Hey Guys! It’s Mike from The Geek Pub. And on this episode, we’re going to build
the Pacade! Guys, I can not tell you how excited I am
that so many of you have built my arcade cabinets, both my bartop arcade cabinet and my fullsize
arcade cabinet. Now one of the questions I get most often
is “Will you customize a cabinet for me?” and unfortunately I am not able to do that. But I am about to make a lot of you very happy. One of the requests I have gotten over and
over and over was.. “There’s this 80’s model bartop arcade
cabinet that only plays Pac-Man and Galaga" and it had a really unique design that none
of the other bartop arcade cabinets had. We’ll we’re going to make a version of
that cabinet today that works with Retropie and a standard 24 inch off the shelf monitor
that way anybody can build it. And it addition to that we’re going to make
some updates to both this new arcade cabinet and retroactively to the plans for my old
bartop and full-size arcade cabinet. And that’s going to be, we’re going to
add USB ports to the front so that you can attach like Nintendo controllers, Atari 2600,
XBOX, all of that through USB. And then the second thing that we’re going
to add is a hugely requested feature for all of my arcades is a VESA mount back plate for
all of them, because some people are just simply afraid that the cabinet is going to
get tipped over and the monitor is going to fall out. So we’re going to add that. I’ll add that to all of the plans, and then
if you’ve bought those plans, you can simple re-download them for free. That’s one of the great things about my
plans is that anytime I make an update you can have the revision for free if you purchased
them in the past or if you are member of the guild. So let’s get started. OK. So what I have done is I’ve drew out my
design here on this section of MDF. A lot of people like to start with Sketchup,
Me personally, I just like to draw it on the actual board that I am going to work with,
or on a big sheet of paper. And then once I get it the way I like it I
will copy it, or create a version of that in Sketchup and then make some adjustments. For whatever reason that’s just easier for
me. But now that I’ve got the arcade cabinet
built in Sketchup I am going to just discard this and I am going to start with a brand
new blank slate over here and draw it out because this is just a big mess. And then I am going to show you some tips
along the way as we go. OK. So one of the questions that come up over
and over and over and its answered in my videos, its answered in the FAQs on my website, its
answered in the plans, but it still keeps coming up, so I keep bringing it over and
over again. and the question is “What is the angle you
used on such and such piece of such and such arcade?” and I could give you the angle
and you could sit here with an angle gauge and try to figure it out and all of that,
but the truth of the matter is there is a far better way to do it. And that is. For example on the top of this arcade, the
front of the arcade is exactly one inch taller than the back of the arcade. So all you do is you measure over one inch,
draw your line, and then use another straight edge to connect those two dots.There you go,
you don’t need the angle. OK. So here’s another pro tip when it comes
to circles and curves. So on the plans you’ll see that the curve
starts three inches over and it starts three inches up on this particular plan (on this
particular arcade), so you don’t really need to be concerned with what the size or
diameter of the circle is. All you need to is make a mark three inches
up and three inches over and then draw tick marks. Wherever those intersect is really the only
piece of information that you need to know. And then you just use that to draw your curve. So a lot you guys that have watched my other
videos know that I like to use these little backer blocks or some people call them connector
strips. But regardless of what you call them, they
are just material that is cut to the exact same thickness as whatever the material is
that you are building your arcade out of. And so in this case they are three quarter
by three quarter because my material is three quarter inch thick. And what these do is that you simply brad
nail and glue them down to the side panels of your arcade and then once the glue dries
and you get ready to assemble your cabinet it makes it very easy for the other panels
to just slip into place and they fit exactly. So there’s no struggling. You don’t have to worry about clamping or
any of that. And then a little bit of glue and couple of
brad nails and you’re good to go and you can move on to the next piece. It makes assembly very fast. So I highly recommend that. It is completely optional. You can just use glue and screws or no glue
at all if you feel like you want to take it apart at some point in the future, and these
are completely optional if you do that. But it really makes it easy for me, so I use
them pretty much every time. So what I like to do is since you know your
backplate is going to be exactly three quarter inch. So here’s an example. We know this is going to be exactly three
quarters of an inch thick, so all I do is I use one of these three quarter inch strips
agains the back of the arcade or wherever it is we’re going to use this and then with
the other one just add some glue, spread it out, and put it on there. Where you put it is really not all that critical
as long as long is it doesn’t overlap any other parts and as long as it is exactly the
distance of the material that you are using to the back of the arcade. And see look at that I just moved it. Line that up again. There we go. And there we go! OK. And this one will be one of the supports for
