Parting It All Out

In order to stay somewhat organized, I made an Excel spreadsheet so I can track the stuff I need to build this thing. I tried listing everything I could think of so I don't kill myself on shipping costs by ordering multiple times from the same vendor. I know I'll mess this up but I at least want to get everything in hand so I can build the control panel.

The goal is to spend a weekend building the cabinet and control panel. Once I get that finished I can work on it in smaller bursts of time but with a newborn and a 3 year old running around there's not much free time these days. The wife and kids are spending a weekend in September at her parents so I'm hoping to put in two 16 hour days working on this. If I can get the frame built and stained and the control panel put together in one weekend so it looks nice then maybe, just maybe, my wife won't kill me when she sees it.

Here's the list of stuff I need to get started (all parts are being ordered from divemaster over at BYOAC):

Pushbuttons (24) - $1.35 ea. = $32.40
U360 Joystick (2) - $59.00 ea. = $118.00
Hard Spring for Joystick (2) - $5.00 ea. = $10.00
Circular Restrictors for Joystick (2) - $14.00 ea. = $28.00
Spinner (1) = $87.99
3" High Lip Trackball (1) = $64.99
Replacement Black Trackball (1) = $15.00
Trackball Mounting Plate (1) = $10.99
iPac2 [with USB cable] (1) = $43.00
OptiPac [with USB cable] (1) = $43.00

TOTAL = $453.37

Woah. There's really no way around this cost... This will cover all of the mechanical parts for the control panel except for the wiring.

Time to Plan the Control Panel Layout

I've got this thing pretty well laid out... in my head. Time to start writing it down - what better place to do it than a blog no one will ever read?

Here's a very rough pic of what I anticipate the control panel layout to look like (not to scale):

It's a 2 player control panel. Each player will have the standard 6 button "Street Fighter" layout and an Ultimarc 360 joystick. There will be a 3" Happs trackball in the middle for games like Golden Tee. The top row of controls from left to right are Player 1 Start, Player 1 Coin, a Slikstik Tornado Spinner, Buttons 1 and 2 (for the spinner), Player 2 Coin and Player 2 Start. It's pretty standard stuff.

I am also planning on adding 2 buttons to each side of the control panel box to act as flippers for pinball games as well as possibly a pinball plunger for added realism. I need to work out the details of that though.

Here We Go Again!

Please don't tell my wife because this is getting a bit crazy. After successfully building Knights of the Arcade Table and Bella's Arcade, I now bring to you .... The Beach Arcade!

This will be the third arcade cabinet I build from scratch. It will be a "furniture style" cabinet made out of birch plywood and stained a nice mahogany color or something similar. It is designed for 2 players and will have a 6-button layout for fighters as well as a trackball for Golden Tee and a bunch of other cool stuff which I will explain as I build it. I'm in the designing stages right now but I'm hoping to begin construction in a few weeks.

A little bit of background... My in-laws have a house in Salisbury, MA. It's a great little house right on the beach where everyone in the family can go to relax whenever they want. Every great vacation spot needs an arcade, right? I have a feeling this cabinet will be getting a ton of use once it's complete - hopefully I can sand-proof it!