The Pi-Cade by belch

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

I present the Pi-Cade: a completely 3D printed arcade cabinet built for the Raspberry Pi 2.
Inspired by the people over at adafruit and their cupcade project (http://www.adafruit.com/product/1783), and the folks over at retrobuiltgames.com (http://www.retrobuiltgames.com/the-build-page/porta-pi-arcade-kit/. I thought the cupcade concept was great, but with a tiny 2 inch screen the playability may be limited. Similarly, retrobuilt is a nice cabinet, but I thought the foot print could be much smaller and still remain very comfortable to use / play. And of course, I wanted a 3D printed version.
With a 7 inch screen, real arcade controls, an amplifier and 3 inch stereo speakers, this cabinet is the perfect size for a desk-top arcade! The system runs retropie, which uses emulationstation to manage various emulators. See their wiki for all the types of emulators that are supported: http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/
A quick video here:
https://youtu.be/lUAQfXKvS6g
This print is made up of fairly large parts, the largest of which is 240mm by 180mm, so at this time you will need a large print bed. The panels also require you to have your printer dialed in and leveled well for good results. If I get time, I may break up some of the larger panels to make this printable on smaller printers.
You can find everything you need to order on the instructions page, and almost everything is available at adafruit.com. I am going to continue to make design enhancements -- perhaps a 6 button panel, a two player version, and options for different controls.
The sketchup file is included for you to edit. The sketchup file does not have rounded edges on the front panels as the printable stl files do. I suggest round corner, with a 3mm setting to round over the sides of the front facing panels (see examples in the STLs).
Happy gaming!