the monitor. And there will be one on each side. And then again we’re going to do a VESA
mount on this arcade as well. But this just happens to be exactly the same
thickness as the monitor so we’ll just put it right there on that line, that’s where
the monitor is going to sit. So this backer block will just go right behind
that. And that will be the right side support for
the back of the monitor. And finally this will be what the keyboard
rests on and I don’t really need a spacer for this because I just drew a line where
it goes. Well you guys know how much I love T-Molding,
but if you don’t its OK. Just substitute the T-Slot bit for a round-over
bit and a little sanding and paint and it will look good too. But, I am a T-Molding guy. OK. Here’s another little pro-tip for you. When you’re trying to put these panels together,
and you want to make sure everything lines up perfectly… The easiest way to do that is to take a piece
of scrap material that is the same size as the material that you are working with, and
just use a clamp (a small clamp) and clamp it on. Once you’ve done that it is as simple as
pushing it on and pushing it back until it stops. Then you know you are perfectly lined up. One piece of feedback I get a lot on the comments
section, and in my feedback on my website is "if I could include additional templates
for the control panel?”. And a lot of times it is simply that they
want less buttons. So instead of having eight buttons per play
they only want to have four. The simplest solution for that is when you
are building the arcade, just drill the buttons that you actually want. So if you only want four of these buttons
don’t drill all eight and you will accomplish the same thing. That being said I am going to start including,
and I will retroactively add this to all of the other plans that I already make is a single
player option. This single player layout will just have one
joystick right in the center with one button players. Sorry with one button “hahaha” with one
player buttons with a couple of different buttons for coins and things like that. So that will be included retroactively in
the existing plans. And this is what we are going to use in today’s
arcade build is this single player layout. All of my plans include spray on templates
for the speaker holes. And so all you have to do just like the keyboard
is spray on a little glue, wave it around just a second to get it tacky (or get it to
stick together) and then stick it on the side of the arcade. On all of my arcades I put a back door on
the back of the cabinet, or a maintenance hatch if you will. And that allows you, because you know at some
point you’re going to want to make a change to something that is in the cabinet. That allows you to get inside and make those
changes. The back door is actually cut one eighth inch
smaller both directions than the hole that it goes in. This is to leave it plenty of room to open
and close without rubbing. And so what I find is that I have these little
little sixteenth of an inch printed circuit boards, but you can use anything… paper,
cardboard, whatever and just lay those on the bottom of the cabinet before you put the
door in and that way you know there will always be a sixteenth of an inch all the way around
and we’ll do that before we install our hinges. And here’s another little pro-tip for you. When you are mounting the hinge, go ahead
and close it to a forty-five degree angle the backwards direction and this will allow
you to space it perfectly on the cabinet. So just put it up against the cabinet and
drill your holes. OK, so
contrary to popular belief, you actually do need to sand and finish MDF. It is actually a lot easier to finish MDF
than it is plywood because MDF doesn’t have a wood grain to it. But there are places like right here where
there is just a little bit of a gap and we want to fill that in. And anywhere that we shot a brad nail we also
want to fill that in. And so I like to use just this plastic wood,
its from DAP but you can use anything you want really. You can also use spackling, it works just
fine on MDF. So we’ll just use this and we’ll fill
in all of those gaps and holes. After the wood filler dries, which takes about
four or five hours, then I like to use 220 grit on the random orbital sander just to
smooth everything out. And the last thing we want to do before we
prime it is just to put caulk anywhere there are seems that are going to be visible. And on this particular cabinet there are only
two places, right here and right here. So we’ll just put a little caulk on there
and then we will prime it. So I have a whole video on why I like to use
filler primer on MDF and if you want to know more, check that one out. OK. Well for the paint on this cabinet, I am going
to go with this Rust-o-lem rattle can from Home Depot. It’s called Oasis Blue and I think it will
look really good with the black T-Molding that I am going to use. And this particular paint is a satin. OK. So I went ahead and installed the T-Molding
really quickly and if you need help installing your T-Molding
I have several videos. Just check one of my other arcade cabinet
videos. In addition I have a whole tips and tricks
video in the guild that you might want to check out. In the same vein, I have installed electrical
in almost all of my cabinet builds so if you need some detail on that just check one of
those other videos, but I’m going to go ahead and just quickly for this video install
the electrical. Alright! It is time to put the control panel together. Now, I am not going to go into a lot of detail
in this video, because I have plenty of other videos that talk about how to wire up the
control panel, but one thing I do want to point out and let you know is that when you
