Make A Portable Arcade And Media Player #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi
Make a portable arcade and media player with Raspberry pi. via instructables
This project started after I made a full size retro arcade cabinet powered by a raspberry pi. The full size cabinet was great for a basement but I wanted to make a portable version with a few cool features:
2 Player with cordless (ended up using Bluetooth) arcade style joysticks.
Support for both game emulation and media player features (play games or watch movies).
Support for a “built-in” LCD as well as plugging in to a TV.
Remote control for navigation.
I also wanted to do this relatively cheap so I’ve used a few things I had from the previous build as well as some things I had laying around including an old laptop, a rarely used humidor (yes, a humidor) and a random box I got with Mets logo on it (no clue where it came from).
The basic setup is this:
The “main” box (from the Mets box) has in it a Raspberry pi loaded with 2 operating systems – a PiPlay image for arcade games and a RaspBMC for watching movies.
Also in the box is a hard drive I removed from my old laptop and a USB hub for powering the RPi and the hard drive.
The box has external ports for HDMI and a female DC power input (more on this later).
The “big box” (the humidor) has the laptop’s LCD screen mounted to the inside as well as an LCD controller board. It also has ample space so that the main box can fit inside it.
(2) Bluetooth enabled joystick boxes with 4 arcade buttons, a joystick and some extra buttons for navigation.
These are very much based on this Adafruit project.
The nice part about this setup is that when I plan on using another TV I just need the smaller box, when I want to use the LCD I need the bigger box but the small box is in it. In both setups I only need 1 power source (see the power section for more info).
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!