Noisebridge Blog

We’ve worked out a strategy for getting classic controllers hooked up to NGALAC. We’ll be about to play games with the orignal controllers they were intended for, controllers for other console systems, or joysticks and buttons.

We’ve tested and tuned the video and sound for our Live Streaming and are now working on the scenes and graphics for our live stream experience. We Help with this. If you would like to help, please come to one of our coordination meetings on Friday evenings at 20:00

After a few iterations and sketches we’ve worked out how we plan to store the various controllers on the sides of NGALAC. Although unlike the mockup, we plan to recess them

And figure out how to comfortably fit those confounding N64 controllers. (Ouch!)

Finally, for this update, we’ve started the 1.0 version of the cabinet. Here is a preview draft of the updated cabinet model

And here the start of the frame that will hold it all together

We’re going to make a big push on this this weekend. Soon we’ll have some more photos to share of the project. 

We have started our draft cabinet. This is not it’s final form, but will allow us to start testing out the placements of the various screens, controls and, audio components. Since this cabinet will also be live streaming we want to take some time to work out a good player experience, while capturing a good live stream as well.

After looking at several arcade cabinets in the wild and online, we started with a couple sketches: 

Then use the power of computer aided drafting to layout the skech more rigorously.

We then plotted the points onto a sheet of plywood, connected the dots, and used a jigsaw to cut along the line, at least sort of cut along the line anyway.

Mean while the Gaming and Live Streaming teams were working on getting the Emulators, Controller adaptors, PC, Camera, Microphones and other components connected together so we can start testing out those systems. We also took a TV apart and learned how to discharge a CRT.

What an amazing thing.

We screwed 2x4s to the cabinet sides along some of the edges and added plywood panels and shelves between them.

Then we added as many of the streaming and gaming system parts as we could and after some trial and error, got out our first live test stream.

https://clips.twitch.tv/SlickSuperSwanBCouch

Thank you for reading. We’re currently looking for help with:

1. Automating the various tasks to make the live streaming happen at the push of a button. We’re writing up an automation flow diagram which will share in a future post.

2. If you are familiar with Twitch streams, you may have seen some of those nice intros, outros, and animations that streamers use on their channels. We're looking for help making some of this for the Noisebridge Twitch channel. 

--We're still looking for a 23"-25" CRT with a curved screen. Once we get one, we'll need help modding it to accept RGB input, similar to this: http://scarthunter.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/RGBmodification.html

--We have many of the things we need to begin setting up the Gaming and Streaming systems. People will be in the space working on these on Tuesday Night 2018-03-06, we'll review their progress at the Friday coordination meeting.

--We need to fabricate a means mounting the ports of retro controller to USB converters on to mountable faceplates that can be installed above the controller board below the CRT. 

--We'll start building a wood mock up of the cabinet during  the weekend of March 10 to 11 to use for cabinet design development; to workout the final cabinet design. This will be cheap plywood, 2x4s, and screws, but it should be fun.

--If you are familiar with Twitch streams, you may have seen some of those nice intros, outros, and animations that streamers use on their channels. We're looking for help making some of this for the Noisebridge Twitch channel.

If you can help with any of these tasks, or have questions or advice, please email the discussion list: [email protected]

Cheers!

More details will follow soon, but if you are interested in helping with the projects or show, feel free to contact me: Jarrod - [email protected]

If you would like to help with the NGALAC (Noisebridge Gaming Archivists Live Arcade Cabinet) , we are having project coordination / build meetings every Friday until Maker Faire, at 20:00, please come. We've ordered several of the components we expect to need and this coming Friday we'll be starting to hood together parts of the gaming and live-streaming systems and see where we're lacking.

If you would like to know more about the NGALAC project please see: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/NGALAC Regular updates on this project will be posted to the wiki and the Noisebridge Discussion list  [email protected]. Cheers!

LINEWORK

The designs of the signs went from sketchbook to AutoCAD. Then from AutoCAD to RDworks (The laser cutter software that came with our laser cutter). 

The important thing is to note that RDworks imports .dxf files and will separate linework by its color. It doesn’t care about CAD layers (I think it behaves similarly with other programs like Illustrator and Inkscape). I used 3 or 4 line colors: one that was intended to cut through the acrylic, one for cutting halfway through the acrylic, and one that defined the bounds of the sign but was not cut at all. On a few sings I used a fourth color to create a shallower hatch across the letters to help them pick up more light.

For suspending the sign I cut holes to pass wire thru in the upper corners of the sign.