are using these smaller buttons and I really like to use these for the start and select
buttons or the one up two up buttons on my cabinets. But I get some feedback on the website sometime
that they are not deep enough. That when you put them in the material, especially
when you are using three quarter inch material there is not enough room on the back to install
the nut. There is a solution for that. I have a whole guild video on how to back-bore
these so that you can put the nut on and the nut will actually countersink. So check that out if you are having problems
with that. So those of you who have watched my other
arcade videos know that I really like to use these little USB speakers. They sound really good and they are kind of
perfect for the form factor of the arcade. But some of you have asked why I hot glue
them in. And the answer is really simple, hot glue
is really strong. Some people don’t think it is, but it is
really strong. Especially if you apply it right. And I really like to use hot glue because
it will last forever and if I ever want to take it out its certainly possible to do so
with a little heat from a hair dryer or a heat gun you can just remove it just a couple
of seconds. So it allows me the option to change these
at any point in the future that I want to and provides for a really simple mounting
method. Alright! So now we’re going to install the monitor. And there is a couple of reasons that I select
this monitor and I use it on almost all of my builds. The first reason is, that is is bezel-less. So except for across the bottom and there
is a little Acer logo that you can put a sticker over or paint it black or whatever you want
to do, but it is a bezel-less display for the most part. So when it sits in the cabinet there is no
big bezel it just looks like a solid piece of glass. The second item, and it is really important
when you are building an arcade is that this monitor remembers it power state. So when you turn this monitor off by unplugging
it, and plugging it back in, it remembers whether it was on or off when it lost power. And that is perfect for an arcade where we’re
not going to be able to get to these buttons because they are behind a piece of wood. So in the case of a power failure when the
arcade gets power the monitor will just turn right back on because it remembers that it
was on when it lost power. So let’s go ahead and install this. So mounting the display is really simple. You just set it on the base and then just
tilt it back. It is going to be a little bit tight and that
is by design. It makes it a nice pressure fit. You can also put a VESA mount behind it if
you want it to be really resilient. OK! So the new Bartop Arcade is complete, and
I am calling this one the Pacade! And some of those of you who are watching
are saying “Hey! We didn’t see you put the graphics on!”
and this is true, I didn’t show it in the video, because this video is already just
too long. So I am going to have another video where
I show how to do that. But I did just use a vinyl cutter called a
Cricut. You can get them at pretty much any craft
store or you can get it online at Amazon. You can make all kinds of cool graphics and
lettering. That’s how I made the iconography for the
buttons. And they are just little vinyl cutouts that
you stick underneath the button. We’ll have a whole other video on that process
at some point. I want to talk about a couple of things that
make this arcade different from the other one that I made previously. And most of the things that I have done to
this one will be able to be retrofitted to that cabinet and I have updated the plans
so that you can add some of these features. The first one is the front USB ports. I have a whole video on the Guild about adding
USB ports to your computer, or to your arcade and so check that out if you want more details,
but these are just USB ports that I bought off of Amazon. One thing that I got a lot of feedback on,
I didn’t show it in the video and I promised that I would, unfortunately, that camera did
not turn on when I thought it was on, but there is a VESA mount available for this. It is also in the plans, so if you want to
make the monitor be held on firmly from behind rather just a press fit like I generally do,
you can add that. The next thing. I got a lot of feedback from people that said
they didn’t really want a lighted marquee because they felt like it would waste a lot
of energy and so the Pacade does not have a lighted marquee. Normally there would be about another three
inch, four inch section on top with banner with an LED behind it and we didn’t do that
on this particular arcade. Although it wouldn’t be that hard to modify
the plans and add that if you really wanted it. Anyway, the next thing that I think is really
awesome is that I have two templates now, one for single player, and one for two player. A lot of people say the bartop arcades are
too small and I will never play two player on them. And quite honestly I just think it kind of
looks cool to just have the joystick right in the center and some buttons on the side. So I used the one player option on this build,
but you can certainly use the two player option. The templates are included for either one. The other thing that I added to the back of
the cabinet is a fan option. So a lot of you feel like that it needs some
more cooling. So I don’t really think that a fan is necessary
for a Raspberry Pi build, but I did include a fan option and there is also a drilling
template for making holes for the fan and installing it if you decide to put a fan in
your cabinet. So that’s it for the Pacade! Thank you so much for watching. Hit that like button and I will see you in
the next video!
