(Topic ID: 145994)

Arcade / Barcade Machine made from an iCade

By calico1997

8 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

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  • 21 posts
  • 3 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 8 years ago by Gort
  • Topic is favorited by 2 Pinsiders

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#1 8 years ago

A few years ago, the "iCade" device was commercialized. It was designed to allow iPad users to play with real arcade controls via a bluetooh connection. It came with a nifty cabinet and retailed for around $150. It was moderately successful, but the problem was that few commercial games supported iCade. You could hack your iPad to play MAME games, but few people are up to that. The iCades can now be found on the internet or ebay for around $50. I have a couple, and thought it would be neat to turn this device into a real working JAMMA arcade machine. Here goes...

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#2 8 years ago

I purchased a slightly beat up iCade on ebay for $12 plus $12 shipping. I was the only bidder.

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#3 8 years ago

Most of the additional components came from cajunarcade.com . Very nice company! From them you can get a JAMMA wire harness, 12vDC switching power supply, 412 vertical game board with amplified audio output and vga video, and an 8 ohm speaker. The JAMMA 412 board plays hundreds of vertically oriented classic games and is the highest cost component at over $100. You could instead use the older 60-in-1 game board for about half the cost and still get the best of classic vertical games, though less of them. The 2nd highest cost item was the 10 inch TFT display from ebay via China direct. It cost about $60. Comes with a driver board and controls board, pretty much plug and play on 12vDC.

All together these parts including the iCade cabinet and some other items like paint, velcro, a matte board bezel, short VGA cable, etc., cost a grand total of about $250. That's still a lot cheaper than most "barcades" sell for on the web.

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#4 8 years ago

The rest of my post is more pictures than writing. It all really came together nicely. I decided to make it look like a Galaga machine, since that's one of my favorite classic games and the iCade cabinet is sort of shaped the right way for it.

The back of the iCade is empty and there's also lots of room underneath. I decided to cut out some back and bottom panels from a scrap piece of masonite board, which later got painted black.

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#5 8 years ago

The control panel comes out without difficulty. However, they do require a "torx" type security bit that you may need to purchase at the hardware store. You can also remove the iPad docking unit, just an obstructive piece of plastic. One could feed all wires through the docking station hole already in the control panel. I opted to drill a 2" hole in the back of the cabinet instead, using a hole saw.

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#6 8 years ago

Pictured above, you can see I added in 4 small wood blocks about 1cm cubed in size. Came from the local retail craft store. These are in the back panel and are what the LCD display will sit against. I applied these with strong double sided tape. The monitor / bezel with stick to these blocks with velcro, so it remains removable if needed.

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#7 8 years ago

I took the control panel apart. You can see the innards here. I took out the bluetooth circuits since they're not needed. I kept the LED coin slot wires and circuit, to be used in my final machine. These are basically real arcade controls, though on the low end. They can all be wired to the JAMMA harness.

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#8 8 years ago

Wanting this to look like a mini Galaga machine, I downloaded some cabinet graphics files from a French web site and used Photoshop to reduce / modify the files as needed. Along with side panels and a marquee, I also made a control panel bezel. To do this, I Photoshopped out all the words, reduced the image to the size of my control panel, and printed it on my ink jet printer with vinyl decal paper. Then applied the decal and clear coated it with satin acrylic. It turned out well.

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#9 8 years ago

To make this look nice, I figured out on a piece of cardboard what the size of the monitor bezel needs to be. I took that model to a local craft store's framing department and they made me a black cardstock bezel matte for $9. I then used a glue gun to carefully affix the LCD monitor to this bezel, and also affixed the monitor's driver board with a large patch of velcro.

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#10 8 years ago

The next part was the most work. I had to connect all the JAMMA harness wires to the game control panel wires. This could be done with crimps, but I just soldered it all instead. The JAMMA harness pinout wire diagram is widely available on the web. I ended up using less than half of the wires, since this is a machine with only 1 controller and no track ball. Therefore I ended up clipping off all the unneeded wires to make it more compact. Of course the length of the JAMMA wires also had to be reduced.

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#11 8 years ago

The wiring to the power supply is easier than it looks. 12vDC and 5VDC to the JAMMA harness, along with Ground. Also connected the LCD monitor 12vDC to the power supply. And, I added the red LED for the coin slot plus a white LED for my home made marquee to the 5vDC. Then added a 110vAC line cord with ground.

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#12 8 years ago

The rest of it just fit together nicely. To affix all the components, I used the very strong "3M Dual Lock" velcro. This makes parts mounting quick and removable, yet strong. I put the power supply in the bottom since it is the most heavy component. There's very little heat, so hopefully no cooling fan is needed.

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#13 8 years ago

I'm not thrilled about having the speaker facing out the back, but it sounds fine. I put in a small speaker grill in the back panel of the machine to "let the sound out".

#14 8 years ago

I mounted the VGA monitor control panel on the iCade flip top lid with velcro. Also added in a white LED pinball light and socket to illuminate my little Galaga marquee that I made with my ink jet printer and small piece of plexi. A sheet of plexi was also used over the monitor and bezel to protect it.

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#15 8 years ago

So here's the final result; all the parts wired and connected, velcrowed in, cabinet painted and decaled, ready to use.

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#16 8 years ago

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#17 8 years ago

The 412 game board of course offers the ability to play Galaga very nicely, along with many other titles via a menu. It also can be configured in a variety of ways. I set up my controls to have the white buttons as player 1 and player 2 start, and a couple of the right side black buttons to be the "test switch" and "insert coin". That left me with 2 red fire buttons plus 2 more black buttons for all other game actions.

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#18 8 years ago

Not sure what to do with this unit, but I think I'll keep it for a while. This project is what I'd call a "medium" skill level project. Let me know if you have any questions or ideas!

Thanks,

- calico1997

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