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So I want to make my own version of the iCade Any thoughts on how I go about doing the hardware side? Has anyone done an unofficial version of this? I'm thinking a combination of:

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

PeterJ
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mad_z
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  • To clarify-- do you mean you want to build the case the iPad sits in, or do you want to build the entire system, including the display? – pingswept Apr 28 '10 at 16:17

2 Answers2

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The main problem I see is that wouldn't the arcade games on the iPad would have to be specifically coded to accept external inputs? Which means not only will you be building the hardware, you'll have to write the software too. You might want to consider using something else than the iPad that runs a standard OS that you can run something like MAME on.

davr
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The tricky part here is likely the software. In addition to being able to put together the hardware, you'll need to have some knowledge of writing software for the iPad.

You'll need to make sure you can:

  • Put together the joystick, buttons, and microcontroller to present the joystick/button data to the iPad via the dock port.
  • Use an API to get the button presses / joystick movements from the external hardware.
  • Take the output of that API as input into arcade software.

davr's recommendation of MAME is likely a good place to start, but I don't know about MAME's support for hardware like the iPad. Considering that there is already a iPhone app for MAME (although its level of operation seems minimal/in-beta right now), there is a good bet you'll get it to work with some effort (at least for Pacman, Qbert); I believe the iPad supports iPhone OS apps. Since the MAME port appears to be open-source, you could integrate your joystick/button data through some custom code modules that you've written yourself.

J. Polfer
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