of the screen Marquee this hole is going to be used for the IR receivers that are going to be behind it one will be the remote for the TV in case any changes need to be made through there and the other one is this little device here this is going to be hooked up to the lights this is the RGB control box IR remote control and this little IR receiver that's going to be hidden underneath there also has a remote here so this piece goes on top of the control panel it's going to make it just look a little bit cooler and shiny since I'm not adding decals and stuff to it this one's just going to be red with the buttons as you can see here I've kind of laid it out in Photoshop that was fun and uh that's kind of the layout and look I'm going for I'm using white and black buttons and joysticks I find the more times that I drill pilot holes the less time I get sad if I drill those pilot holes first and then drill it with my 1 and 1 8 forstner bit it's going to work a whole lot better this also allows me to transfer my design directly to my control panel foreign press would be way faster however I said I was going to do my best to do this project with mostly hand tools or power hand tools now I keep telling myself that I'm known far and wide for eyeballing you know measurements well that's that's kind of just what I do here I get it as straight as I can there's going to be a little cover that covers the main hole out of the joystick but I'm still gonna measure it mostly and get it lined up this is going to be held on with four bolts and Nylock nuts now these bolts are eventually going to go underneath that plastic sheet so you won't be able to loosen them or tighten them but they shouldn't be going anywhere because the plastic sheet is going on top I need to add a countersink so that the head of the bolt is flush with the top of the control panel now some of my favorite parts of doing these arcade cabinets is when they are finally starting to come together they're painted and I can finally assemble things and not have to keep taking them on and off on and off to check for fit we're gonna see this thing fire up real soon there are so many different ways to attach a screen to the inside of an arcade cabinet this worked for me in this project but what I started doing after this I do this as well but I add a little bit of exhaust strapping behind it they screw into those four holes in the back of the screen I think they're called Visa mounts and I screw that into the side of the cabinet as well as long as it doesn't fall out you know that's a good day foreign foreign so this is all nice and wired up it's pretty sweet I'm very happy with this so far [Music] please [Music] for many of these buttons it doesn't really matter how you align them however it looks really nice if you can kind of make them all look even on the back that way your micro switches are all point in the same direction and it makes cable management and wires just look a little bit nicer despite the fact that it's hidden on the inside it is nice to be able to take things on and off easily these are the encoders that came with my joystick and button set they have a set of numbers and letters on the back so I'm going to decide where they're all going to go in that way both of my size player one and player two will be plugged into the same thing and the configuration in Rico box will just make it work I'm going to go ahead and wire those up I find attaching my cables to my micro switch before I put them on my buttons tends to work a little bit easier it's easier for me to get things in there so I'm just going to go ahead and attach those all now and hopefully there's no broken connections that's going to be a pain to troubleshoot if I need to now it doesn't really matter which color goes where because when the button is pressed it's going to basically just close the circuit and it's going to work I only have two choices anyways so literally it's just like I'm taking wires and touching them and then taking them on and off that's it ah see here's a problem this one here's one in the kit that came and it is missing a little Quick Connect so it might have fallen off in the box I'm going to see if I have any extra ones kicking around so lucky for me I found an old cable that I'm going to be able to just pop right in there this uses I believe it's called a DuPont Dupont connector and that is the same as what's in there so I'm going to pop that blue wire out and stick this one in if you're lucky you never have to worry about these things there we go that just popped out has the same style connector and let's just push this one right back in all right so that didn't all work out but this one did so I've just snipped it attached those I didn't feel like having to re-crimp this to the blue wire so I've just kind of pigtailed it all together soldered it covered it up so there's no chance of a short circuit let's get back to putting all this stuff together so I just realized that I had a bunch of extras I didn't actually need to do that but that's okay live and learn let's keep on going so now it's time to refer back to my little drawing here and plug them all into the correct spots on the USP keyboard encoder I'm just gonna screw it right on there so I'll drill a little pilot hole and screw it on so there is I think that's that's for player two everything looks pretty clean I'll throw a zap