This Arcade Machine is hidden in plain sight! And This is how I Built It!

this video is sponsored by kiwico more about them later so arcade machines are really cool right there's just one problem with them i don't see myself having one in my living room for one they're really big so i only have space for them and two the design aesthetic of a classic arcade machine isn't just something i would want to have standing there in my living room all the time so in today's video we're gonna build a fully functional two-player arcade machine that is gonna be disguised as a really nice looking piece of furniture i've already got everything i need to build this entire project everything from the clicky buttons and joysticks for a cake machine i got a monitor and we're going to run the whole thing on a raspberry pi but don't worry we're not going to need any sort of programming skills and i'll leave a link to all the things you need down in the description below my goal with this project is that we're going to build a really nice looking piece of furniture that you'll have no idea is an arcade machine until we walk up to it flip up the front and start playing so the first thing that we need to do is start cutting up all the parts that are going to make up the frame for this thing and in case you want to build this too i'll have the plans available for download from my website which is alch.shop alright let's start cutting out some parts [Music] [Music] right so i've just cut up this big full-fledged sheet of plywood into three a bit more manageable pieces so we're gonna make this whole project out of just one sheet of plywood i'm gonna use 60 millimeter oak plywood to both give me a really nice finish and also a lot of strength from the plywood inside let's move on to the table saw and cut out all our pieces [Music] so [Music] and just like that that is all the individual parts for this entire build already caught now for the most part all of these are relatively simple cuts with exceptional review angles and some few pockets and holes that we'll need to make in some of these parts so we'll talk about a few bits and pieces that are challenging once we get to assembling them now talking about assembling we're almost at the point where we actually could start doing that already however i've chosen to make my life a little bit harder yet again i'm gonna do two things that are gonna make this build a little bit more challenging one of them is that i don't want to have any visible screws that will have to get a little bit creative with the way we attach pieces together so we're gonna use some wooden biscuits and some more fancy lamella biscuits we'll talk about these more in a second secondly i don't want any of the plywood edges here to be visible so i'm going to cover them up with some edge bending i'm going to use the same edge bending that i always use this stuff comes in a roll and it's basically just wood veneer with hot milk glue on the back quick tip though if you're planning on adding edge binding it will add a little bit of thickness so you need to subtract the thickness of the edge bending from all the parts that you're cutting out so before we can start figuring out how everything is going to go together i'm going to apply edge bending to the edges that will need it and now that all the edge bending is done it's time to cut some holes to fit all our different components we'll start off with the screen [Music] hey does that look like you can fit a screen good because that's the plan the hole here is just about the right size for the display itself however i don't want the full thickness of the plywood as a border around the display so i'm going to use my router and rather a little pocket here so that we can have a thinner bevel let's say a rounded display [Music] right let's see if it fits pretty pleased with that and now that that is out of the way this part is probably the most complicated one in the entire build so we're pretty soon going to start to be able to assemble stuff there's still one more thing left to do in this one though and that is drill two holes up here to accommodate for the speakers that we're gonna have there and now that this guy is completely finished it's time for me to show you how all this is actually gonna go together now we can divide this whole build into two main assemblies you've got the frame that's going to consist of this part in the middle a couple of parts on the side and a top and this thing is what's going to make up the outer part of this box because like i said from the outside this is going to look like a totally plain normal cabinet and then obviously that cabinet is going to have a door and when it's closed it's gonna look like any other door but to open it up this whole thing is gonna flip down revealing the surface where all the buttons and the joystick will live and the screen that is inside of the box is gonna be right here so obviously this door is going to have some thickness to it so that all the wires and the electronics can live inside of here but we'll worry about that part later it's time to assemble the main cabinet now to start off the frame for the screen here will be attached in between the two side parts and because i want the screen to be a little bit tilted backwards i've caught some angles in the top and the bottom of this piece i just did that on my table saw when i was cutting out the parts that this can now go on here and to make sure everything ends up in the right place using the drawings i've marked up the locations for where all these parts need to be now these holes here aren't actually for the speakers themselves they're just access panels for this guy this is where the speakers actually will go and this part is gonna be mounted right on top of here then we've got our top plate and the board is going to go on the other side and now this should give you a bit more of a better understanding how everything is going to go together this whole thing is obviously laying on its side but this is where the screen goes and this is where the door will come out that will have all the buttons and stuff on it so time to figure out how to attach all this together now as i said i don't want any visible screws in this entire build and that is going to make my life a lot harder if you were to build one of these and let's say i wanted to paint it you can just use screws everywhere fill those holes and paint it after the fact and you'd probably be able to make one in about half the time as i'm gonna spend here but those are my choices and i'm just gonna have to live with them so to achieve not having any visible screws i'm gonna use a combination of lamella biscuits which i used a ton of in the past and something i haven't used