Here’s a portable retro arcade cabinet that you can DIY at home. Not a cabinet alone, it has a 1) Two Players cordless arcade style joysticks 2) Support for both game emulation and media player features – that is, playing games or watching movies 3) Support for a “built-in” LCD as well as plugging in to a TV 4) Remote control for navigation.
The project consists of a “main” box which houses a Raspberry Pi loaded with two operating systems – a PiPlay image for arcade games and a RaspBMC for watching movies. Along with the Pi, there is a hard drive removed from an old unusable laptop and also a USB hub for powering the RPi and the hard drive. The box has external ports for HDMI and a female DC power input. It has the laptop’s LCD screen mounted on the inside surface and an LCD controller board. After all this, there still remains ample space so that the main box can fit inside it. As for the peripherals, there are two Bluetooth enabled joystick boxes with 4 arcade buttons, and some extra buttons for navigation.
The maker ensured that the media player and arcade operate in two modes. In the first mode, the “big box mode” everything is self contained and one just needs to power up the gadget. In the second mode it is convenient to plug in to any HDMI TV and this allows the user to use the Bluetooth enabled joysticks to play games or watch movies.
Filed Under: Reviews
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