strap around this to kind of tie them together or I might just keep them loose in case we need to make changes but that is on there pretty good when I test it all I'll be able to see if there's any dead micro switches or anything and I've got extra micro switches here if you need it great thing about this everything can be taken apart and changed if needed whether it's for upgrades or not now sometimes it's good to have extra micro switches I snapped that one but luckily I've got extras all right so player one is now wired up the USB encoder is attached there buttons and everything are on the front we're almost ready to go install this and go do some testing actually pretty clean much cleaner than some of my other builds next thing to add is the top of the joysticks little covers here and to hold them on I could just screw them in place really tight or I can add some Loctite this uh this one's seen some use good with a plastic over top this looks so cool I really like the clean look of it now what you could do if you wanted to you could have had artwork and then put the plastic on top but I really just like this color scheme so we're going to stick with this now I don't show how to wire everything else because you might have different Hardware than me whether you're using a Raspberry Pi an old Droid or even a small computer inside there there are so many different types of front ends for these arcade machines I've been using recall box for years since I started out I like it because it's simple and I don't have to do a whole lot of programming if you want to do programming and really customize things yes there are many different front ends choices retropie and other stuff like that I wish I could give credit to them all but it is super easy to find the resources I taught myself all this just by watching other YouTube videos and reading forums if I came across part where I was stuck I would just Google it and look it up setting the controllers is pretty easy as long as they are responding if they're not responding that means you might have a dead wire dead micro switch or something else on the inside that might require further attention now that I can confirm that my buttons are actually doing something I finally get to test this with something more than just an Xbox controller or a keyboard [Music] so it looks like all my buttons are working I tried to test a variety of games that incorporate you know all six buttons but we ain't done yet it's time to move on to t-molding this is what gives it that Final Fantasy look you can buy fancy tools to do this but I'm doing it with just a hammer an exacto knife and a small set of diagonal cutters every time I reach a corner I usually have to snip a little bit of the spine out and that lets me wrap around the corner without getting some weird bulgy mess on the outside of the t-molding now you don't have to cut off everything even though you see me cutting it all off you can just do small notches instead take a little like triangle shapes out of it and it tends to fit pretty good it does stretch foreign so while I've never tested it I'm sure that this system can run Woody Woodpecker as well for the Game Boy Color [Music] foreign so here you can see where I have a very slight curve so I'm not cutting everything out but those little notches will allow it to stretch easier and it uh those spines really do grip in there where I routed out for the t-molding [Applause] [Applause] now I was originally going to put backlighting on this arcade but I found that those strips behind it just didn't look cool so we only did the LED panel behind the upper Marquee I basically just glue gunned that thing down to a piece of MDF which I mounted behind the artwork I got this on Amazon and it came with a remote controller and as you may have remembered earlier there's an IR receiver that is just below the monitor there's a small hole there so is the arcade done no not yet I still have more things I want to do I have an IEC 320c14 socket that I picked up on Amazon and I'm going to wire it to a power bar so that I can have power to all my stuff on the inside but the outside looks clean I'm using insulated quick connectors to prevent any sort of metal touching something that it's not supposed to and cause in a short circuit and these just snap onto the back of the power socket now that's my three for the power I have a little LED switch on the front and I want that to light up so I need to run these little mini Jumpers in a certain order to make that happen now you're always going to want to check with your wiring diagrams depending on what Hardware you are using but I will show it on the screen for what diagram I use to make this work there's also a fuse that didn't come with it and I had to buy that separately you will notice that the yellow connectors are not insulated I did end up switching those out and putting in proper insulated ones but this is all I had on hand to fit those specific little connectors temporarily I wrap some electrical tape around it just to make sure they don't touch so here you see the fuse it just pops in and there's also room to put a spare one but I don't think you're going to need it if you wire everything correctly now it's time for a little test will it work of course it will now be aware don't plug in stupid things into stupid places hmm so I do find these sockets give a