RetroPie console + controllers project - 3D printed

Hello Hive community.

It's been a while since I posted anything, but today I decided to share with you one of my latest projects: two arcade controllers to play retro games on a console designed by me running a game emulator (Retropie) on a Raspberry Pi 4.

There were many times, more than 25 years ago, when I chose not to have lunch in order to have some coins to spend in the game room in my area. I spent endless hours playing Metal Slug, Tetris and Bubble Bobble, just to mention a few.
A few years ago, I came across a good deal on an arcade machine and decided to buy it and bring it home. I restored it and, after a few months, sold it at a good profit.

The desire to have something like that again remained and with the pressure exerted by my daughter who loved to play, I decided to do something about it.

For my project, I had several options: make a complete bartop cabinet for two players, make an arcade stick for two players, make two controllers where the console was in one of them or just make two identical controllers and a separate console. It was this last option that I chose.

I ordered a set of SANWA buttons from Amazon that already have the board where everything is connected and that is then connected, via USB, to the Raspberry Pi 4. I took advantage of the design from upperpeninsulaplastics, I made some small changes according to my needs and printed everything in PLA (gray and black, colors chosen by my daughter).

The buttons set comes with the cables to make the essential connections but, although they have LEDs, for them to light up it was necessary to "burn some eyelashes" and make some extra connections on each button with a soldering iron and 2.8mm terminals.

The first part of the project is done and now we just need to get the Raspberry Pi 4 to continue and make the console.

Stay tuned to see how it goes. By the way, what do you think of the design I created for the console?