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Rich! · May 17, 2015

So this week I started work on an idea I had in my head for a while - making a games console using a raspberry pi, housed inside a SNES. I managed to pick up a broken SNES for cheap on ebay that was dirty as hell - but cleaned up spectacularly. Using a mishmash of cheap parts, a raspberry pi B 2 and a control board, I did the following:

- added HDMI and USB power ports.
- hooked up the front controller ports to the pi
- set up retropie with 16gb of storage, wifi and bluetooth.
- mounted the pi and controlblock to the inside of the case using some plastic spacers and a little bit of superglue
- hooked up the power button and led. Power switch turns the pi on and shuts it down when switched back.
- a lot of fucking around with the linux shell

Turned out quite well I think:

(ignore the tape - this is an older photo. it's much better organised and secured now)

Plays everything from NES to SNES to GBA and PS1 like a dream. Played some Sonic 2 and Symphony of the Night earlier...on this SNES. Good stuff

right, now show yours. lets see what awesome shit gaf has come up with

MisterM · May 17, 2015

I made an arcade table out of an Ikea Lack table. I don't have any handy pictures of it completed but you get the idea.

http://imgur.com/a/x981k

I've since flipped the monitor 180 degrees to improve viewing angle and hidden the bezel.

PS. Loving the SNES. Great work.

Rich! · May 17, 2015

MisterM said:
I made an arcade table out of an Ikea Lack table. I don't have any handy pictures of it completed but you get the idea.

http://imgur.com/a/x981k

I've since flipped the monitor 180 degrees to improve viewing angle and hidden the bezel.

PS. Loving the SNES. Great work.

I swear I've seen your table before, and it's fantastic. I would do something like that if I had the space.

MisterM · May 17, 2015

You've possibly seen pics before. I made it about two years ago and I've posted them a couple of times here.

Due to space and a baby since I made it, it doesn't get much love anymore. I should make some space for it and get it up and running again.

morukutsu · May 17, 2015

Nice work !

Rich! said:
- hooked up the front controller ports to the pi

I'm interested by this point,
Did you buy a specific adapter or you just wired the SNES ports to GPIO pins?

Rich! · May 17, 2015

morukutsu said:
Nice work !

I'm interested by this point,
Did you buy a specific adapter or you just wired the SNES ports to GPIO pins?

controlblock

http://blog.petrockblock.com/2014/12/29/controlblock-power-switch-and-io-for-the-raspberry-pi/

works flawlessly. I fucked up the initial installation though...had to reinstall retropie but its all good now

sp3ctr3 · May 17, 2015

I built this in 2013

Hyperspin frontend. MAME favorites only
Build Thread over at arcadecontrols

entremet · May 17, 2015

Does Retro PI use that janky UI.

Rich! · May 17, 2015

entrement said:
Does Retro PI use that janky UI.

uses whatever you want.

emulationstation, rgui, lakka. i've gone for emulationstation and it's actually pretty sweet

anx10us · May 17, 2015

Love the SNES, I have a few Arcade Machines, currently running an Egret 2 tri-sync with Dremcst and xbox 360 inside, an Addams Family PInball and this self built Fix-It-Felix (from the Wreck it Ralph Disney Film) Arcade Cabinet.

The Cabinet a customised vertical Hypersping frontend with about 300 vertical games, including the mentioned Fix-it-Felix

A few pictures, from how it started to finished product

Rich! · May 17, 2015

holy shit that fix it jr is incredible

anx10us · May 17, 2015

Rich! said:
holy shit that fix it jr is incredible

I'm very pleased with it, you would assume it was a real cabinet, kids love it, it even has a self-made serial plate, working coin mechs etc ...

entremet · May 17, 2015

Rich! said:
uses whatever you want.

emulationstation, rgui, lakka. i've gone for emulationstation and it's actually pretty sweet

Ok. I remember you had another emulation thread, I forget the name of the software but you loaded cores and whatnot.

I just found the interfaces too antiquated. Really put me off to the whole thing sadly.

Robcat · May 17, 2015

This was my fist one

This is the one i'm working on now

Ushay · May 17, 2015

anx10us said:
Love the SNES, I have a few Arcade Machines, currently running an Egret 2 tri-sync with Dremcst and xbox 360 inside, an Addams Family PInball and this self built Fix-It-Felix (from the Wreck it Ralph Disney Film) Arcade Cabinet.

