My Pinball Arcade Cabinet (iPinCade)

Hey all, I wanted to share some pics my personal The Pinball Arcade Mini Pinball Cabinet, which I named TPA iPinCade. It's my tribute to Farsight Studios and The Pinball Arcade. Thank you Farsight for releasing such an awesome product that brings back memories of some of my pinball faves. And thank you for adding iCade support, which was the reason why I decided to purchase an iPad and TPA to make this project. Now, both my full-sized virtual pinball cabinet and I are anxiously awaiting for the PC version to arrive soon! And of course, many thanks to the informative digitalpinballfans.com for such a great site.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, here is some info about my mini cab:
I took dimensions of an actual pinball cabinet and reduced the size proportionally. I made my cab a little steeper for a better viewing angle. In addition, I widened the cabinet considerably for comfort (noticed the backglass looks more rectangular than a real cab). It's built from laminated shelving, plexiglass in front of the backbox artwork, aluminum side rails from Menards (saved big money by not using real pinball rails) and a real lockdown bar, which was cut down, epoxied and sanded to look like brushed steel. I also cut out a plastic bezel to conceal the iPad and the rubber/foam that surround it. For the side art, I printed out the TPA logos onto an adhesive-backed stock and applied Polycrylic coating. The backglass image was the quick result of manipulating online logos and images using Illustrator and Photoshop.

All of the buttons are interfaced to the iCade encoder. I installed leaf pushbuttons for the flippers and left/right nudge, and Happs' illuminated buttons for start and ball launcher. I wanted the little bezel in the front face to look like a mini coin door--it has three mini buttons for pause and special buttons. I hope Farsight will add front nudge to an iCade button soon. The backbox is backlit by battery-powered LED lights, and I added fake metal backbox hinges to help make the cab look more authentic. I may replace the backbox image with a digital photo frame or tablet so it could display the actual tables' backglasses.

The entire project took me a lot longer than I expected, especially since I used hand saws to cut most of the pieces. I'm not sure how long it took to complete but I almost forgot what my wife looked like, which was somewhat of a good thing. If anyone has questions, comments or suggestions, please share. Happy TPA gaming everyone!

Thats pretty slick! AWESOME job

Love it.

This is your wife -- what exactly did you mean with that remark?

Seriously, your cab is freaking awesome!

Hahahahaha, that wife remark made my day, ;-).

But guys, thisis what i am talking about, awsome mate. And that photo frame is a fantastic idea.

I am pretty sure i want that.

Can you please make a youtube video of playing on this virtual pin?

Dutch Pinball ball said:

Hahahahaha, that wife remark made my day, ;-).

But guys, thisis what i am talking about, awsome mate. And that photo frame is a fantastic idea.

I am pretty sure i want that.

Can you please make a youtube video of playing on this virtual pin?

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Thanks all...makes me feel better for all the time (and funds) I've invested on it.

Dutch, the thing about the photo frame, I believe most of them are ac-powered only. I think a cheap tablet should do the job well, especially since they run on rechargeable batteries. Although it probably should not have glass in front of it so you can swipe through the backglass pics.

Sorry but I currently can't make a video of me playing it since my iPad is the only digital video recording device I have. I used it to take all of these pics except the last, poor-quality pic from my phone. I will ask my friend if I could borrow his later.

and please put together some instructions on instructables or somewhere that anyone that is so inclined could DIY this

If you could find the right sized digital photo frame, that might be the more economical way to go for the backglass.

That is one sweet setup. Very pro looking.

That's amazing. You know what would be perfect? If Farsight could do that thing some other apps do and link iOS devices together, use an iPhone or iPad mini or something, have that as a DMD (and maybe backglass) server. At least, an iPhone (5 or 4S) would be almost the perfect size to mount in there.

Nice work! Very impressive, looks solid as well. Now I want one myself so I can sit a tiny little virtual pinball machine on my lap to play while watching TV

Fungi said:

If you could find the right sized digital photo frame, that might be the more economical way to go for the backglass.

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I've actually seen some used tablets for pretty cheap $40+). And a tablet wouldn't need to be too speedy since it'd only serve as a photo viewer. Plus, battery-operated digital photo frames are pretty hard to find.

Shaneus said:

That's amazing. You know what would be perfect? If Farsight could do that thing some other apps do and link iOS devices together, use an iPhone or iPad mini or something, have that as a DMD (and maybe backglass) server. At least, an iPhone (5 or 4S) would be almost the perfect size to mount in there.

Yes, that would be awesome to have the DMD on an iPhone. Then the playfield could fill the entire iPad. I wonder if that would slow down the game's performance. Farsight should also consider hiding the button icons (view, pause/menu, special button, launch).

Nice work! Very impressive, looks solid as well. Now I want one myself so I can sit a tiny little virtual pinball machine on my lap to play while watching TV

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Thanks! And, with iCade's bluetooth and iPad's hdmi out, perhaps we could view it on televisions.

The HDMI out of an iPad doesn't work with TPA. It seriously screws with the frame rate, which screws with the physics in the game.

This was nearly identical to what I was hoping to build, except I was looking for some cheap non-powered speakers that I could plug into the iPad to improve the sound. I'm still looking for those...

I'm very impressed!

Love the wife comment too

Gord Lacey said:

The HDMI out of an iPad doesn't work with TPA. It seriously screws with the frame rate, which screws with the physics in the game.

That's good to know, thanks. Have you tried playing videos with the iPad? If that works well, I'll probably still get the adapter.

This was nearly identical to what I was hoping to build, except I was looking for some cheap non-powered speakers that I could plug into the iPad to improve the sound. I'm still looking for those...

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How about bluetooth speakers? I was originally going to make a DMD and speaker panel under the backglass, but after I widened the cab design, I thought it'd look strange.

Jeff Strong said:

I'm very impressed!

Love the wife comment too

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Thanks for the kudos Jeff, as well as for all of your info and interviews you've shared with us!

Looks really great, very impressive! This is what I had envisioned but I never thought of adding more width to it. How wide is it?

Codeena said:

How about bluetooth speakers? I was originally going to make a DMD and speaker panel under the backglass, but after I widened the cab design, I thought it'd look strange.

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I thought it wasn't possible to connect two bluetooth devices at the same time. I just tried connecting my iCade and Jambox bluetooth speaker and both work. TPA sounds great with the external speaker.

Excellent stuff. Shame the backglass decal couldn't be swapped out with ease as then you could have printed out all the different tables backglasses and just swapped them out depending on what able you were playing

This thing should be on the front page of the new Farsight home page (when they get round to updating it)

What a beauty! A piece of true art. Well done

Wow, looks amazing! I'll take it, how much?

You could make a small fortune producing these.