really nice clean look to the back all you got to do is flick it on and off and if you really want to change anything else on the inside then open up the door and then change something on the inside all right now if you're worried about things getting a little spicy on the inside with all those Electronics you should set up some sort of fan system or at least drill a hole in the back to let air flow I'm going to mount these in such a way that one is going to suck air in and one is going to push it out as an exhaust that in my mind should allow it to circulate now you could probably figure out a better place to mount these maybe put one up top one at the bottom I just put them side by side because it looked clean and I think it's gonna be okay when I disassembled this the bolts that it came with were not going to be long enough for what I had planned so I had to purchase eight more bolts and I kept them all to be the same size the 10 by 24s and just mounted them to the inside but the Grille on the outside looks pretty cool though these Nylock nuts so nothing comes loose now I have never been a master of cable management especially if you can't see it that's just my personality but I did try to make my thing look kind of clean so busy today got most of the cable management figured out there's a lot of cables so there's a lot to manage but the big thing was tying them down so that they kind of stay in place that's just the uh intake and exhaust fan hard by USB which is just plugged right into the television I got this mounted here lots of space for extra but I have an expansion here because of these large ones here I'm really excited to get this thing going it's almost finished tomorrow I will be adding the additional t-molding to there and the artwork up front on the Marquee now I'm going to use some real Precision measurement here and just poke a pencil through the holes and then screw it in these parts probably will not come on and off too often so I'm not bothering to use bolts or t-nuts I'm just using some short screws there are very many different types of artwork you can use for your Marquis I based mine on what the sponsor of this video wanted the person who was funding this project they wanted an arcade theme with a little bit of Mickey Mouse on it foreign all of my first arcade projects had lock and key on the back the problem was I kept losing the keys so I've switched to using magnets so one of the next steps I'm going to be doing is adding an external power switch to the odroid xu4 just in case maybe it needs to be hard reset or rebooted or maybe it's just not turning on and you don't want to open the back of the panel whole bunch of times to do that so easiest way is we're going to take these wires and unplug them into pin number one and then pin number 12. you can see a picture here of what that does so pin number one looks like you're getting this and pin number 12. p w r o n I'm assuming that means power on so when I take these two I'm just testing it with some basic cables if I bring those two together it's going to turn it off if I click them together again it'll turn on so I'm going to wire in another arcade button and mount that near the panel those are in pins number 1 and 12 and it doesn't matter which wire is in which this is going to an extension here that I have stuck onto a micro switch so that when I click the button should turn on now it's not plugged in I'm not going to do that until I install it and I I have a very small hole over there well a one and one eighth hole to be exact so that on the front of the machine if you ever need to turn it on you can't see it but if you look underneath there'll be a little button you can press for the odroid for power down to power off so if you look really carefully you can now see that that micro switch is back there so let's plug this thing in make sure these are away from the fan now it's probably just going to power on its initial time probably boot up but now by using the button I should have complete control over when that happens so let's just wait for this to boot up so that came on let's press that button let's see what happens so it looks like there we go it's shut down so let's test it again press the button give it a moment let's see if it sends a signal there there we go so now we have a basically it's a momentary switch just the same as any of the arcade buttons plugged into pins number one so it starts it goes at the top one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve which is right all right done the final request by the person funding this project was some Mickey Mouse style artwork so I ordered these big stick on stickers from Amazon this is probably the kind of thing you'd put into a kid's room on the wall or something and it worked out almost right maybe the first or second time around wow wasn't that magical [Music] I recommend it though so the full size arcade is finally finished everything is done so let's do a little overview of this thing we have a backlit Marquee it has a little RGB controller that allows it to scroll through different things there's remote control and the remote control has a little infrared receiver down in there if you want to change things we've got a set of speakers these are from Amazon and so is the amplifier that goes with it pretty decent quality the buttons I went with ball tops and I've personally these are just a fan of these style buttons for me I don't really like the LED light up ones they seem to be a little bit tougher everything is mostly held together bolts and t-nuts so these are number 10 by 24 with matching t-nuts the reason that I designed that way is if we want to open it up and make changes and this is also just kind of the style that I have adopted it's built out of three quarter inch MDF for pretty much every single panel finished off with some nice three-quarter black t-molding front panel has been left blank and is able to be unscrewed bolted on and off for future changes if needed artwork kind of inspired uh kind of a Mickey Mouse theme that it was commissioned by someone and that was the style that they were looking for let's go around to the back the rear nice and simple no random things to really catch on again everything is held on with bolts again number 10 by 24. one single on off switch to control the power for the whole machine it has some cooling these are just powered by USB let's open this up held together with a little magnet okay so on the inside we have a 32 inch screen this was just bought at a local Big Box electronics store any screen will do just depends on what size I built mine around this 32 inch screen the main processor is an old Droid xu4 I have some USB controllers or USB encoders sorry plugged in for my buttons and joystick you can't see them because they are actually kind of glued down kind of see the corny but there that little red light and I have a little Wi-Fi dongle so that this thing can have network access I personally prefer to plug in a ethernet something like this I find the transfer speeds are a little bit quicker kind of a mishmash of power cords just because these power bricks were so large and I couldn't fit them all on one here so this is going to do just fine the main power here nice LED switch which is good TV remote for making changes to the television if needed that's the controller for the RGB LEDs which you can kind of see making the rounds there now those dots that you see that's just the Reflection from the panel I can't really get my camera in there to show that see the speakers These are nice just little quick connects that come on and off in case you want to make changes swap them outs you could solder them if you want to fairly clean clean build the style that I went for holding the TV on is fairly simple like I've done in some of my other videos it's just blocked on on the other side of this Bolt behind here is a t-nut this piece of pine is glued and nailed to the uh the screen support here so it's not going anywhere this is very strong two on the bottom as well inputs on the TV are just HDMI and there's a headphone out which goes to the amplifier if you wanted to you could just use the televisions speakers but I wanted to have exterior control what other interesting stuff do we have not a whole lot this is a fairly simple build it took a lot of time since this is my first time designing one like this I designed this from scratch in AutoCAD and then on paper and just kind of back and forth until I found a design I liked I didn't go after a specific cabinet design I kind of looked at some side views and found what I liked so there it is so while I know everything works it's still fun to put this on and do some quality control testing of all the parts I'm happy with the way that turned out I might have resized some of the art a little bit but overall I think it looks pretty sweet I love the fact that you can program the LEDs to change colors and pulse and all that stuff even subtly but I still want to make sure that everything works 100 before we pass this off ends up an artist I should have moisturized oh no I'm almost there James Bond s oh he's already got a rocket we know who's gonna win this one oh no this is the same move over and over again the cool thing about these arcades is if a part breaks you can take it off and replace it all those little micro switches do have a lifespan but they're all very easily user replaceable I mean if you've built this you can probably replace anything I love Pokemon yeah [Music] [Applause] let's go [Music] bye bye there we go so you made it through that entire series thank you so much for those of you who watch the whole thing I really hope that it was helpful and uh you know leave a like subscribe ask questions leave comments try to help other people that's what my channel is really all about is hopefully inspiring others to just build stuff anyways thank you so much uh I originally built that arcade back in 2018 and I kind of just got to editing it now so about five years four to five year difference uh that's about it have a great day everybody bye

Channel: We Build Stuff

Views: 55,819

Keywords: arcade, diy, cabinet, full size, we build stuff, michael holbrook, woodwork, shop class, tech ed, adst, retro, gaming, odroid, raspberry pi, xu4, layout, design, series, teacher, build, log, jigsaw, skillsaw, rage quit, mario, nintendo, n64, circular saw, easy, tools, builder, autocad, template, happ, joystick, buttons, keyboard encoder, recalbox, retropie, launchbox, pac man, street fighter, latency, no lag, solder, do it yourself, holbrook, bald, beard, CAD, DWG, router, step by step, beginner, guide, emulator, rom

Id: OLX1JOj9Tds

Length: 82min 2sec (4922 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023