In this project, I assembled and designed an arcade machine based on the styling of a bartop Arcade Machine kit. Originally I created just the bar top design which was painted to match the Super Nintendo controller color scheme along with the RetroPie logo. I opted for Suzo-happ buttons for the top six and joystick but had to use Sanwa buttons for the front of the arcade due to space constraints.
In the second iteration of the project, I wanted to replicate the feel of an actual arcade machine so I created a bottom base out of similar MDF and included a quarter coin mech to finish it off. As the base and the arcade machine are two separate pieces I used ethernet keystones and a ethernet cable to connect the two so the coin mech would function correctly. This is the arcade machine with the bottom base.
To wire all of the buttons to the Raspberry Pi I used as the main core, I used an ipac2, which is a control board that emulates a keyboard via USB. You connect each button to a section on the ipac2 and then map those keys within RetroPie. It is a very simple way to get custom buttons setup like a controller in RetroPie. Here is a picture of the iPac2 for reference.