The non-cut bounds linework represented the size of the scrap piece of acrylic I was using. This allowed me to use the “frame” function of our laser cutter to align the work piece. The example image below is one of the few signs where I did trim the acrylic to improve the proportions of the sign in relation to the artwork.

For text, I tried to keep it all around 4 inches tall or taller for easy reading across the room, with exceptions. Also

CUTTING

The scrap acrylic I bought was 3/8″ thick; it was the most available in the Tap Plastics scrap bin. The speed and power (S/P) settings I arrived at for our cutter were 1: 7/55 cut through, 2. 30/50 for a ~3/16″ deep cut. It is always a good idea to buy extra material and test your settings first tho. 

The half deep cut would form the graphics of the sign while the cut through would be used for the mounting holes.

I left the protective film on during the cutting and kept most of it on until the signs are mounted and tested as they are handled a lot during this process. I found it best to remove the film off the letters but leave film on the borders and back, non cut, side of the sign.

ELECTRONICS

I looked into setting up the sign system using esp8266/arduino boards with fancy LEDs and came to the conclusion that this would blow the budget, since I was making 12 signs (and which ended up being 14).

After searching for cheaper solutions, I ended up selecting to use an RGB Dimmer to control the whole thing. This also meant using SMD 5050 light strips which are also cheap. It was also easier to set up for me as I am still new to electronics.

This budgetary decision turned out to be an improvement for the project overall. These dials sit next the upstairs entrance to Noisebridge and allow anyone to change the color of the signs in the space. It’s much more fun to show people that they can mess with the sings this way.

Here is the sketch of the layout of the system:

After reading up on the RGB dimmer, it looked like it wouldn’t be able to run all of the signs. I soon learned that people make amplifiers just for this purpose so I split the system so that the signs on the west side and the east side would run off of separate amplifiers. I installed the amplifiers on the walls sort of centrally located to the signs they would serve.

While the dimmer, LEDs, and Amplifiers were cheap, I opted to get good power supplies (life is too short to troubleshoot questionable power supplies). Henner mentioned that Mean Well makes a reliable power supply so I selected their LPV-100-12  8.5A 12v single output switching power supply.

The wiring between the dimmer, amplifiers, and to the locations of the signs is 18AWG 4 conductor stranded speaker wire, in a white insulated jacket to match our ceilings. I had a little trouble tinning the wires, but I may have been using weird flux. I was surprised to find that the wiring and the power supplies ended up costing more than everything else combined; LEDs, acrylic, amplifiers, and so on. 

The wire was run along the ceiling using bridle hooks, as is our custom at Noisebridge, and ended with a terminal block connector on the ceiling above where the sign was intended to be.

The terminal block was a very cheap easy to use connection that would allow me to detach and reattach the wires that would be attached to the LEDs at the signs, with only a screw driver. There are probably other connectors that would be nicer but this one was easy to work with up on a ladder working on the ceiling. (The photo above is from a test setup, the terminal block is up at the ceiling in the final installs)

To suspend the sign I screwed lag eye (or eye lag) screws into the ceiling, with a diver bit made for them, and hooked 3′ lengths of 12 ga. hanging wire on to them. The signs were cut with holes at the upper corners for the hanging wire to bend through to hold the sign.

The 12 ga hanging wire is sturdier than I needed for the signs so one could probably get away with a much thinner wire. However, it did allow me to adjust the positions of the signs after hanging by bending the wire since it is rigid enough to hold its form under the load of the signs.

SIGN ASSEMBLY

I cut the LED strips to match the length of the signs, using the closest cuttable point shown on the strips. The strips I used allow a cut every three LEDs. Then moved on to stripping the ends of the 18 ga stranded speaker wire and attempting to solder them to the SMD 5050 strips.

This   is   probably   impossible.

After it became clear to me that no matter how I tried I wasn’t going fit the wires on the strip, I bought some 22 ga 4 conductor solid wire and used that to connect to the LED strips. I also watched youtube videos to learn how this is done. I put some heat shrink tubing over the connection, but these connections are extremely fragile. Once the wire is attached to them be very careful bending and moving the connection. No matter how careful I was I ended up losing a couple connections during the steps between soldering the wires to the strip and the final install of the sign on the ceiling.

Leave the wire long enough so you will be able to reach the ceiling when the sign is installed. My different wires ended up having different colors inside so I made a chart to remind myself what connects to what.