The Cabinet a customised vertical Hypersping frontend with about 300 vertical games, including the mentioned Fix-it-Felix

A few pictures, from how it started to finished product

Wait, Fix it is an actual game? I thought Disney made that up?

anx10us · May 17, 2015

Ushay said:
Wait, Fix it is an actual game? I thought Disney made that up?

It is fictional, however Disney created about 20 real machines to use for promotion. This is a home made reproduction, hand built by me for my kids, in effect brand new, it does play the game of fix it feix, even accepts 25c to put credits in. Added bonus of utilising hyperspin and mame means we have about 300 other vertical games to play ..

;-)

U2NUMB · May 17, 2015

anx10us said:
Love the SNES, I have a few Arcade Machines, currently running an Egret 2 tri-sync with Dremcst and xbox 360 inside, an Addams Family PInball and this self built Fix-It-Felix (from the Wreck it Ralph Disney Film) Arcade Cabinet.

The Cabinet a customised vertical Hypersping frontend with about 300 vertical games, including the mentioned Fix-it-Felix

A few pictures, from how it started to finished product

Well.. you win!

anx10us · May 17, 2015

Rich! said:
So this week I started work on an idea I had in my head for a while - making a games console using a raspberry pi, housed inside a SNES. I managed to pick up a broken SNES for cheap on ebay that was dirty as hell - but cleaned up spectacularly. Using a mishmash of cheap parts, a raspberry pi B 2 and a control board, I did the following:

- added HDMI and USB power ports.
- hooked up the front controller ports to the pi
- set up retropie with 16gb of storage, wifi and bluetooth.
- mounted the pi and controlblock to the inside of the case using some plastic spacers and a little bit of superglue
- hooked up the power button and led. Power switch turns the pi on and shuts it down when switched back.
- a lot of fucking around with the linux shell

Turned out quite well I think:

Plays everything from NES to SNES to GBA and PS1 like a dream. Played some Sonic 2 and Symphony of the Night earlier...on this SNES. Good stuff

right, now show yours. lets see what awesome shit gaf has come up with

Ok so now I want to do exactly what you have, already bought the controlblock, just need a dead snes ...

Any chance of a quick video of the interface and a few games, maybe snes, megadrive and PS1 ?

I'm assuming its the 2nd version of the RPi ? any problems with frameskipping lag etc ?

Olengie · May 17, 2015

Looks amazing! I'm hoping I could do a project like this in the future.

brainpann · May 17, 2015

I posted these in previous threads but Ill gladly post again. ;-)

This is my SNES portable. It uses a jr board connected to a PSone style screen via RGB. The housing took the most time to make-probably something like 6 months working here and there. It probably looks a little large and bulky, but I actually spent quite a bit of time making sure it was comfortable to use. Powering it is a 7.5v li-polymer battery that gives me about 5 hours of play time. I could get more if I replaced the ccfl with leds but I dont see much point since it will never leave my house anyway. It was one of my first major projects and I learned A LOT from making it.

And here is my FamiNES- it playes famicom and NES carts. It is also RGB modded. Internally it is a famicom but the housing is a moddified NES shell.
At some point Id like to redo the top part of the shell. Its a little wonky in some places. This project was also much more difficult than I had orginally planned. The famicom board kept giving me trouble and I didnt reinforce the shell initially and it bowed a little.

I also made a GBA console with a custom controller. Basically its a gba with a tv out adapter-also RGB modded. Unfortunately, I dont have any pics atm but you can see it on my youtube channel here. There are also videos of the SNES portable and the FamiNES.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6KLTMZ5NmI

Currently Im working a mini mame cab to look like a mini astro cab. Ive had no time though.

sixteen-bit · May 17, 2015

Cool thread. Subbed.

Viper3 · May 17, 2015

Robcat said:
This was my fist one

This is the one i'm working on now

Awesome work. That must've been quite time consuming.

anx10us · May 17, 2015

brainpann said:
Currently Im working a mini mame cab to look like a mini astro cab. Ive had no time though.

Now this i'm interested in, a mini Astro cab would be fantastic, any pictures ? what scale ? I assume you have seen the Capcom Mini Cute ? also the dinoking conversions that are essentially small/children sized arcade machines ?

