Opera Widget Arcade

On Wednesday, we moved on with our controller board construction. Adam and Arjan did all the interconnections between the controller board components. The PCB connects to both joysticks (they have one microswitch for each of the four directions) and to most of the buttons according to the assembly manual; it also plugs into the computer and acts as a USB keyboard. The trackball connects to the buttons that do left and right mouse clicks (those are in the top-left and top-right corners on our controller panel); the computer regards it as a USB mouse.

Adam screwed the joystics and the trackball to the controller panel. He also drilled holes in the sides of the cabinet for pinball flipper puttons, and installed buttons into the holes. In the back wall of the cabinet, Anders and Adam cut two holes with the jigsaw and mounted a power switch and an Ethernet socket. Later we'll run the power and network lines through these, but for now we just connected the hardware through the open back door.

Meanwhile, Anders installed a computer inside the cabinet, connected the monitor, keyboard and the speakers, and powered the system up. For the first time, the screen of the arcade machine went up! Julien installed and configured the operating system.

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Hello again! We didn't do really much on Wednesday, but what we did was an important part: we installed the sound system into the cabinet.

Our sound system consists of an amplifier unit combinet with a subwoofer, two speakers, and a volume control on a wire that came in handy because we could put it on the keyboard shelf. We put the main unit in the bottom part of the cabinet.

For the speakers, Arjan and Adam made two openings in the ceiling sheet above the monitor with a hole saw. The speakers turned out to be exactly the right size for the tight space between the ceiling sheet and the top of the cabinet: were they just a little bigger, and they wouldn't fit.

When it was done, we had to test the sound. We moved the arcade to the middle of the room and connected the sound system to Adam's Mac. Of course, Adam started the original Galaga game in an emulator, so the sound test was very authentic. The monitor wasn't showing anything yet, but the sounds our box made were the true sounds that a video game is supposed to make!

There will be more reports as we go on with our project.

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So it happened! We've had our first arcade-building session at George's place.

First thing in the morning, Adam and George went shopping and brought a full car of materials. For the cabinet walls, we got three MDF sheets which we had to wipe dry first because they got wet outside.

As soon as everyone came, we did some planning, converted all sizes on the plans to millimeters (yes, we all think metric; measuring in inches for us is like measuring in TV screens), and decided what to cut and in what order. Then we went to the garage where all the actual building happened.

The most important part was to mark up the complex side wall shape on the MDF sheet; it's less spectacular than actual sawing but more crucial. For the curved parts of the shape, Anders and Per Arne used a piece of string as compasses. Adam and Arjan used a jigsaw to cut the curved parts of the profile and a circular saw for the straight lines. The other side of the cabinet was easier because we could use the first one as a template for our mark-up.

Meanwhile, George cut several wooden strips with a cross-cut saw and put them together to make the bottom frame for the cabinet. He drilled some holes in it for the screws and assembled a box-like structure with a shelf for the keyboard (you'll see later where it ends up in the assembly).

After that, we cut the remaining MDF sheet to make all the other parts. We've finished the edges of the parts with a sander to correct the unevenness of cuts. Then we put everything together to see how it fits, and for the very first time we were looking at something that resembles an arcade!

Finally, the cabinet was disassembled and brought into the Opera Oslo office where the game will stay. Bear with us, more reports on our construction efforts are coming!

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