Assembling Picade Max (2/4)

This tutorial will help you assemble Picade Max. This is a bit of a mammoth guide, so we'll be splitting it into several parts.

Part 1

Part 2 <- you are here

Part 3

Part 4

Mounting the Raspberry Pi

In this guide, we'll be installing a Raspberry Pi inside our Picade Max. You may have noticed though, that there are a lot of other mounting holes in panel A, so if you want to mount a mini PC or other hardware inside the cabinet instead, that should be possible. Scroll down to Appendix A at the end of this article for some suggestions!

We'll be using a Raspberry Pi 5 but you can use another kind of Pi if you want, as long as it's a model that has a 40 pin header. We'll be assuming you're just using a microSD card for storage here - if you want to add a NVMe Base to your Picade Max setup then follow the instructions in the next section.

You'll need:

a Raspberry Pi 5 (ours already has its Active Cooler fitted),
the booster header
Picade Max Power HAT
4x 10mm M2.5 standoffs (the medium ones)
4x 17mm M2.5 standoffs (the longest ones)
4x 22mm M2.5 screws (the longest ones)
4x 6mm M2.5 screws (the shortest ones).

Poke the long 22mm M2.5 screws through the holes in the bottom of panel A (with the ends pointing upwards). Then add the 10mm standoffs to the screw threads.

Place your Pi on top of the standoffs, oriented so that the Pi's GPIO pins are next to panel B.

Screw the long 17mm M2.5 standoffs onto the screws poking out of the top of the Pi. Then push the booster header down onto the Pi's GPIO pins (make sure it's correctly lined up and not 'off by one').

Add the Picade Max Power HAT to the top of the stack and push it down onto the booster header pins. Again, make sure the socket header on the HAT is correctly lined up with the pins on the booster header. Then fix it in place with the 6mm M2.5 screws.

Your Pi should now be safely secured to the cabinet.

Mounting the Raspberry Pi (with NVMe Base)

Here's how to incorporate an NVMe Base into your setup!

(Note that Picade Max will only work with the single NVMe Base, not NVMe Base Duo).

You'll need:

a Raspberry Pi 5 (ours already has its Active Cooler fitted),
An NVMe Base with the standoffs that connect the Pi and Base together removed (you can leave the SSD and ribbon cable in situ)
the booster header
Picade Max Power HAT.
4x 17mm M2.5 standoffs (the longest ones)
4x 22mm M2.5 screws (the longest ones)
4x 6mm M2.5 screws (the shortest ones)
4x M2.5 nuts
4x 7mm M2.5 standoffs (these are the ones that come with NVMe Base)

Poke the long 22mm M2.5 screws through the holes in the bottom of panel A (with the ends pointing upwards). Then add the M2.5 nuts to the screw threads.

Place your NVMe Base on top of the nuts, oriented so that the ribbon cable is pointing towards you.

Screw the 7mm M2.5 standoffs onto the screw threads.

Place your Pi on top of the standoffs, oriented so that the Pi's GPIO pins are next to panel B. Make sure the NVMe Base's PCIe cable is clipped squarely into both connectors, it will be tricky to adjust later.

Then push the booster header down onto the Pi's GPIO pins (make sure it's correctly lined up and not 'off by one').

Screw the long 17mm M2.5 standoffs onto the screws poking out of the top of the Pi.

Installing the acrylic screen piece

For the next bit, you'll need:

the long thin wooden panel F
the large square acrylic screen piece.

The tabs on panel F fit into slots on side panels D and E. This piece will act as a brace and keep the console solid, even when faced with serious button mashing. You might need to wiggle the side panels apart slightly to get the tabs into the slots. Note the tab in the middle should be pointing upwards once this piece is fitted.

Next we'll be fitting the acrylic screen panel, this will protect the actual screen once it's installed. It's a good idea to keep the protective backing stuck to the acrylic pieces as long as you can, to protect them from fingerprints, scratches and other miscellanous assembly detritus. If you want, it's possible to just peel off the protective backing from the tabs that slot into the case here, and leave the rest of it in place until later on.

Once you've removed the protective backing from the tabs (or from the entire panel, if you prefer), you can go ahead and fit the tabs into the slots in side panels D and E.