KatamariOnTheRocks · May 17, 2015

brainpann said:
I also made a GBA console with a custom controller. Basically its a gba with a tv out adapter-also RGB modded. Unfortunately, I dont have any pics atm but you can see it on my youtube channel here. There are also videos of the SNES portable and the FamiNES.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6KLTMZ5NmI

I checked that out and gotta say I'm impressed. That's a really cool idea and the shell for the console looks pretty good as well. Nice job on that

Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew · May 17, 2015

Robcat said:
This was my fist one

This is the one i'm working on now

Oh nice! This is quite well done. I had quite a similar plan for my machine. Mind if you share the blue print (if any?).

brainpann · May 17, 2015

anx10us said:
Now this i'm interested in, a mini Astro cab would be fantastic, any pictures ? what scale ? I assume you have seen the Capcom Mini Cute ? also the dinoking conversions that are essentially small/children sized arcade machines ?

Im using an 8 button icade as the base shell so it will be tabletop. Ill be modifying it heavily. ;-) I dont have any pics because the only thing that is close to being finished is the portion that houses the stick and buttons. So far i have replaced the stock buttons with Sanwa parts. Originally i was going to replace the stick as well, but after messing with it-decided its actually ok. I did replace the ball with a nice bright pink top, however. Next i need to wire it up to my usb board and decide where im sticking the start, coin, etc buttons. Ill probably just put some discreet tact switches somewhere. Ideally ill wire up some sort of button on the coin slot space.

Next ill be planning out the cab cosmetics. I need to decide how ill be attaching the screen, computer, speakers, etc. I literrally havent had a day off in 5 weeks, so its been difficult finding time to do anything with it. Ill take some pics later and show everyone my progress so far.

Skyzard · May 17, 2015

I hope you guys have basements to put those cabinets in for that arcade feel. Can't imagine it looking right just sitting in a medium/small room. They all look really well done though.

BibiMaghoo · May 17, 2015

Amazing work : The thread.

brainpann · May 17, 2015

KatamariOnTheRocks said:
I checked that out and gotta say I'm impressed. That's a really cool idea and the shell for the console looks pretty good as well. Nice job on that

Thanks! I probably should have warned everyone about the blurry and shaky footage, lol.

Phat Michael · May 17, 2015

This thread is great. I have a supergun and Sony wega that I have been dying to make into some form of cabinet. But I just don't have the skills or room to do it.. :/

brainpann · May 17, 2015

Phat Michael said:
This thread is great. I have a supergun and Sony wega that I have been dying to make into some form of cabinet. But I just don't have the skills or room to do it.. :/

For me, learning how to do these things is the fun part. I spent a lot of time reading through other peoples build logs to get an idea about how Id go about making my snes portable. With research included, i probably soent a year on that project. You can gain the skills. If you really want to do it, i say start reading up on forums, etc about other peoples builds and go from there. Not all of it will make sense at first but eventually you will get a pretty clear idea.

Space, however.....

L Thammy · May 17, 2015

Not mine, but I think this fits the thread. Saw it on another forum.

Here it is for the real 15khz game on my sega astro city. The SSD was just here to see that i successfully made a ghost of my arcade system with it^^
Running on a crt screen in 240p resolution

RumblePuff · May 17, 2015

Awesome. I know what I'm going to do with my raspberry pi 2 now.

Kyou · May 17, 2015

Rich! said:
So this week I started work on an idea I had in my head for a while - making a games console using a raspberry pi, housed inside a SNES. I managed to pick up a broken SNES for cheap on ebay that was dirty as hell - but cleaned up spectacularly. Using a mishmash of cheap parts, a raspberry pi B 2 and a control board, I did the following:

- added HDMI and USB power ports.
- hooked up the front controller ports to the pi
- set up retropie with 16gb of storage, wifi and bluetooth.
- mounted the pi and controlblock to the inside of the case using some plastic spacers and a little bit of superglue
- hooked up the power button and led. Power switch turns the pi on and shuts it down when switched back.
- a lot of fucking around with the linux shell

Turned out quite well I think:

Plays everything from NES to SNES to GBA and PS1 like a dream. Played some Sonic 2 and Symphony of the Night earlier...on this SNES. Good stuff

right, now show yours. lets see what awesome shit gaf has come up with

guh I really want to make something exactly like this but I am sure it is out of my league

REDSLATE · May 17, 2015

About 1/3 the weight of the stock console.

Leonsito · May 17, 2015

This thread is fantastic, subscribed!

