Saskatoon TechWorks Forum

Techworks, I need your help! This project has been languishing on the back burner for far too long (years), collecting dust in the basement.



I'm scratch-building a pinball machine, using an old busted playfield off ebay for development and to scavenge mechanical parts. I've got most of the circuits designed, I just need to get around to actually building the damned thing. Harass me until I do so!

What's your first step?

I'll give you $5 when you finish this project.

I could get a weapon, and threaten you with it?

Or we could like, help you, or something.





...or the weapon thing.

First step is to figure out exactly where I was, progress-wise (so I don't light it on fire when i power it up, or something). Second step is to build the solenoid driver board so I get functioning bumpers, etc.

Worked on solenoid driver today...

Awesome. I loves me some pinball and I've been gathering parts to build one too but its a heck of a lot of work.

I used to have a Space Invaders pinball but then I sold it.

Got some arduino firmware coded up to strobe the switch matrix and send events back to a PC over USB, and some software on the PC to control everything at a higher level. Basing the software on pyprocgame (http://pyprocgame.pindev.org), which is designed to interface with some proprietary pinball logic board replacement. The software is open source though, so I hacked in my own hardware layer.

Hooked the pinball playfield up to the arduino and tested out the switch matrix stuff last night. It works! Some of the switches on my old busted ebay playfield are dead (or the playfield wiring is broken), but it's good enough for now. Tonight I'm going to (finally) hook up the solenoid drivers. If all goes well and I don't cook anything, I should have a very primitive game playable this week.

Had a big day today:

* Solenoid drivers work.
* Power supply works.
* Flipper control relay works.
* Switch matrix didn't light my arduino on fire.
* General illumination on the playfield works.
* The embedded code for the micro is mostly done. Doesn't have lamp control yet, but I haven't built that board yet either.
* Hooked everything up and had a "play" (score doesn't work yet, and most of the stuff on the playfield isn't coded in either).

Some pics:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJN-OuGKxiQ

No pictures today, but I played a real actual game, with score and everything. Hitting anything on the board gives 10 points, and locking the ball in one of those saucers gives points and kicks the ball back out.

Got all of the coils hooked up and tested. Two of the drop target solenoids don't work, but I suspect they're just corroded and sticking. This week I'll be hooking up the pop bumpers and slingshot, building the lamp control board, and continuing to code the test game.