Fitting the marquee and the top of the cabinet

Now we'll be adding the marquee to the top of the cabinet. We'll be installing the provided artwork in our Picade, but if you want to be totally extra and upgrade to a Galactic Unicorn LED matrix, scroll down and check out Appendix B. For this step, you'll need:

A transparent acrylic marquee piece
A black translucent acrylic marquee piece (with holes)
Some marquee sized cardboard artwork (your kit should hopefully contain some more exciting artwork than our plain black one)
Wooden panel G
Wooden panel H
4x M3 18mm screws (it's time to use some of the long ones!)
4x M3 nuts

As before, remove the acrylic backing from the tabs on the two acrylic pieces on one side.

Flip both panels over, and remove all the backing from the other side.

Sandwich both panels together, with the completely unpeeled sides on the inside and the artwork in the middle. The more pleasing side of the artwork should be facing out of the transparent side :)

Fit the tabs into the slots in panels D and E.

Panel G is the top panel of the Picade - slot it in like this (making sure the tabs are pointing out of the back of the cabinet.)

Panel H sits on top of Panel G - make sure the holes line up! You'll need to slot the long 18mm M3 screws through the holes, to attach both panels to the brackets.

Mounting the display panel

Next job is to attach the LCD display panel to the sides of the cabinet. You'll need:

19" screen panel
Black cardboard screen surround
4 x M3 12mm screws (back to the shorter ones!)

Double check that you're using the shorter M3 12mm screws here, if you use the longer ones it could damage the display.

First peel off the protective covering from the front of the screen.

Remove the protective covering from the inside of the acrylic screen panel, if you've not done that already.

Find the black cardboard screen surround, and insert the four tabs alongside the ones that the acrylic screen panel goes into.

The display needs to be mounted with the ribbon connector at the top. Observe the four screw holes in the sides of the display, these are where we'll be attaching it to the side panels.

Position the display behind the perspex screen panel and line up the screw holes.

Screw M3 12mm screws through panels D and E into all four mounting holes to secure the display in place.

Once you've fastened all the screws, it should look something like this.

Adding the backplate

Next we'll be adding the backplate. There are two versions included (panels I and J) - as we're using a Raspberry Pi we'll be using panel J which has a round cutout for your Picade's power cable to pass through. It also has a cutout to make it possible to insert/remove the SD card.

Panel I is for if you are going down the mini PC route and want to install a big old PC power supply in the cabinet. See Appendix A for more details.

Note that you could skip this step for now and attach the backplate panel after you've fitted the power button and volume control, if you wanted to leave yourself a little more room to work.

Assuming you're using a Raspberry Pi, you'll need:

Wooden panel J
4x M3 12mm screws
4x M3 nuts

Insert the tab on panel B into the slot on panel J:

Then attach it in place through the brackets using the M3 12mm screws and nuts.

Part 2 is complete! Have a rest, and treat yourself to something nice. When you're ready, proceed to part 3.

Appendix A - Adding a mini PC

Hopefully we'll eventually have some more details of how you can install mini-PCs and other hardware in your Picade Max cabinet here. For now, here are some photos of some configurations that we tried.

Appendix B - Unicorn marquee

If you want to use a Galactic Unicorn as your marquee here's what you'll need:

The black translucent acrylic marquee piece (with holes)
A Galactic Unicorn
2x Diffuser Standoff Set containing tiny M2 nuts, screws and standoffs.

Remove the protective plastic from the acrylic diffuser piece. Identify the front and back of this piece - when looking at it from the front the mounting tabs should be further apart on the right hand edge.

From the front, poke the screws through the holes in the diffuser, and then screw the standoffs onto the back of the acrylic. Don't tighten them too much as you could crack the acrylic - just finger tight is fine.

Flip it over so that the back of the panel is facing you and the standoffs / screw threads are pointing upwards. When looking at the assembly from the back, the mounting tabs should be further apart on the left hand edge.

You can then poke the ends of screws through the mounting holes in your Unicorn board.

Secure everything in place by adding the nuts to the back of the board.

Fit the tabs on the diffuser panel into the front slots in panels D and E. Note that the clear transparent acrylic marquee piece won't be used if you're installing a Unicorn.

That's all folks!

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