NaCade- The Naked Raspberry Pi Arcade Machine. by krimmy

The brains of this setup is the Raspberry Pi computer. It’s not overly powerful by today’s standards but it can run early style games and systems pretty well. It’s small size and low power consumption makes it ideal for many different uses. Best of all it’s cheap to buy. The software comes courtesy of Shea Silverman’s PiMAME http://pimame.org It has a bunch of great gaming emulators built in.

The display is an ordinary 7″ LCD (car reversing monitor) which is sufficient enough for these low resolution games although the menus can be a bit too small to read. I had to use a larger monitor when I set it up initially. Working with scripts on this screen was impossible though a 9″ screen would be a better option if I had to do it over.

The AV input on the screen is connected into the yellow RCA port on the Raspberry Pi.

I used an arcade quality joystick and illuminated buttons which are wired directly into the Pi. Power is supplied through an 9 amp hour AGM battery which is charged by an inbuilt 15amp solar controller. The solar controller regulates voltage from an external source which in this case is a solar panel. Yes, its powered by the sun!

Sound comes from a portable USB speaker that has its own internal battery.

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