Portable Arcade Box

It was a few years ago that I had the idea for this, but I lacked the technical know-how to make it happen. The idea was to create a box with arcade controls built into the top of it, just like any USB arcade controller you find online. But I knew there was room for improvement, so I wanted to build the arcade computer into the box itself, so that you only need to plug the box into a TV and you'd be ready to go. Furthermore, I thought it could be done for less than $100.

I got the parts from many different places, Jamma Boards being the only one I can recall for the arcade parts (I know I at least got the joystick from here, probably all the buttons, too). I got my Raspberry Pi Model B from amazon for around $45, a clear case for $13, and a 32gb SD card. The wiring was just what I could find at the local electronics store (20 gauge, maybe?). And I had to get a Teensy (the 2.0 was the most recent model at time of purchase, so that's what I got) for $16.

I'd had, at this point, no electronics experience outside of basic soldering, and little construction experience, too. Everything ended up being a challenge for me during this project, but almost entirely due to my inexperience.

I first made sure all my wiring worked, so I had to learn C to program the teensy board (based off of someone else's USB gamepad code). During the soldering for the board, I ended up frying one of the contacts due to improper soldering equipment, so I had to reprogram the board to make up for it, so if you look at the code it will be a little... imperfect. But it all ended up working, every button registered with the computer as a generic USB gamepad (which was important, because the RPi ran Linux). I suppose that, if I really knew what I was doing, I could have just attached the buttons to the GPIO pins, but I wasn't about to tackle that beast. The code can be found here.

Secondly, I got the RPi ready to work with the controller. I went through the initial setup and installed MAME4all-Pi, and then the arcade games themselves.

Then I had to build the box itself. It's not well built, and it's a little thicker than I'd like, but due to hasty designing, I got what I got and haven't gotten around to fixing it yet. Everything works, it's just a little imperfect. I also had to drill a hole into the back of the box in order to run the external cables through. I took the controller design online and modified it a little bit and ended up with this:

I'll admit the button placement near the joystick was a horrible idea, but I was dealing with size constraints at the time.

After finishing the box, putting all the buttons in, screwing down the RPi case, and dealing with the wiring, I ended up with this on the inside:

 (not shown: teensy)

Plugging a keyboard into the RPi, I only have to navigate to usr/local/bin/indiecity/InstalledApps/mame4all_pi/Full and run ./mame and everything ran!

I found and old cost analysis spreadsheet I made awhile back and this was the official rundown at the end:

Item	Cost ($)	Quantity	Total Cost ($)
Pushbutton	1.95	10	19.5
Joystick	8.95	1	8.95
Teensy 2.0	16.00	1	16.00
RPi	46.83	1	46.83
Power Cable	8.99	1	8.99
Case	13.59	1	13.59
32gb SDHC	27.74	1	27.74
			141.60

More than I anticipated, but still not bad. There's definitely room for improvement, too, which can bring the price down (I suspect that it can still be done sub-$100).