CNC Router Raspberry PI Arcade Cabinet

In my classroom, there is a big arcade machine using a Raspberry PI with a large variety of games. While it is cool, there are some big issues I personally have with it. 1: It's a piece of junk and is likely going to fall apart at any moment, 2: It is too big, takes up too much space, and is impossible to move around due to its size and lack of material quality to make up for said size, 3: too confusing to anyone who didn't make it, there are so many buttons using it is like flying a plane, 4: too many people use it, the buttons and joysticks are grimey and damaged, and the thing is so old it hardly works. These problems can all be solved pretty simply, decreasing the size allows me to use the same materials but get twice the value out of them because it weighs significantly less. Since it weighs less, it is a lot easier to move around compared to the other arcade, and since I can move it around I can keep it away from people who do not care to maintain it. These are the steps I took to make it, in no particular order.

Electronics

Raspberry PI 3B+ (with the retropie OS)

Monitor

VGA to HDMI Converter (For monitor)

2x USB Speakers

Micro Usb

2x DragonRise Generic USB Joysticks

32 GB MicroSD

Assembly

48x80" 1/4" Plywood

Wood glue

Nails

First, I started off with a prototype to get the idea of how I wanted it to look and how I wanted to assemble it. My prototype is made of cardboard, and is held together by excess wood pieces and hot glue laying around the workshop. I ended up using the wood pieces the same way in my actual build but instead with nails and wood glue. I also decided to remove the back part so the wiring and electronics is easily accessible. In the pictures shown the size of the prototype is 1x1x1ft, which I decided to change to 2x2x2ft for the finished product to make room for a second person.

Next, I made a CAD model so I could get a visual on the assembly, and decide where the buttons are placed. This also gets me started on step 3!

For the CAM, I arranged all the pieces out separately with the arrange tool, I then got my feeds and speeds from https://app.fswizard.com/ I then ran it on a CNC Router. I attached the 48x80" plywood board to the router using a plastic nail gun so that i could break the board off after easily. I used a 1/4" Flat end mill for the cuts, and a 1/8" flat end mill for the holes I would screw the monitor into. The router ended up messing up the plywood a few times, mainly because when the router would pull the tool up it wouldn't go high enough and would end up dragging across the board. This could have been avoided if I set the clearance height high enough.

This step is pretty straightforward, just put excess wood in corners and use a nail gun and wood glue to assemble them. This method works, but might end up with open corners and uneven pieces if you're sloppy with the assembly. I was definitely sloppy with it but personally I don't mind since it's my own project.

Next, I got a Raspberry PI 3B+ with the RetroPie OS installed, this software comes with a large amount of emulators for more games than I could wish to play. Unfortunately, I couldn't upload any ROMS straight to the MicroSD without them instantly wiping from the drive when I plugged it into the Raspberry Pi. I solved this problem pretty simply, there is a software on Retropie called Samba, this allowed me to wirelessly transfer roms over to the Raspberry Pi through an IP address. Now that all the games are on the Raspberry Pi, I can connect the buttons and joysticks to the Raspberry Pi through USB.

This part is pretty simple, plug everything in and pray that it all turns on. The buttons and joystick are connected to one makeshift dragonrise controller (picture 2), which is then connected by USB. The rest is as easy as setting up any old console with an hdmi and power cord.

Now that everything is assembled I can setup the controls and everything, the controls can be set through the "configure input" setting, which I did for each side of the control panel. Then, I launched one of the games from the main menu and tested it out, and it works. Sadly I cannot figure out the controls for the N64 games, it only registers half the inputs. The other consoles don't share this problem.