before which is pocket holes now even though people on youtube don't seem to be a huge fan of pocket holes i think they're a great way of attaching pieces of ketter where you get the convenience of being able to use screws to pull stuff together which in the case of lamellar biscuits you will have to do with a clam so i'm going to go ahead and figure out where i want the lamellas and the pocket holes and once all that is done we can actually start assembling this frame [Music] you [Music] tell you what i love pocket holes they make assembly so much easier especially in combination with lamellae biscuits to keep everything aligned now as you can see i've already assembled this whole frame now lucky for me i still get to take this whole thing back apart sand everything put it back together with some glue and then apply finish because this thing has a bunch of weird angles i just really wanted to make sure that everything fit which lucky for me it actually does now there are a few parts on here that you haven't seen yet like a couple of these parts in the bottom which will make more sense when we go to assemble the whole thing and these two parts in the back these pieces in the back here are both to give some rigidity to the frame as well as these will be the mounting system to hang on the wall they're pretty standard french cleats that means that there's a 45 degree angle on the bottom here that will interact with the 45 that we're going to attach to the wall so that when we're going to mount it on the wall it will slide on that 45 degree angle and pull itself towards the wall same thing that we did with our media camera alright time for the most tedious part of this project which lucky you you get to watch in fast forward oh man i wish i could apply finish and fast forward [Music] man i'm sure glad we're done with that now while we wait for the oil to dry a quick add from today's sponsor kiwico kiwico creates super cool hands-on projects and toys designed to expose kids for concepts in stem in a fun and engaging way they offer eight subscription lines each catering to different age groups and topics they come with detailed kid-friendly instructions and an educational magazine filled with content to learn even more about the creates theme and every box comes with everything you need for that month's project so you never have to worry about running out supplies or not having the right tools cubico believes that small lessons today can be big world changing ideas tomorrow and sometimes when you're small it's easier to think big they actually sent me a couple of these crates to try out and in this project you can create your own sculpture using metal wire and this really cool battery-powered l-wire it came with everything i needed to put it together and a bunch of really cool designs to choose from i decided to make my own logo so now i can have this cool light up logo in my own shop and if you use the link in the description or go to kiwico.com alexanderpal get 50 off the first month of any crate all right the day after all the oil is dry and these parts are ready to be assembled this time for last time before i oil these i put some masking tape on the areas that will need glue because the wood glue i'm using doesn't really like to stick to the oiled surface i've also already oiled all the parts for our flip out front even though i still need to drill some holes in here but i might as well do that now that everything is oiled assembly time [Music] now that the glue on that thing is drying we're moving on to the other part of this build which luckily is considerably easier all this part is gonna be is a box which is gonna have all the buttons on one side a couple of thin pieces for the front and sides as well as the back and then we're gonna have a top part going right there now the only part that is going to add a little bit of extra work here is that i want this surface to somehow be removable and to do that without using any visible fasteners i'm going to use this fancy lamella machine which i've used a couple of times in the past that will allow me to use these things which are just basically fancy lamella biscuits that i can insert in each of the parts and then i can snap them together like this so that we can snap this whole front in place once all the wiring and electronics is done and that way hacking will access it again after effects so that machine makes screws where these plastic pieces can fit in like this and then the opposite part will go like that snap into place and securely hold it and then with a bit of force we'll be able to take it back apart all right all the holes are drilled and as far as the woodworking part of this project is concerned we're basically done now it's just about assembling all these parts and as we do that i'm going to show you a couple of three different parts i made to serve various purposes in this build first up is the back piece of this box this is the part that will be on the bottom when the lid is closed i've routed out a pocket into the bottom of this into which we're going to insert this guy this phillip in the part is going to be the locking mechanism to keep the lid closed and together with a spring and a brass bolt it's going to serve as the locking pin we'll worry about these parts later for now we'll just screw in this into this piece and then we can assemble the rest of the parts and now we're basically ready to start installing the electronics but first i really want to show you how this is actually going to look like in the end now this part will go inside of the frame like this obviously with the front panel attached and here's another cool 3d for the part that is going to function as the hinge this thing which is a 3d printed cylinder that i've stuck a wooden dowel through is going to go through a hole that we drilled into side parts here and the dowel goes into a matching hole in the frame and same on the other side so that we now have a functional hinge now this is the first time i see it's semi-assembled and i'm super happy with the way this is turning out i think it's going to look really good next up electronics and that part of the project is actually surprisingly easy i just bought a complete kit from amazon that included everything i needed to make both the joystick and all the buttons work the kit comes with a little circuit board where all the buttons and the joystick plug right into and then it gets converted to a simple usb cable that plugs into your raspberry pi and then everything you need to do is plug in everything to your raspberry pi load up the sd card with the arcade program and put some games on a usb stick i'm by no means any expert in doing any of this and i've never used the raspberry pi before and even