A1Up RetroPie front control panel

Last crawled date: 4 years, 1 month ago

[Working on it]
This is a custom cabinet and Raspberry Pie control panel for the Arcade1UP first and second-gen cabinets. It is intended to mount on the J-panel (the angled panel on the front, dircetly below the control panel.
I use an ATX power supply for all internal power - it is switched on and off from this front panel exactly like a computer's on/off switch. A Raspberry Pi is used to run all the games - one of the buttons on the front panel is a safe-shutdown button for the Pi. All of the buttons on the front panel are illuminated when on. The arcade buttons are also illuminated and controlled by a wireless LED controller. (They can flash in patterns in attract mode, but I find a dim illumination better for game play.) There's also a microSD card slot - an extension cable plugged into my Raspi's uSD slot.
I've shoe-horned in a common small, inexpensive amplifier and used its face plate on the panel.
Originally, I had the this panel flush to the surface of the J-panel, but the back of the amp intruded into the arcade button area so I added a housing to let me mount it level. This, along with the car speakers mounted on either side, had the added benefit of making it look a bit like an add-on auto tape deck. Just a small touch of retro.
This is a very preliminary post, but I'm publishing to give a place to point to for those who have asked me about this build. The parts posted are the parts I used and will work for you, too, if you're going to be building a hardware-similar front panel, but a step-by-step for the complete build is a work-in-progress.
I intend to fully flesh out the hardware I used and the wiring and installation of all the things I used to build this A1Up Retro Arcade. I'm also building another one, so I can photograph more of the intermediate steps where necessary.