Tal Shiar Agent · May 17, 2015

Rich! said:
So this week I started work on an idea I had in my head for a while - making a games console using a raspberry pi, housed inside a SNES. I managed to pick up a broken SNES for cheap on ebay that was dirty as hell - but cleaned up spectacularly. Using a mishmash of cheap parts, a raspberry pi B 2 and a control board, I did the following:

- added HDMI and USB power ports.
- hooked up the front controller ports to the pi
- set up retropie with 16gb of storage, wifi and bluetooth.
- mounted the pi and controlblock to the inside of the case using some plastic spacers and a little bit of superglue
- hooked up the power button and led. Power switch turns the pi on and shuts it down when switched back.
- a lot of fucking around with the linux shell

Turned out quite well I think:

Plays everything from NES to SNES to GBA and PS1 like a dream. Played some Sonic 2 and Symphony of the Night earlier...on this SNES. Good stuff

right, now show yours. lets see what awesome shit gaf has come up with

Can you post a guide to do this? Also, where can I buy that control board for the Pi2? The link you gave just seems to be an information site, I can't seem to find a place to purchase.

I have an old NES shell begging for something like this.

Robcat · May 17, 2015

shagg_187 said:
Oh nice! This is quite well done. I had quite a similar plan for my machine. Mind if you share the blue print (if any?).

These are old cabs that I restored. My friend who is a cabinet maker makes me the control panel and I just cut out the old one.

Meesh · May 17, 2015

OP your SNES kicks ass!!! Could you give us a tutorial on how to do it, or point me in the direction of a newb friendly one? Soldering isn't my strong suit but I'm willing to learn for this!

eXistor · May 17, 2015

Too bad I have zero skill in this area, I'd loooove to have a MAME cab in my house.

BFIB · May 17, 2015

eXistor said:
Too bad I have zero skill in this area, I'd loooove to have a MAME cab in my house.

It's not too bad. I bought an empty SF2 cab and grabbed an old PC I had lying around. Bought a JPac from Ultimarc.

Galdelico · May 17, 2015

BibiMaghoo said:
Amazing work : The thread.

You stole my post.
Holy. Shit.

anx10us · May 18, 2015

nemss said:
It's not too bad. I bought an empty SF2 cab and grabbed an old PC I had lying around. Bought a JPac from Ultimarc.

Its much easier than you ever thought, a cheap arcade machine (ebay/craigslist) a simple pc, mame and a ultimarc adapter and you have 1000's of arcade machines which to the untrained eye are the real thing.

The internet is your friend, there are a bunch of people here happy to help as well.

The biggest challenge is space and girlfriend/wife approval, its definetly cheaper than you think ;-)

Rich! · May 18, 2015

Just so people know, there's currently an odd glitch with the controlblock on SNES input mode when on an overclocked pi2 where it registers random/constant button presses. I bought it up on the petrockblog forums and they are gonna fix it with an updated driver.

Fredrik · May 18, 2015

Awesome work on your Raspberry Pi SNES Rich!

My first ever arcade cabinet, running RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 2, a bit scruffy looking but it works pefectly

rSpooky · May 18, 2015

Holy nuggets that FixitJr.... :O
Is there a good recourse how to get started on arcade cabinet making? Or is it all figure it out as you go from scratch? I would be useful to know what options are there to get, what to keep in mind, best wood to use , any pitfalls to watch out for etc.

anx10us · May 18, 2015

rSpooky said:
Holy nuggets that FixitJr.... :O
Is there a good recourse how to get started on arcade cabinet making? Or is it all figure it out as you go from scratch? I would be useful to know what options are there to get, what to keep in mind, best wood to use , any pitfalls to watch out for etc.

Good isn't it

My inspiration came from this thread and a lot of googling ..

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,135095.0.html

brainpann · May 18, 2015

Fredrik said:
Awesome work on your Raspberry Pi SNES Rich!

My first ever arcade cabinet, running RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 2, a bit scruffy looking but it works pefectly

Wow-that looks amazing. Good job!
But why only four buttons and not 6? Looks like NeoGeo setup.

Riesenfass · May 19, 2015

REDSLATE said:
About 1/3 the weight of the stock console.

Could you give a bit of detail on how this was done? Looks really interesting, thanks for sharing.

BFIB · May 19, 2015

Fredrik said:
Awesome work on your Raspberry Pi SNES Rich!

My first ever arcade cabinet, running RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 2, a bit scruffy looking but it works pefectly

That's awesome. Excellent work. And a bartop unit which is even cooler.

My ultimate would be a kitchen table that when you remove the top leaf, is a cocktail arcade.

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