my first Bubble-bobble bartop

carlhungus74

Hello,

I have finally finished my very first bartop, with a bubble bobble theme.
Of course Retropie inside, with a poorly customized (by me) emulationstation theme :)
It contains, among other things, a 19" HP monitor, 2 seimitsu joysticks and buttons... 2x10w speakers, and subwoofer.
I still wait for the 2 dustwashers.

Hope you like it.

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Kids already likes it :)
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pjft

Congrats, and great choice!

@AndersHP there's 3 of us now with a Bubble Bobble cabinet :)

@carlhungus74 how old are they? Mine don't play a lot yet - I mean, they can waggle the joystick and push some buttons, but nothing very structured yet.

Thanks for sharing!

carlhungus74

@pjft Thanks.
My kids on the pictures are 7 and 10. Enough for simple games, apparently. They loves to play simple games for the moment (bubl, pang, frogger, pacman and so on...even street fighter III). Of course, they are frustrated with "quick and sudden death" games like ghost&goblins..

My 2 girls (5 and 7) can play bubble bobble with lot of enjoyment. They even can reach the end (by using a lot of credits, I must admit)... :)

pjft

@carlhungus74 Ah, great, so there's still hope on my end :D

My 3 and 5 year olds like to play (out of all things) the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games (yup, that's true @TMNTturtlguy :) ). While the 5-year-old kind of has a good feel for how to control the game, the 3 year old is there just for the fun. Mostly button mashing and moving the joystick somewhere. It's credit feeding all the way. :)

Well done on the cabinet, looks great. I ended up not putting some proper speakers on mine yet - I have a pair of Logitech speakers there, with sticky tape, but it's not ideal. It's serviceable, but I imagine I probably should fix that one day.

carlhungus74

@pjft said in my first Bubble-bobble bartop:

@carlhungus74 Ah, great, so there's still hope on my end :D

I have a pair of Logitech speakers there, with sticky tape, but it's not ideal. It's serviceable, but I imagine I probably should fix that one day.

I have put 2 visaton speakers and a 2.1 12V amplifier (same as in cars, I think). Unfortunately, result is not very satisfying, because there is lot of "background noise" and interferences. Try to limit them, but the analog audio of the rpi seems very "poor"... With sometimes some "cracks & pops" when navigating in menus, or rebooting.
Annoying, but the overall quality is great, and the volume can be "impressive" for such a small bartop..
Maybe I will try to upgrade the "sound" side in a near future.

pjft

@carlhungus74 My audio comes from the monitor, as I found that the one from the Pi wasn't great either.

I believe I ran into static as well at some point, and the solution was to use separate power sources...? I don't quite recall exactly, but I remember that sharing the same USB or power source resulted in some static of sorts? Maybe I was powering the speakers with the Pi's USB as well, and that was the issue - don't quite remember, unfortunately.

Best of luck!

cyperghost

@carlhungus74 I made very good experience with these speakers from Amazon. They are USB powered but likely look better outside the cabinet ;)

Thorr69

Which theme did you use for this? (I know it's modified, but I would like to know what theme you started with.) I really like the layout.

carlhungus74

@pjft said in my first Bubble-bobble bartop:

@carlhungus74 My audio comes from the monitor, as I found that the one from the Pi wasn't great either.

I believe I ran into static as well at some point, and the solution was to use separate power sources...? I don't quite recall exactly, but I remember that sharing the same USB or power source resulted in some static of sorts? Maybe I was powering the speakers with the Pi's USB as well, and that was the issue - don't quite remember, unfortunately.

Best of luck!

Unfortunately, cannot retrieve the digital sound from the pi hdmi, as my "old" monitor is VGA/DVI only.
The amplifier and pi are not on the same power supply (dedicated 12v power supply for the amplifier)., but background noise is still here. Will try to use "shielded" cable between pi and amplifier.

carlhungus74

@Thorr69 said in my first Bubble-bobble bartop:

Which theme did you use for this? (I know it's modified, but I would like to know what theme you started with.) I really like the layout.

Glad you like it. Can't remember which theme I modify. Will check this. If you want, I can send you my modified theme.

AndersHP

@carlhungus74
Great looking arcade! Fun to see another Bubble Bobble build, and the white buttons looks great!!
Which Seimitsu buttons is it, exactly?

About the static, I remember from my car-audio tweaking days, that wrapping the signal cable in tinfoil could solve some issues.

That being said, I have absolutely no static issues, and I'm using the HDMI out instead of the 3,5 mm jack. Have you tried this?

Thorr69

@AndersHP He answered that already -

@carlhungus74 said in my first Bubble-bobble bartop:

Unfortunately, cannot retrieve the digital sound from the pi hdmi, as my "old" monitor is VGA/DVI only.

AndersHP

@Thorr69 My monitor is CGA/DVI only also, got me one of these, works great:

HDMI to VGA/jack

carlhungus74

@AndersHP said in my first Bubble-bobble bartop:

@Thorr69 My monitor is CGA/DVI only also, got me one of these, works great:

HDMI to VGA/jack

Thanks for the advice. Will try this. It couldn't be worse than the built-in analog jack of the pi :)

carlhungus74

@AndersHP said in my first Bubble-bobble bartop:

@carlhungus74
Great looking arcade! Fun to see another Bubble Bobble build, and the white buttons looks great!!
Which Seimitsu buttons is it, exactly?

Buttons are PS-14-GN.
Seimitsu PS-14-GN
Very happy with them.