Building the AR Cabinet: A Comprehensive Guide

To build the AR cabinet, I started by planning out the layout and design. I wanted to create a cabinet that would house an LED light panel, a Raspberry Pi, and other electronics. I decided to use a wooden cabinet as the base of the project, which required me to cut and shape the wood to fit my design specifications. The cabinet had to be long enough to accommodate the length of the screen and wide enough to provide adequate space for the components.

The next step was to install the LED light panel. I used a series of strips with JST connectors that would connect the LEDs to the Arduino board. To ensure reliable connections, I also added jumpers between each strip and between all the 5V terminals. This allowed me to test the circuit before moving on to other components. Testing the LED light panel revealed that it was super bright for ambient lighting.

For the back of the cabinet, I followed a similar process as the front, but with fewer strips. I started at the top to minimize extra wire hanging around and used hot glue to secure the connections in place. The Light Panel was attached using adhesive, and I also glued the monitor in place along the top and bottom. Although the adhesive wasn't dry yet, it held everything in place.

The final step for the cabinet was adding doors to the front section. I followed the instructions provided with the hinge, marking the spot where I needed to drill holes. Using a forcer bit, I drilled through the face of the cabinet from the back, not from the side. The overlay hinges were easy to install, and I used two screws per hinge to secure them in place.

With the doors installed, I moved on to installing the electronics. Drilling large holes with a forcer bit allowed me to hide the motion sensor and other components. I drilled down through the center of the control box using a small drill bit to create a hole that would accept the spade bit from the bottom. The sensor dropped right in, and I also had to drill a hole near the edge for the mode switch.

Hot glue was used to hold both the motion sensor and the mode switch in place, and their wires were fed through an access hole I added to the back of the cabinet. The control panel was set in place, and all its wires were run through the holes as well. Power and HDMI cables were plugged into the Raspberry Pi, which was then set up and slid into the monitor.

Magnetic catches were used to keep the side panel shut, with one attached to the inside of the cabinet and two underneath the control board for added security. The only modification I made to the electronics was using a single relay instead of the Shield, as it powered the extension cord.

To make the cabinet mobile, I installed four furniture sliders on its bottom, which allowed me to slide it around easily without visible marks from the weight distribution. These sliders were hidden by attaching them to the underside of the machine and pushing in so that they wouldn't be seen.

Throughout this project, I encountered several questions and concerns from viewers, many of which will be addressed in a follow-up video. The question of how to build a cabinet like this has been a common inquiry, and it's something that can be learned by following plans available on my website. If you're interested in building your own AR cabinet, there are detailed guides and instructions available.

