7

CAN I HACK IT?

A mini arcade cabinet

Can a tiny arcade cabinet be hacked?

YOU’LL NEED

Funtime ET7850

Mini Arcade

Machine Toy

COST

£19.14

WHERE

hsmag.cc/LTgVEL

e love the arcades of yester-

year, the vibrant colours

and sounds that fill the air,

designed to entice us to put

another 10p into the slot (OK,

50p these days). These arcades

are dwindling, largely due to home consoles being so

powerful and fostering large communities of gamers.

But for those of us who enjoy the arcades, we dream

of owning a cabinet, or even building our own. Thanks

to the Raspberry Pi and RetroPie, we can make that

dream real; all we need to do is make a cabinet. But

what if you haven’t got the space? Well,

a tabletop cabinet is

possible, but we can

go even smaller

and, using the

‘Mini Arcade

Cabinet’, we have

a ‘donor cabinet’

that we can use

to create our own

miniature cabinet.

So dear reader, let’s

take a look at a £20

cabinet that may

just help us create

our own miniature

nostalgia trip!

THE STOCK

MACHINE

Powering up the

machine and taking it

for a spin, there are four

categories of games:

‘Sports’, ‘Shooting’,

‘Puzzle’, and ‘Arcade’.

Inside of these categories

we find a mixture of unlicensed

games from the early 1980s, Flash

games, and some very dubious clones

of popular games. Sure, they are fun and we spent

a good hour playing as part of the tear-down, but we

can have more fun building our own machine.

GENERAL CONSTRUCTION

Made from rigid plastic that can be easily worked

with hand and power tools, this arcade cabinet is tiny,

measuring just 14.5 cm tall × 8.3 cm wide × 8.6 cm

depth. Internally there is sufficient space to add your

own electronics, including a Pi Zero W, as long as it

is mounted to the base of the unit, as this has the

greatest surface area.

POWER

Powered by three AA (LR6)

batteries, we see 4.5 V of voltage,

which means we can easily install a

LiPo, or other type of rechargeable

cells, as long as we use a suitable

boost/charging board. Power is then

passed directly to the main PCB, which

has no power regulation, so careful

consideration is needed to ensure the

electronics are not damaged.

ELECTRONICS

This is a little bit of

a Frankenstein’s

monster, as the

electronics for this

cabinet are actually the

same as used in the

many Chinese clone

hand-held consoles that

can be picked up for a

few dollars online. We

can identify this due to

six pads on the board,

which are normally used

with rubber buttons that hold

a conductive pad; when a button/

pad is pressed, this causes a connection

A mini arcade cabinet?

Can I Hack It?

W

Les Pounder

@biglesp

Les Pounder is a maker

and author who works

with the Raspberry Pi

Foundation to deliver

Picademy. He also

helps teachers/learners

to become creative

technologists. He blogs

at bigl.es

Right

This cabinet is truly

tiny, but we have

so much scope for

hacking and we

will not need any

specialist equipment!