Taking shape - Part 3

With most of the major woodwork complete I cut out a mock up of the bezel glass out of card, it will be one large piece to display both screens rather than having the marquee separate like most traditional bartops.  The monitor is rather square so doesn't lend itself to anything else really.

At this point I'm just filling in gaps on the back of the cabinet with what ever scraps I can find but at lease I have all the components to make a back door.

I found a 32GB micro SD card and imaged it with a vanilla version of Retropie to test everything out, I wanted to see both monitors in action and prove the concept.  There are 2 HDMI outputs on the Raspberry Pi 4 and I'd bought the 8GB version. Both of my old screens only accept RGB though so I also picked up a couple of HDMI to RGB adaptors to convert the video signal.

I then installed a script to utilise the top monitor, everything worked fine until I came back in the next morning to find that my top monitor had died!  I had to buy a replacement monitor and found a nice little 10inch screen on Amazon which seemed perfect for the job, plus it's got a better aspect ratio that the original 4:3 monitor I was using.  Better the original screen failed at this point in the project rather than later down the line!

The script I used can be found here  :  GitHub - losernator/PieMarquee2: Dynamic Marquee script for Raspberry Pi
It is a simple install and has the option to run videos or images in different situations, for example you can have a default video playing on startup in the marquee then individual images per game per system if you source the artwork and put it in the appropriate folder.

Every good arcade machine needs sound and I had an old pair of Creative speakers with a built in amplifier.  I decided to take them apart and use the speakers and then designed and 3D printed a panel to house the amplifier circuit.  I also added a spot to mount a switch which I plan to connect to the Pi to act as a safe shutdown switch.

It came out really well after a couple of test prints.  I want to mount this on the lower part of the back which will be secured and permanent (unlike the back door itself).  It will sit on the same panel I plan to mount the power socket.