Another Bartop Arcade Build

I ended up building a second Bartop Arcade. This one has a few changes compared to the first one. The cabinet is made with grey Melamine coated fiberboard. So it didn’t need painted. I also didn’t do the cutout of cabinet or the main assembly. The marquee top issue was addressed and cut to the proper angle. The Door was properly sized. The cabinet is assembled with Kreg Jig pocket screws and not corner blocks. For the fan the larger “speaker” pattern was used at the bottom of the door. Edge banding was used on the back of the cabinet instead of tmolding. The edge banding was used on the edges of the door and door opening, any of the board ends that weren’t covered with the Melamine coating. It makes it look very clean.

With the VESA Mounted monitor, it is cleaner inside, with more room. This build is a better fit to put a small or “Tiny” form factor PC into with Ubuntu and Retropie instead of using a RaspberryPi with Retropie. The Pi5 is out now, which is even more powerful than the Pi4 used on this build, but as of 3/24 does not yet have a Retropie Image made for it, although it is possible to do a manual install just as I did with the Pi4 on this build back when it didn’t have a build for it then. I don’t know the limits of a Pi4 or Pi5 and what it can’t run, but I expect there are plenty of (even used) Tiny PCs out there that are even more capable. It is good though that the Pi4 prices have come back to proper retail pricing, and the Pi5 is having some availability, so they are again at least viable options. With the Pi4 I don’t think ventilation is an issue, with the Pi5 it does run warmer, and with a PC you may want more ventilation that was put into this build.

here you can see the lock placement was a bit different. I also used one of the spare 30mm buttons for the safe shutdown.

The monitor was specifically purchased for this build. It is a BenQ 24″ IPS Monitor Model GW2480. This monitor supports using a VESA mount, so this time it is mounted with the VESA bracket. That made it much cleaner inside as far as not having that big block in the way in the middle. This monitor is larger than the one in the first cabinet. It “just” fits. Some 24″ monitors do not fit, this one does as it is virtually bezel-less on the sides and top. I used the same techniques for the plexiglass bezel on the monitor, there was very little black on the sides with this one though.

The back of the control panel has a piece on it that the plexiglass panel slots into so it doesn’t flex there. You can just see part of that piece of white textured material there below the edge of the monitor, that is the part the plexiglass rests into the front and it is attached to the control panel board. For the Marquee I went with the same design, as well as the same speakers. I am also using the same type of Meanwell dual voltage power supply.

There are other changes on the inside, for this build I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 not a 3b+. The basic reason being the Pi 4 is the same price and a more powerful system. When I build the unit there wasn’t yet a supported build for the Pi 4 though. In the end the only features that wouldn’t work for me was the splash screen/video.

I did run the speakers to the audio jack on the Pi this time tough. I couldn’t do the audio from the HDMI off of the BenQ and get rid of the static. Running the audio off of the Monitor audio out in the last one had eliminated the noise from the shared power supply on the speaker and Pi, but this time with this monitor that didn’t work. I had to put in a ground loop isolator. It is hard to make out much of it, but it is sitting there at in the middle of the bundle of wires. It is a little unit that has what looks like “Design” on it it is actually “Besign” Ground Loop Noise Isolator available on Amazon for $8.99 usually. I have had a number of these little units, one being in my pi1541. Since putting the audio through the monitor out didn’t fix the ground loop, I went strait to the Pi’s audio jack, as the output on the monitor I believe was much lower making the speakers not as loud.

The Pi4 does get hotter, and requires a good cooling solution. I went with a heatsink style case with the 2 fans on it. This case keeps the Pi nice and cool, the fans are not very loud. It is attached to the bottom of the cabinet with a piece of Velcro.

Here is another view, just showing the fan mounted in. You can also see the the stopper block in the middle of where the door closes. I think the unit looks much nicer inside. You can’t see it any pictures I though to take, but the controllers use a different pc board design. The ones I have used before are the kind with a header for a permanently attached usb cable, these have the usb port and use standard usb a to b cables. The order of the buttons is different. So it took me a little while to sort out how to wire these in the exact same order as my other cabinet and usb arcade stick. Having everything wired the same lets me use the usb arcade stick I had made as a third player controller. I also can have a single Retropie image for any cabinet without having to reconfigure the controllers. My Pi3 SD card is not compatible with the Pi4 though. I used alternate instructions on getting a new image setup with the Pi4. I built this back in the end of January, but they have since released a new version with “beta” support for the Pi4. The game scraper has not been working on either machine, but the update is listed to have fixed that. To set this one up, I pulled game info and images from another Retropi install that I have.

Here you can see how narrow that black border is along the sides. The larger screen goes nearly to the edge on this build. It looks like I still had the tape on the speaker grills as the silicone that I used to install them was still curing.

Here you can see a better view of the Marquee as the unit is powered off. The marquee is the same design and print that I made for the first one printed on the inkjet printer. This marquee is slightly shorter, that is why the Atari is about to get cut off in the trim pieces. I don’t think I went over the trim pieces in the last build, they are cut from some angled vinyl window trim pieces I had left over. They go back in between the mdf and aluminum pan to hold them in, and have a short lip that goes up and holds in the plexiglass.

The other changes with it are that I ended up doing a 3d printed customized volume knob for the speakers. The knob is nothing special, it was off of Thingiverse, so that I had the proper shape and fitting, I then stretched it in Tinkercad to be tall enough. It did have a bit that stuck out to denote the position, I removed most of that, as there really is not a relative marking on the cabinet. I did it in white so it would not stand out too much. I also ended up designing and printing out some speaker covers on my 3d printer. They are nothing fancy, and are held in with some clear silicone in the openings. With the first one, I used the 2″ desk insert pieces with the fabric, I didn’t have any fabric or 2″ desk grommet inserts.

The Melamine coating saved a lot of work. The draw back being it is a very thin coating and brittle. It is easy to chip out and not much can be done to fix it that I know of anyways. The fiber board in it is coarse board not the fine cardboard like consistency of the MDF, which I think may make it lighter. Tmolding is just very slightly undersized, this exposed some of the unfinished edge of the board. With the MDF black cabinet, I had paint on the edge although not as smooth or well coated as the other surfaces, so that is more hidden on it. If I had realized that, I would have painted the edge of the board before putting on the tmolding or had the edge banding put on it all around. Overall the cabinet is lighter, I think partly the coarser board rather than the MDF, also the lack of a base on the monitor as well as no blocking to build that up. The monitor itself may be lighter even though it is a bit larger. Then there is the lack of corner blocking that may very well add up overall.

It is certainly different looking than the first cabinet. I like it though.

If you are interested and have not seen the other Bartop cabinet posts I do go into more detail there. This just notes many of the differences on this build. I have also posted about an AirMouse project that I made to use as a Zapper replacement for Duck Hunt.