The process of building the AR cabinet involved careful planning, execution, and testing. It was a long-term project that required patience and attention to detail. The end result is a functional cabinet with a working LED light panel, Raspberry Pi, and motion sensor, making it an ideal setup for anyone looking to create their own augmented reality system.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today we're going to finish the arcade cabinet this is part three of this project if you've not seen Parts one and two be sure to go watch those they explain how I built the cabinet and put on all the graphics now we're going to put in the electronics to power the cabinet I got an extension cord some wire a switch receptacle and some boxes I cut off the female end of the extension cord and then stripped off the outer insulation I also stripped off the insulation from each one of the inside wires I measured the back of this remodel box and then drew a rectangle to match on the back of the arcade cabinet I made this in a place to where it wouldn't run into any of the drawers that were on the inside I drilled some holes in the corner and then use a jigsaw to cut out this rectangle this box will hold the switch I pushed it in place and then turned the screws to actually lock it in I used a different type of box up top that was nailed into the top of the cabinet I drilled a hole in the bottom and fed the extension cord through and the other end of that came out through the switch box I fed some wire through the switch box up into the top box this is where the receptacle is going to go I stripped off the end of that and just wired up a simple receptacle now I'm not an electrician so make sure you do things in the correct way based on where you live once this was wired up I screwed it back into the box and then connected the other end to the wire to the extension cord and the switch the white wires go together the green wires go together on ground on the switch and then the black wires go to the Brass terminals I chose a black switch and a black cover plate for this just so it would blend in with the back of the machine this is going to act as the main power for the entire cabinet I plugged in a lamp just to make sure everything worked all right we've got power going to the cabinet now and a switch to turn the whole cabinet on and off that power is going to feed several things the Raspberry Pi and the monitor the buttons the speakers and an Arduino and some lights we're going to talk about those now I'm not going to talk about setting up the Raspberry Pi or the buttons because I already did a video on all that stuff and if you want to get up and running and actually get the system working to play games on you can check that video out here I'll have it linked and I'll have it in the description down below be sure to go check that out because that's kind of an important part of building an arcade with the Arduino stuff it's kind of hard for me to show it to you in the building process I want to show you all the parts that are involved and explain what they do cuz it'll be really hard for me to explain what things are as I'm actually installing it into the box I understand that this is very messy and hard to look at the base of it is an Arduino Uno down here with a relay shield on top of it the relay Shield allows you to control higher voltage Electronics with a 5volt Arduino so the power to the Appliance is actually running through the relay Shield not through the Arduino there's just a control back and forth between these two things I've got two spools of LEDs here and they represent different things one represents the Marquee because it's going to be colored separately from the other the other spool represents the lights that go on the back of the machine and they'll give you kind of a backl against the wall to give an ambient look we got a mode switch here and this switch is going to be mounted on the outside of the machine and it will tell the machine to be reactive as people walk up to it or to be stationary in stationary everything is just on the other position is going to be sensor mode and that means the lights are only going to turn on when the sensor is triggered so the sensor that runs all this is a PR sensor and basically it's a human sensor that can tell a human motion and so it's measuring whether motion is happening or not happening and it tells everything else to work accordingly so when it sees motion happen it's going to fade these lights up and then turn on some other lights once motion has stopped for certain amount of time it fades these lights down and then turns those other lights off these are the other lights that are going to be controlled just through the relay so I have a lamp here which is just going to represent the screen it's going to be turned on and off with the relay and then the buttons have LEDs in them and those LEDs will be turned on and off with the relay as well there's a lot of power happening here as well this one right here is actually 5 volts powering both of the sets of LEDs they're powering them directly even though they are controlled by the Arduino the Arduino has its own power source this extens cord here is just an example of what will eventually be in place but for now this plugs in the wall and then the relay controls what actually gets through so our lamp or our Monitor and our buttons are going to be plugged in here so that they get turned on and off with the relay now the other end of this the Arduino and the LEDs all get plugged in to constant power just for the sake of showing that everything works as it should I've got a few things set up that I'm going to change when it goes in the final machine for now when it's in static mode meaning that the sensor is not doing anything these are going to show up red and these are going to turn on immediately and then in sensor mode these are going to be blue and white and you'll see them Fade up when the sensor is activated then these will