I put my Picade Console together and am happy with the result.
Looking at the instructions and video for assembling the full Picade was helpful, but of course there are differences.
I have an RPi 2B with RetroPie 3.0 inside the console.
For now I am using my HdmiPi (from Kickstarter) as my display and force the sound output to the 3.5 mm jack on the Pi which is connected to the Picade Board (Leonardo) and the built-in speaker.
One difference with the full Picade is that there is only one speaker (connected to the left channel), so no stereo sound when using the console speaker.
A few comments in no particular order:
With a Pi 2B you cannot use a long WiFi USB adapter (like the official Raspberry Pi one) since it interferes with the speaker. Using a short one (like the Edimax) works fine. Note that also the USB cable connector needs room.
The USB and the audio cable connecting the Pi and the Picade board are very long. Since there is not so much room inside the console it is difficult to route them. Here the included cable ties and mounts help. Shorter cables for the console version would make life easier.
It is important to check all the screw terminals on the Picade board when you have all the cables inside. In my case 2 wires had loosened and I had to reconnect them.
Not all the bolts followed the full Picade instructions. Used the 12mm M3 bolts for both the door clasp and catch.
The longer 14mm M3 bolts were needed to mount the Picade board.
The 2 longest M4 bolts (22mm) were used to attach the top with buttons and joystick to the base box.
All in all a very nice kit, but specific console instructions would be helpful.
I’ve just assembled my Picade Console and have pretty much the same experience and feedback.
If the case was a little bigger then it would make the contents feel less crowded and squashed and that would probably make a big difference to a klutz like me who really isn’t very good at routing cables.
Some console-specific instruction would be good although I saw another thread where you said that they were on their way although the only thing I really struggled with was a really stupid thing… putting the hinge on properly so that the back door fits nicely.
It would be really nice if the USB ports were more accessible or had more space next to them.
Finally, and this isn’t specific to the Console, I’d love to have had microswitches buttons to really remind me on my old C64 and Amiga joysticks. I’m not sure if they are still made by anyone or could be retrofitted but if I can find some and they can be I will in a heartbeat.
Just about finished by mini-ITX based build and thought I’d share my experience during the build process.
Others have commented on the build process, I found it pretty straight forward, all the holes and edges lined up (rare for kits in my experience) so big tick on quality control from me. My only complaint is that scratching the powder coating was a little too easy when I slipped with my screwdriver, but a spot of paint soon touched it up and you can’t tell.
I’ve hung a mini-ITX motherboard with a pico-PSU and an external DC power brick. So I’m going to make some holes on the side to take a PC power button (illuminated) and the DC jack and fit a reset button inside the case to handle the PC gubbins. I’ll also drill out some holes to pass my USB ports out so I can connect a dual shock. I managed to find some spare 5V pins from USB headers to drive the display so I have a nice one button / one power supply solution.
I also need to work out cable management, the Picade buttons are easy enough to tie together but I really need to better manage my PC wiring (mini-ITX boards are a mess for power connectors all over the place) and figure out how to mount my SSD (I’ve currently got it resting on the bottom of the case!)
Software wise, I’ve settled on Retroarch and Emulation station running on Win 7 64-bit, and I’m currently getting all my speccy games and the like installed and set up. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the ability to have a few mappings in the Picade board would be really useful so I hope that comes to pass.
Overall, it’s been a great experience and the end effect is excellent. Although now I’ve got it running, that bezel is begging me to get a bigger screen in there…
Oh, man. I’m having a lot of problems with the hinge in mine. Looks like I got a defective one: the distance between the holes in the metal don’t match the distance between holes in the wood.
I’m thinking of redrill the metal to fixit. Can you share a photo of your assembled hinge so I can check that I’m not doing something wrong before going the redrill way?
We have no idea why, but very, very few of the hinges we’re buying in have exactly this problem. The hole spacing is quite significantly off, enough to make them impossible to install.
I recently received a Picade for Christmas and I can say that I am quite pleased with the product. It was a fairly simple build process and the video tutorial was very helpful!
My build experience was similar to your own and I thought that I would share a solution to one of the issues that we both experienced as I also found that the usb ports of the raspberry pi 2 was too close to the speaker to fit more usb devices.
Ultimately I think it would be better if the speaker was shifted a little further away from the space for the raspberry pi. It looks like there would be plenty of room to do so.
I also used the edimax WiFi USB adapter as there is little room inside for a standard size adapter.
I intend to find a place for a simple reset button as well.
The only small criticism might be that I would have preferred micro switch buttons but I can always upgrade them in the future.
Thanks to the help of forum members, I was finally able to run my picade like a charm!
Just got my Picade last week, and thanks to the video, assembly was pretty much on the nose.
Every single part was of easy assembly, and took about 3 hours from start to finish!
However, I’m having lots of issues trying to get it to work… And find little to no detailed instructions on how to properly setup the software.
I can’t seem to make it work on the 8" standard screen from the kit, and can’t use sound on it either. I do know that the board seems to be working, since I was able to use it connected to my hdmi tvs, with the arcade stick and buttons working on spot with retropie 3.5.
I did found the suggestions on the reviews to edit the config.txt, but not sure if I added the extra lines properly (I’m somewhat tech savvy, but definitely not used to using code).
In any case, it didn’t work… And I can’t figure out why. I’m pretty sure that it’s not from the connections, as I followed your instructions on the nose, and double checked all the connections before inserting the last screws in the build.
Any light you can share would be greatly appreciated…