I removed the protective film on the letters of the sign while working on a table, but left the rest of the film on to keep the sign clean; just avoid touching the letters. For most of this work I wore gloves nearly any time I was touching the signs.

To keep costs down the LED strips are attached to the tops of the signs with ~2″ wide black duct tape. Cut a length of tape slightly longer than the LED strip, the remainder will be folded and cut off.

A very small amount of light bleeds through the duct tape, but it didn’t seem so visible that the signs needed more layers tape or some other solution needing materials that I didn’t have on hand. My LED strips can with an adhesive back covered by a protective strip. I found the LED strips easier to work with if I left this on. Carefully lay the LED strip down on the center of the duct tape and then press the strip down onto the tape.

To prepare the sign for installing the tape, about an inch and a half of the protective film needs to be removed from the edge of the sign where the LEDs will go. If you can, wear gloves. I had good results peeling back about 2 inches and laying it back down on top of a ruler, then using razor blade to cut along the film on top of the ruler so that the ruler acted as the cutting surface.

Tape is really good at sticking to latex or nitrile gloves so the next part is easier without gloves on.

If you laser cut holes in the top of the sign for the hanging wire to pass thru, this is a good time to make sure that the holes fell out of the sign after cutting and pop them out if not.

Once the top of the sign was exposed, I flipped the sign over and gently set the edge on top of the LED strip. 

Hold the sign straight up on top of the LED strip. With the other hand gently pull the tap up and on to the sign. Work from the center, on both sides of the sign, towards the ends. There is a bit of finesse required for this part. Don’t pull too hard on the tape and try to press it on to the surface of the sign evenly to avoid creases. Although no one will likely notice them except us. While you are pulling on the tape you will have some control over the alignment of the LED strip to the edge of the sign. Ideally each LED is centered facing the edge of the sign, but a little bit of an offset doesn’t seem to make a big difference.

The little bits of tape that extend past the ends can be folded over each other to close of the light at the end and any excess can be trimmed with scissors. If the tape ends up covering the holes for your hanging wires, slice them open with a razor blade so that it will be easier to pop the hanging wire thru them later.

TESTING AND INSTALL

After I installed the electronics on the walls and ceiling, I realized I didn’t leave myself a way of testing the signs at my work area. I had to climb the ladder and connect each sign to a connector at the ceiling to test if I’d soldered it correctly. Don’t be like me. Leave yourself a way to test the sign(s) at your workbench.

To install the sign on the ceiling make a 90 degree bend in the hanging wires at the height where you want the holes in the sign to be. Then slide the sign on to the hanging wires one side at a time. Push the sign all the way to the bend and then bend the wire up on the back side. I think it was better to connect the side with the wire connection first. I also would try to hold the wire in place in a way that avoids the solder joint moving or being bent in a sharp angle.

I carefully bent the wire so that it would approach the top edge of the sign horizontally and then I tapped it along the hanging wire, up to the ceiling. 

At the ceiling, I connected the wire up to the terminal block and then wrapped up whatever slack was left in the wire. This could probably be cleaned up better, but I thought I might end up needing to move the signs.

At this point one could go back and clean up the wiring some, either way they turn out pretty nice and don’t have to be too expensive.

Thank you for looking this over. I hope this helps you make your own version, improving upon this one.  Cheers!

Here is a video of our test sign. 

EXHIBITION Day 01: Saturday September 9, 2pm-7:30pm

BALL: Saturday September 9, 7:30pm-midnight

EXHIBITION Day 02: Sunday September 10, noon-10:30pm

Details are at:

https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Nb10

2. The Noisebridge TIME TRAVEL Ball and Fundraiser starts at 7:30pm and will feature:

Live performances by:

- Suyash aka Techillusionist- 

- RichDDT - http://lovetech.org - http://richddt.com

- Moldover - http://moldover.com/

- Doctor Striker - http://doctorstriker.com/

Karaoke

VR

Organizing the library was a huge task:

Stocking our geeky vending machines: 

Lots of parts were organized! 

Lots of dust removed from our woodshop: 

Checking off tasks from our list of tasks: 

Deep cleaning the bathrooms: 

Cleaning and organizing our classrooms: 

Sweeping, mopping, scraping the floors: 

Food for everyone! 

Re-painting many of the walls: 

Making a new RFID power system for our nice laser cutter: 

Lots of bicycles, waiting for their owners to take them home after the Mini-Reboot: 

Some results – Our newly refurbished Fox Lounge: 

Some results – A new look for our library: