Hey everyone, I had this quirky idea a while back that it would be kind of neat to be able to control a pinball machine with a joystick or joypad - especially for special tournaments!

The general idea is to connect an older joystick with a 9 pin port (think Atari 2600 joystick, c64, Master System joypad etc) to a pinball machine, and have the left / right movements control the flippers. This could even be interfaced to a custom controller - say an arcade joystick on a stand in front of the machine, so people could play one handed - while holding a beer

So I've put together a prototype and wanted to see if there was any interest in me making a broader run for people? A couple of pictures attached, one showing the custom plate in the panel of the coin door, the other with joystick attached. I'll try and grab some video in the next day or two.

At this stage it's aimed at WPC flipertronic era but it could expand depending on interest and where this might evolve to

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My thought of one handed was to have a custom 2-way arcade joystick on a pedestal - up around lockdown bar height, so hopefully a heavy enough base not to tip over one handed.

Thanks

Saturn might be a bit too modern for my plan for this

First revision boards are in! I decided to use a modular design using modular phone jacks to connect the flipper boards to the 9 pin jack. Also, diodes to isolate each of the flipper button inputs coming from the opto board.

Seems to work nicely, although I have since made a modification so that the joystick button 1 can also work as the left flipper, and button 2 works as the right flipper - this allows a Megadrive/Gensis gamepad to be used, and you can use the left joypad for the left flipper and the rightmost button (C) for the right flipper. With an Atari style joystick, you can use left or the button for the left flipper, and right for the right flipper.

I realised that the photo with the board connected to the flipper opto board has my board sitting out on an angle - there is plenty of clearance for the plastic flipper opto interupter to move in and out, I just just didn't push my board in all the way

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