Inspiration
Saw some full sized arcade cabinets and have wanted to spend the time to build one. I got the idea to make one that is ran off the raspberry pi instead so that it would be portable and cost less in hardware.
What it does
The raspberry pi emulates arcade, NES, Arari 2600, and others with a nice front end program called RetroPie. Then I have 9 arcade buttons and a 8-way joystick attached to the GPIO ports on the raspberry pi and they emulate keys on a keyboard. The emulated keys are then set to run the arcade games.
How I built it
I build the physical box the night before with my woodworking skills (since Mhacks does not have table saws, router tables, joiners, miter saws for everyone to use)
Challenges I ran into
Learning out to navigate through Linux in order to put this project together. Figuring out that I needed pull up resistor in order to use arcade buttons with the pi. Getting all the Linux programs to run automatically on boot up in the right order so that the emulated keys work when trying to use the arcade box.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
It is wonderful that I have such a nice looking and running hack that I can showcase from my first ever hackathone. I am proud of all the challenges I overcame in getting the arcade box to work. I also love how nice the project looks so far.
What I learned
I learned how to use Linux through terminal.
What's next for Arcade box
Wire the box more permanently, give the the box a nice finish, and mount the pi inside the bod so that the only thing coming out of the box is the VGA and micro USB cable.
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