turn on when the sensor sees no motion for a while they're going to fade down and then these will turn off so let's give it a shot we'll plug in the Arduino and it's in static mode so everything comes right on and these are red eventually they'll be white or blue or something so now I'm going to put it into sensor mode and sometimes it takes a few seconds for it to switch all right so I'm going to move my hand those should Fade up and that should come on there you go now I'm going to move my hand away from the sensor so now that there's no movement in just a second those are going to fade down and that's going to turn off so there you go it works as it should it's just really messy so now before I put it in the machine I'm going to move all this stuff to a little circuit board just to clean it up and make it easier to move around and make it permanent next I had to take the strip of LEDs and turn it into a panel for the Marquee I cut it down into strips that would fit across the panel and peeled off the adhesive back when you put these back in place you have to do it in the right order they are directional in fact there's a little arrow on the Strip itself so I went from left to right and then right to left left to right and went zigzag back and forth when you cut strips like this you cut along a point that has connections on both sides of it so that you can reconnect the strips and in this case I had to connect the end of one to the beginning of the other I did this with some three conductor wire just making sure to get 5V to 5vt data to data and ground to ground between each strip I also did a jumper between all the 5vt terminals because I didn't want voltage to drop over such a long distance I tested it out and the fade up and down was really nice and it's super bright for the ambient lighting I did basically the same thing on the back but I only did three strips I started it at the top so that the connection wires were pretty close to the Arduino and I wouldn't have any extra wire hanging around I put down strips on both sides and then hot glued the ends in case the adhesive wasn't quite strong enough I used some glue to hold the Light Panel in place along the top and the bottom and I was too impatient for it to dry so I just use some tape to hold it up there I actually still have the tape in place there's no real reason to move it the last thing to do to the cabinet itself was to add doors to the front section I followed the instructions that came with the hinge to find the place where I should drill the hole I marked it with my ice pick and then drilled with a forcer bit but not all the way through the face these are overlay hinges and they go in from the back of the door not from the side I set them in place and then use the speed Square to Square them to the outside edges it's really important that two hinges are parallel to each other so that they can swing freely I screwed each one of these in with two screws and did the exact same thing on the opposite door these are concealed hinges so you can't see them when the door is closed you just attach them to the inside of the face frame which makes them really easy to add to any cabinet that you build I was ready to install the electronics so I drilled some large holes with a forcer bit on the back of the control box behind the Monitor and up top near the power I did large holes cuz I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to have to go where I wanted to hide the motion sensor so you could couldn't see it but it could see you so on the inside of the control box I drilled down with a forcer bit but not all the way through in the center of that point I went all the way through with a small drill bit and it came up with a spade bit from the bottom to make the correct size hole the sensor just dropped right in I also had to drill a hole for the mode switch near the edge I used some hot glue to hold both of these things in place and then fed their wires through the access hole that I had added in the back I set the control panel in place and put all of its wires through the holes as well I plugged the controls power and the HDMI ey into the Raspberry Pi set it in place and slid on the monitor I also put a keyboard in there for good measure I got some basic magnetic catches to keep the side panel shut I painted in black and screwed one to the inside of the cabinet I put on the plate and press the door against it it leaves a little Mark which tells you where to screw it in that one held all right but I also added two of them underneath the control board I moved all the electronics up top and plugged everything in and the only real change I made was to use a single relay instead of The Shield it's powering the extension cord everything constant is in the power strip all right let's try it out one thing I forgot to mention in the video is how I'm actually moving this thing around I've got it sitting on four furniture sliders just like this they have a plastic bottom and a foam top they're sitting underneath the machine pushed in so you can't see them from the outside but there's four of them and they carry plenty of weight making it really easy to slide this thing around on hardwood or on carpet there have been a lot of the same questions come up over and over about this project so if you have a question leave it in the comments below I'm going to try to do a follow-up video about the cabinet here pretty soon to answer some of those questions but like I've told you in the past I can't really give you a time or a cost estimate because this thing's been a long-term project and I haven't kept track of that stuff if you've missed the earlier parts of this project you should check out those videos here if you want to see what I'm working on in between these videos you can always follow me on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook if you want to make your own cabinet like this I've got plans available for it on my website and by buying those plans it helps