I've always wanted my own arcade cabinet. One of my dreams is to own an arcade at some point. After diving into the realm of Raspberry Pi-based emulation for a previous project, I decided I would take it up a notch and build a bartop arcade cabinet. I'm glad I did, because the final build exceeded my expectations by far!

Overview

The cabinet itself was constructed by me and my dad from a sheet of plywood, but if I were to do this again I would pick a better material. Don't get me wrong - it looks good - but the grain of the plywood is unappealing to me (not a huge deal with full coverage graphics) and drilling holes was more trouble than any other part of the project. That being said, for the price and weight it makes a lot of sense.

The software is run through a RetroPie Pi image using the Emulation Station frontend, run on a Raspberry Pi 2.

The audio is routed through a usb audio adapter (fixed a distortion bug with the Pi,) into an amplifier, routed to a set of Kicker DSC35's with the volume controlled by a 1k potentiometer. The amplifier is powered by one of the 12v 5a 60w power supplies.

The video is sent from the Pi to a 19" computer monitor with an HDMI > DVI cable.

The main LED buttons are powered through the USB encoder board that came with the kit, and the marquee LED strips and 12v triangle LED buttons are powered through the barrel jack with one of the 12v 5a 60w power supplies.