Day: June 29, 2019

Building A DIY Desktop-Sized Arcade Machine

June 29, 2019 by 10 Comments

Full-sized arcade cabinets are undeniably cool, but take up a lot of space and can be somewhat of a handful. [PleaseNoFisticuffs] desired something a little more fun-sized, and so built a desktop arcade machine that has some serious style.

It’s a build that’s remarkably accessible for even the inexperienced builder. Paper templates are used to cut out the plywood parts for the cabinet, and the electronic components are all off-the-shelf items. Assembly is readily achievable with high-school level woodworking and soldering skills. Like most similar builds, it relies on the Raspberry Pi running RetroPie, meaning you’ll never run out of games to play.

Where this project really shines, however, is the graphics. Cribbed from Mortal Kombat II and looking resplendent in purple, they’re key to making this cabinet a truly stunning piece. The attention to detail is excellent, too, with the marquee and screen getting acrylic overlays for that classic shine, as well as proper T-moulding being used to finish the edges.

We’d love to have something like this on our desk, though we’d likely get far less work done in such an event. For another take on an arcade build, check out this impressive Undertale pinball cabinet.

 

An SDR Transceiver The Old-School Way

June 29, 2019 by 4 Comments

Software-defined radios or SDRs have provided a step-change in the way we use radio. From your FM broadcast receiver which very likely now has single-application SDR technology embedded in a chip through to the all-singing-all-dancing general purpose SDR you’d find on an experimenter’s bench, control over signal processing has moved from the analogue domain into the digital. The possibilities are limitless, and some of the old ways of building a radio now seem antiquated.

[Pete Juliano N6QW] is an expert radio home-brewer of very long standing, and he’s proved there’s plenty of scope for old-fashioned radio homebrewing in an SDR with his RADIG project.  It’s an SDR transceiver for HF which does all the work of quadrature splitting and mixing with homebrewed modules rather than the more usual technique of hiding it in an SDR chip. It’s a very long read in a diary format from the bottom up, and what’s remarkable is that he’s gone from idea to working SDR over the space of about three weeks.