Arcade Cabinet with Ambient Light Effects

A home made arcade wood cabinet, with commercial quality arcade controls, and integrated Ambient Reality Effects system.

The wood cabinet is cut out of 4x8' sandwich panel from Home Depot. The Arcade controller is a HotRod SE from http://www.hanaho.com (comes with MAME and Capcom ROMs).

The LED Ambient Light System is from http://www.arfx.nl and comes loaded with features.

Step 1 Family and Living Room Friendly

After having the concept drawn out, I created a cardboard mockup of the cabinet which lay around the house for a few months.

Tweaked the mock up time and again, and tried different placing in the house, until I was happy with both shape, functionality, and the whereabout.

It was then important to ensure the end result satisfies everyone in the household. That meant:

*Natural* oak wood that matches the living room furniture, and smells good
*Desk* monitor for the kids education and fun
*Shelves* for the kids toys
*Comfortable* folding stool you can load oneself and the kids for long game play (fits 1 to 4)
*MIDI* keyboard for piano lessons
*webcam* to keep in touch with the far and beloved
*MediaReader* to upload family pics and videos online
*MAME* (cream of the crop, flower of the flock, pick of the bunchcrop !!)
*one place* for the whole family to spend time together
*private* user accounts for the 5 of us, and the nanny
*Silent* media center PC

What we also got on the way:
- PVR convenience (never miss Desperate Housewives again)
- Juke Box and Winamp (music for the living room)
- Mood light (cuddling time)
- Browse family pics on living room TV (MCE)
- Watch kids videos on living room TV (MCE)
- Cleaned the house of old PC's and replaced with a single modern one

Technically to support above:
- silent uBTX Gateway 4019 Athlon 3500+, 1GB RAM, Media Center Edition 2005
- silent XFX7600 dual DVI + TV video card
- Svideo connected to TV
- DVI out 1 connected to desk monitor
- DVI out 2 connected to cabinet monitor
- Audio out 1 connected to living room stereo system
- Audio out 2 connected to arcade speakers

Cost wise:
- 4x8 feet Oak sheet from Home Depot $75
- misc. Home Depot $25
- Folding stool from IKEA $36
- Hanaho Hotrod Controller $150
- Gateway 4019 Media Center PC $400
- XFX 7600 video card $100
- Video and Audio Cabling $50

Comments

[uhsnamih]

i always wanted to make an Arcade machine however , i live in a rented house hence i guess i gotta find a used old laptop to make a desktop version of arcade machine. Anyway thank you very much to ignite my passion to make a portable arcade that i always had in mind.

[Fenwick]

I like the design.  I made a full-sized arcade cabinet over the summer, and it takes up a lot of room (both vertically and horizontally), and your design looks like it doesn't take up that much room.

[computer_guy]

Nice.

[stratisfire]

i think i might do this with street fighter 4 on my 360 =)

[Nucleus]

The best part is the Synthesizer on your desk

[Yerboogieman]

now that i think of it i could use my grandpas old computer and LCD, he used to play call of duty 3 on. he, doesnt use it anymore. lets put it that way :-(

[mwwdesign]

Nice instructable, but I think you really should have left the top half of the cabinet on... so it feels like an arcade machine, not just joysticks on a computer.

[den_of_thieves]

those interested in this might also enjoy my brothers scratch built arcade cabinet at http://www.lusid.net/arcade/

[skautistic]

Could you add any pictures of the finished product?

[Cyberia2016]

Added night-time fun-time pics. Enjoy.

[mega_swordman]

Pretty nifty. I have the same controller and would like to make the game cabinet for it. I have question though, do you know where I could download games for the computer? Thanks.

[Cyberia2016]

The HotRod controller comes with MAME and licenced ROMs. You can find more about MAME at their official site http://www.mame.net/