The Rusty Rocket

There is something very special about an arcade cabinet and I've made a couple in the past with varying degrees of success as I try and recreate that strong nostalgic feeling I have for retro gaming. Now that I'm more familiar with the process of building cabinets I decided to see how cheaply I could build me next one and this is the process I followed. For those wishing to make one but don't have the space then maybe you would be interested in building one of my smaller miniature versions here . This is the finished product, a Mario themed table top arcade machine running a Retropie set up and as most of the material was sourced from scrap, the whole project (not including the cost of the monitor) came it at just over £20. The buttons were the first purchased I made as you can't have a cabinet without necessary joystick and buttons. if you hunt around on eBay and prepared to wait a while for them to be shipped from China, you can find a USB joystick and button set for ...

I have previously built arcade cabinets from scratch and wanted to build another one now that I'm more familiar with the build process. However, after seeing the work of Small Change Arcade , I was inspired to build a miniature arcade machine instead and wondered how small could I go. This tabletop arcade with a Raspberry Pi Zero running Retropie was the result and I love it. I also set myself an additional task of sourcing the materials from what I already had about the place in a bid to keep costs low and to prove that you can make good use of practically anything. As I was about to throw way some old IKEA CD drawers, I looked at one of them and could instantly see how this could be repurposed as a mini desktop arcade due to its shape. Now I've never been very good at measuring things for projects accurately, nor am I very good at carpentry but that's never put me off before. I set about roughly cutting out the desired shape with a saw and was able to make ...

I am a little late to the party but I have only recently discovered that one of my tutorials written three years ago was featured on the Adafruit blog . Whether it was a human or an automated algorithm that posted it, I am just so pleased that someone or something thought it worthy to be posted despite the photographs being blurry, the writing is terrible (even now I'm still not confident with my writing, hence this blog to help practice) and a somewhat illegal activity of interfering with local FM transmissions (see small print below). It all backs up my advice to people, that you don't have to make a project that is perfectly polished, you just have to crack on and make it, for people will see through all the roughness and home in on your idea. It also got feature over on the Instructables site too. I wrote the Instructables tutorial as I wanted the practice writing detailed steps for my projects, as most view the production of documentation as a chore, it's a nece...

It's 2020 I want to see what's out there. The idea is to use my builds throughout the year to push myself out of the familiar comfort zone, attend events and meet others with similar interests to me. So I'm kicking off the year by aiming big, really big as myself and Rich attempt to break the world record for the largest Gameboy ever built. Last year I was fortunate enough to play on the current record holder and to be honest I've seen bigger Gameboy builds but similar to the Wright brothers not being the first to achieve flight, this current record holder had all the documentation to back it up, thus achieving the record. Incidentally, I noticed that it's emulated, a topic guaranteed to divide the retro gaming community. So in order to start planning the build, we first needed to take measurements of the original model and it's surprising how short and stumpy the original Gameboy actually is. From here we were able to scale up the plans and taking ...

Coding chatbots has always fascinated me for years and during that time I have created a number of chatbot projects with varying degrees of success. It wasn't until I exhibited one of my simpler yet more successful chat projects called Woggle at a science fiction convention that I started to realise that putting a sci-fi spin of things greatly increases a project's popularity. For those interested, you can see Woggle in action and follow the links to chat with it yourself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skrpZBU0VIs Whilst at the show I took the time to visit the other exhibitors, one of which were a group of Star Wars droid builders and they kindly gave me a tour and breakdown of the robots they had brought with them that day. It was these people that suggested that I put one of my chatbots into a droid's body and we all agreed that this would make for an interesting project indeed. However, as I am not skilled in the art of droid building, this quickly became a prob...

An old Raspberry Pi project of mine seems to be gathering in popularity once again. This is to do with turning a Pi Zero into a little FM transmitter. I had previously written a tutorial for it over at Instructables.com  and I remember at the time being amazed at how many people viewed it on its first day of becoming featured on the site. If you have an old model Raspberry Pi or a Pi Zero and stuck for something to do then this simple project might just be for you. It’s all based around number stations , relics of the Cold War that transmit cryptic messages to spies out in the field over shortwave. This tutorial shows how to broadcast your very own station over FM. Read it  here . Radio has been an interest of mine since I was very young but it's only now, over the last few years that I've been able to develop this interest further as my knowledge of electronics and software has grown. My favourite of all has to be a little WebSDR box that I built, complete with a Mo...

After hours of tinkering, the arcade cabinet is finally complete and I love the way it has turned out. It started out as an idea and a heap of scrap wood (mainly from an old bed) and I basically made it up as I went along. Inside is a tiny Pi Zero running Retropie which means there is a large amount of internal space to play around with if I ever decide to add things like a coin slot. The total cost of the build (minus the screen which is my tv from the bedroom th at no longer has a bed – see above) the cabinet build has come it at around the £40 mark which I think is pretty good going. The most expensive elements of the build were the controls and the vinyl covering. Some people have asked me for the plans but unfortunately I don’t have any, it was all built on the fly. I would love to make another one, learning from the mistakes made in this build and improving my woodworking skills. I also need to get some practice in order to beat my son at Street Fighter 2 first before ...

I recently made a start on my RetroPie arcade cabinet. I’m making it up as I go along really but my first attempt seems to be heading in the right direction. It’s been slow going but the cabinet I’m building without following any plans took a big step forward recently as I installed the joystick and buttons.  They were slow to arrive (probably a very slow boat from China), easy to wire up and a pain to drill the holes and install but they’re working great and really change the feel of the games, as they’re now being played how they should be. It’s all running off a Raspberry Pi Zero which means that there is a huge amount of empty space actually inside the cabinet. I’m thinking I made it a little too wide but the extra width gives me room to play around with some clever lighting or something around the screen when I build its cradle. It’s been suggested that I make it coin operated and have it calibrated to the old 10p coins we used to have in the UK, making it trul...

My son and I built a mini tabletop arcade machine. As luck would have it, the width of an old wooden IKEA drawer is the same width as a USB NES controller. It’s nice when things fit like that.    The brains of the operation sits a small Raspberry Pi Zero running  Retropie . Even without a knowledge of coding, setting up a retro gaming system using  Retropie  is really simple and I would definitely recommend giving it a try if you’re toying with the idea. Why stop there? Using the same ingredients you can then go on to build more interesting and creative gaming projects. One of my favourites has to be the retro gaming picture frame that I build a couple of years ago for an event.