Yonatan Mevorach's Desktop Arcade Machine Offers Grafana-Powered Insights Rather Than Space Invaders
Converted from a swag-bag arcade cabinet toy, this Raspberry Pi Zero W-powered build offers interactive at-a-glance metric graphing.
Wix Engineering developer Yonatan Mevorach has turned a toy arcade machine into something a little better-suited to his current work-from-home lifestyle: a Raspberry Pi-powered Grafana dashboard.
"It occurred to me that [the arcade toy's] small screen could be perfect for presenting graphs, and that I could even use the physical buttons to navigate through them," Mevorach explains of his inspiration, triggered by missing a dedicated metric-tracking second monitor used in the office. "Luckily, despite having no idea how an arcade machine works, I managed to modify it to display graphs from Grafana."
The basis for the build is a miniature arcade cabinet, received in a Wix Engineering swag bag but simply gathering dust. Inside was a controller board, joystick and button panel, speaker, screen, and battery compartment — and enough space to fit a Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer.
"I could try to re-use the original screen but I would have to learn to reverse-engineer how to control it," Mevorach explains, "so I decided to get rid of it and try to find a screen with the same form-factor that's designed to be controlled by a Raspberry Pi. This meant that other than the plastic exterior, the only original part I would need to re-utilize are the physical buttons and the circuit-board that controls them."
With the control board wired to the Raspberry Pi's general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header, and the batteries replaced by a suitable micro-USB power supply, Mevorach's arcade machine became a lot less fun but considerably more useful. A replacement 2.4" display slots into the original housing and offers a look at Grafana dashboards, while the controls flick through the possible metrics on display — all updated live over the Raspberry Pi Zero W's Wi-Fi connection.
"Don't worry if you've never tinkered with electronics or used a soldering-iron before," Mevorach notes. "I didn't either before starting this project."
The full build log is available on Mevorach's website.