i managed to figure it out i'll leave a link to a couple of videos that will show you everything that you need to know so i guess the next step is to get all these buttons hooked up and neatly tucked away in the frame here however one more thing so these are the buttons that came with that kit they're pretty nice there's nothing wrong with them they have a nice connector in the bottom and they even light up only problem is i don't really like that they light up and i also don't like the clicky sound just listen to this it's pretty lame huh so i bought these guys classic old-school arcade buttons with a big manual switch in the bottom and these sound much better so i'm gonna make my life a little bit harder because i now can't use that connector anymore so i'm gonna have to hook up my own terminals and splice the wires luckily this isn't hard just a bit tedious you know what i am pretty pleased with this i've got everything hooked up all the buttons both joysticks and the raspberry pi i've also got all the cables that need to go either up to the screen or to power right here and the very last thing that will go in here is some speakers more specifically the brains for the speakers this is just a super cheap speaker set i bought that has a base that i'm not even gonna use because it's so bad and two okay speakers the speakers will obviously go above the screen where we drill those holes and the part that needs to go into the frame is this guy this thing has a nice little volume knob that is attached to a pop meter in the back here so i'll take this thing apart attach the individual components to the frame and then i'll also extend the wires for this pop meter so that i can have the volume control knob somewhere else [Music] now that all the wiring and the lid here is completely finished we can move on to putting all the different components together and we're going to start off with this speaker assembly now i took the speakers out of their plastic casings and glued them onto these pockets that routed out of the back of this part here also because i didn't really like how those speakers looked i 3d printed a couple of nice covers and glued those onto the front of the speakers and talking about glue that's exactly what we're going to use to attach it to the frame i did go back and forth between different solutions to attach this part to the frame but at the end i figured it would be just as easy to just use a couple of drops of super glue and just glue this piece in place if i ever need to take it back out i can just push it out from the back and then glue it back in again also can we just take a quick second to admire how incredibly well this piece actually fits [Music] okay next up time to finally install the screen now on the screen i'm planning to use there's this little plastic cover on the front here and in order for the screen to sit completely flush i am going to take that off and now that that is gone the entire panel is flat and i should be able to once i take it off the stand simply slide it in from the bottom here and to hold the screen in place while i make it more complicated than it needs to be we're going to use hot melt glue and just like that the screen is attached and then it's really starting to get close we're almost finished the next step is to put the two halves together and i'm really looking forward to do that the very last thing we need to do before that is to install the locking mechanism that will hold the thing in place when it's closed we've already attached the housing and the mechanism itself is actually super simple this little spring goes in there and then i've got this brass rod which i've cut to length drilled a hole and tapped that hole this thing will go in here and then this short little screw will screw into this threaded hole up here and that's really all there is to it now we have our little spring loaded locking mechanism it's time let's finally put these two halves together did you hear that that was the lock now to our 3d printed hinge parts all right i'm at the point now where everything in here is connected and all i need to do is hook up these last wires these wires are poking out of this hole that i earlier made by drilling a couple of holes and then using the jigsaw to cut out the rest of it and that hole will perfectly fit this three event apart it might not look like much right now but this is what is going to become the control interface for the entire box and in addition to the volume knob i extended which will fit in this slot here there's also a usb cable and that usb port is where i can plug in the usb sticks these will have the games on it a reset switch for the raspberry pi and main power switch which will snap in right here and then finally the main power cable for the box i think that's gonna look pretty neat i'm just gonna wire this up and then we can actually attach it to the wall and start playing [Music] games [Music] [Applause] hey and now the last thing that's left to do is just to attach the front which will slide into a couple of regular lamellae biscuits in the bottom for alignment and then the top and that's it we are finished oh and to get the illusion that this actually is a regular door i made a little slot at the bottom here to make it look like there's a gap but in fact the bottom piece is attached to the door itself almost hit me and to make sure that the door stops in the right place i've got these little pegs that are normally used to hold up shelves oh and in case you're wondering if everything works sure does now in terms of games you can have on here there's obviously tons of rules and i'm not going to tell you how to do it super easy to find all the information you need online i'm also just super pleased with the way the latch mechanism here worked and it seems to hold everything in place really well now in case you want to make one of these i'll have the complete plans available for download on my website which is alch.com there'll also be a link in the description below but hey you'll have to excuse me now because i really want to play some arcade games and you can go watch some of my other videos or start building one of these for yourself thanks so much for watching and i'll see you guys in the next video bye bye [Music] oh and in case you're wondering how i'm planning to get the front cover off again here's my plan somehow hopefully securely attach this thing and then [Applause] and if you're wondering why the corners on this are busted the first time i did this i dropped the front cover and busted three of the corners yay

Channel: Alexandre Chappel

Views: 292,879

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Id: OB8VauGEvqg

Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021