support these videos and I really appreciate that so that's it for this project guys the AR cabinet is finished I'm going to go play it thanks for watching I'll see you next timehey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today we're going to finish the arcade cabinet this is part three of this project if you've not seen Parts one and two be sure to go watch those they explain how I built the cabinet and put on all the graphics now we're going to put in the electronics to power the cabinet I got an extension cord some wire a switch receptacle and some boxes I cut off the female end of the extension cord and then stripped off the outer insulation I also stripped off the insulation from each one of the inside wires I measured the back of this remodel box and then drew a rectangle to match on the back of the arcade cabinet I made this in a place to where it wouldn't run into any of the drawers that were on the inside I drilled some holes in the corner and then use a jigsaw to cut out this rectangle this box will hold the switch I pushed it in place and then turned the screws to actually lock it in I used a different type of box up top that was nailed into the top of the cabinet I drilled a hole in the bottom and fed the extension cord through and the other end of that came out through the switch box I fed some wire through the switch box up into the top box this is where the receptacle is going to go I stripped off the end of that and just wired up a simple receptacle now I'm not an electrician so make sure you do things in the correct way based on where you live once this was wired up I screwed it back into the box and then connected the other end to the wire to the extension cord and the switch the white wires go together the green wires go together on ground on the switch and then the black wires go to the Brass terminals I chose a black switch and a black cover plate for this just so it would blend in with the back of the machine this is going to act as the main power for the entire cabinet I plugged in a lamp just to make sure everything worked all right we've got power going to the cabinet now and a switch to turn the whole cabinet on and off that power is going to feed several things the Raspberry Pi and the monitor the buttons the speakers and an Arduino and some lights we're going to talk about those now I'm not going to talk about setting up the Raspberry Pi or the buttons because I already did a video on all that stuff and if you want to get up and running and actually get the system working to play games on you can check that video out here I'll have it linked and I'll have it in the description down below be sure to go check that out because that's kind of an important part of building an arcade with the Arduino stuff it's kind of hard for me to show it to you in the building process I want to show you all the parts that are involved and explain what they do cuz it'll be really hard for me to explain what things are as I'm actually installing it into the box I understand that this is very messy and hard to look at the base of it is an Arduino Uno down here with a relay shield on top of it the relay Shield allows you to control higher voltage Electronics with a 5volt Arduino so the power to the Appliance is actually running through the relay Shield not through the Arduino there's just a control back and forth between these two things I've got two spools of LEDs here and they represent different things one represents the Marquee because it's going to be colored separately from the other the other spool represents the lights that go on the back of the machine and they'll give you kind of a backl against the wall to give an ambient look we got a mode switch here and this switch is going to be mounted on the outside of the machine and it will tell the machine to be reactive as people walk up to it or to be stationary in stationary everything is just on the other position is going to be sensor mode and that means the lights are only going to turn on when the sensor is triggered so the sensor that runs all this is a PR sensor and basically it's a human sensor that can tell a human motion and so it's measuring whether motion is happening or not happening and it tells everything else to work accordingly so when it sees motion happen it's going to fade these lights up and then turn on some other lights once motion has stopped for certain amount of time it fades these lights down and then turns those other lights off these are the other lights that are going to be controlled just through the relay so I have a lamp here which is just going to represent the screen it's going to be turned on and off with the relay and then the buttons have LEDs in them and those LEDs will be turned on and off with the relay as well there's a lot of power happening here as well this one right here is actually 5 volts powering both of the sets of LEDs they're powering them directly even though they are controlled by the Arduino the Arduino has its own power source this extens cord here is just an example of what will eventually be in place but for now this plugs in the wall and then the relay controls what actually gets through so our lamp or our Monitor and our buttons are going to be plugged in here so that they get turned on and off with the relay now the other end of this the Arduino and the LEDs all get plugged in to constant power just for the sake of showing that everything works as it should I've got a few things set up that I'm going to change when it goes in the final machine for now when it's in static mode meaning that the sensor is not doing anything these are going to show up red and these are going to turn on immediately and then in sensor mode these are going to be blue and white and you'll see them Fade up when the sensor is activated then these will turn on when the sensor sees no motion for a while they're going to fade down and then these will turn off so let's give it a shot we'll plug in the Arduino and it's in static