Get some Pac-Man fever while sitting on this couch thanks to the arcade rig built inside of the coffee table. The controls are a bit more sparse than more dedicated MAME rigs, but you should still be able to play most of the classics with four buttons and a joystick. After all, you need to reserve some room to put your feet up when you’re not gaming.
[Manny Flores] started the project with a Lack table from Ikea. The top is anything but solid. After tracing the outline of his LCD screen and cutting through the surface he discovered this is more of a beefed of cardboard than it is wood. The honeycomb of paperboard inside the surface of the table makes it really easy to clear out some space. In fact, when it came time to add the arcade buttons he just used a utility knife to cut the openings. Inside you’ll find a Raspberry Pi which interfaces with the buttons and joystick via an iPac USB controller board. A set of powered speakers mounted on the underside complete the design.
[via Adafruit]
Cool idea, but this looks like back murder. Unless you sit on the floor, in which case the screen is hard to see and the controls are hard to use.
Unfortunately, of the eight or so cheap LCDs I have around here, none of them has a decent viewing angle…
Could easily do this without the iPac, just wire up to the GPIO pins and write up a quick python script to handle the button presses.
Or buy the Jakks Pacific mame toy if you just want to play pac-man
http://www.jakks.com/tv-games-arcade-gold-featuring-pac-man.html
Would have been nice with a glass top to protect from drinks etc. I wonder if a glaziers can cut the stick & button holes?
Ikeahackers.net is a pretty cool website BTW. There’s tons of cool stuff on there.
Also, no coin slot :-)
Maybe the whole situation could have been solved with a nice wireless remote, a coffee table with a joystick sticking out of it all the time is a little strange just to put coffee on.
Wow, there are a couple more Arcade Coffee tables on the BYOAC forum that beat this build by far. One example: http://theawesomer.com/photos/2012/09/091912_arcane_arcade_table_1.jpg
It is so much nicer when you can hide the controls, or at least don’t have to have them on the top all the time. Kind of anoying to have them stick out all of the time.
Viewing angle is useless. After 15 minutes you’ll have neck/back strain. Why not prop the lcd at an angle?
So no one is gonna congratulate him? Props Manny. Nice Ikea hack!
You are right, it is a nice build. Good work manny man the mans. Think about finding a way to hide the Control Panel
My grandfather used to build furniture from hollow core doors. Looks like Ikea does the same.
Unfortunately, it’s going to fall apart in a couple of weeks. I had that coffee table (from Ikea), and it lasted maybe a month or two.
im in the middle of one of these builds……put my monitor on fire escape window hinges with gas struts to help with the viewing angle……undecided on how to mount my controls though………