mode so everything comes right on and these are red eventually they'll be white or blue or something so now I'm going to put it into sensor mode and sometimes it takes a few seconds for it to switch all right so I'm going to move my hand those should Fade up and that should come on there you go now I'm going to move my hand away from the sensor so now that there's no movement in just a second those are going to fade down and that's going to turn off so there you go it works as it should it's just really messy so now before I put it in the machine I'm going to move all this stuff to a little circuit board just to clean it up and make it easier to move around and make it permanent next I had to take the strip of LEDs and turn it into a panel for the Marquee I cut it down into strips that would fit across the panel and peeled off the adhesive back when you put these back in place you have to do it in the right order they are directional in fact there's a little arrow on the Strip itself so I went from left to right and then right to left left to right and went zigzag back and forth when you cut strips like this you cut along a point that has connections on both sides of it so that you can reconnect the strips and in this case I had to connect the end of one to the beginning of the other I did this with some three conductor wire just making sure to get 5V to 5vt data to data and ground to ground between each strip I also did a jumper between all the 5vt terminals because I didn't want voltage to drop over such a long distance I tested it out and the fade up and down was really nice and it's super bright for the ambient lighting I did basically the same thing on the back but I only did three strips I started it at the top so that the connection wires were pretty close to the Arduino and I wouldn't have any extra wire hanging around I put down strips on both sides and then hot glued the ends in case the adhesive wasn't quite strong enough I used some glue to hold the Light Panel in place along the top and the bottom and I was too impatient for it to dry so I just use some tape to hold it up there I actually still have the tape in place there's no real reason to move it the last thing to do to the cabinet itself was to add doors to the front section I followed the instructions that came with the hinge to find the place where I should drill the hole I marked it with my ice pick and then drilled with a forcer bit but not all the way through the face these are overlay hinges and they go in from the back of the door not from the side I set them in place and then use the speed Square to Square them to the outside edges it's really important that two hinges are parallel to each other so that they can swing freely I screwed each one of these in with two screws and did the exact same thing on the opposite door these are concealed hinges so you can't see them when the door is closed you just attach them to the inside of the face frame which makes them really easy to add to any cabinet that you build I was ready to install the electronics so I drilled some large holes with a forcer bit on the back of the control box behind the Monitor and up top near the power I did large holes cuz I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to have to go where I wanted to hide the motion sensor so you could couldn't see it but it could see you so on the inside of the control box I drilled down with a forcer bit but not all the way through in the center of that point I went all the way through with a small drill bit and it came up with a spade bit from the bottom to make the correct size hole the sensor just dropped right in I also had to drill a hole for the mode switch near the edge I used some hot glue to hold both of these things in place and then fed their wires through the access hole that I had added in the back I set the control panel in place and put all of its wires through the holes as well I plugged the controls power and the HDMI ey into the Raspberry Pi set it in place and slid on the monitor I also put a keyboard in there for good measure I got some basic magnetic catches to keep the side panel shut I painted in black and screwed one to the inside of the cabinet I put on the plate and press the door against it it leaves a little Mark which tells you where to screw it in that one held all right but I also added two of them underneath the control board I moved all the electronics up top and plugged everything in and the only real change I made was to use a single relay instead of The Shield it's powering the extension cord everything constant is in the power strip all right let's try it out one thing I forgot to mention in the video is how I'm actually moving this thing around I've got it sitting on four furniture sliders just like this they have a plastic bottom and a foam top they're sitting underneath the machine pushed in so you can't see them from the outside but there's four of them and they carry plenty of weight making it really easy to slide this thing around on hardwood or on carpet there have been a lot of the same questions come up over and over about this project so if you have a question leave it in the comments below I'm going to try to do a follow-up video about the cabinet here pretty soon to answer some of those questions but like I've told you in the past I can't really give you a time or a cost estimate because this thing's been a long-term project and I haven't kept track of that stuff if you've missed the earlier parts of this project you should check out those videos here if you want to see what I'm working on in between these videos you can always follow me on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook if you want to make your own cabinet like this I've got plans available for it on my website and by buying those plans it helps support these videos and I really appreciate that so that's it for this project guys the AR cabinet is finished I'm going to go play it thanks for watching I'll see you next time\n"