Affordable & Arduino Programmable 16-ch Coil/Lamp Driver Kickstarter

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2

#1 7 years ago

OP

ALH

adamlhumphreys

Inactive member

Royse City, TX

7y 16,900 1 1

Hello all!

I’m still new to pinball in general, but I really want to make my own pin if/when that becomes feasible. I’ve done a fair bit of research though, but when looking for hardware, most of the things I found were old and/or fairly pricy. Of course I can understand that in respect to supporting existing machines. PinballLife.com looks like a great source for most electromechanical parts and assemblies among other things though.

So I decided to try my hand at designing a board that would make DIY pinball, (among other projects that need multiple power channels), easier, less expensive, and adaptable. You can find the Kickstarter page here with more information: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/939637926/protean-8x2-affordable-and-arduino-programmable-po
If I can get things rolling, I imagine most of the work ahead will be in making the optional firmware/software a lot more versatile. Any questions, thoughts, feedback, or sharing of this project would be very much appreciated!

The attached image is of version 1.2 of the board. I admit I’m also new to this forum as well, so if there’s a better place to post this, please correct me. The site said I needed to link to a game. Obviously this would be something intended for any general purpose homebrew game, or even an advanced mod, so I left it blank. (And I noticed it doesn’t take a custom name either.)

_DSC5938 crop [!] 2000px (resized).jpg

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#2 7 years ago

ZAC

zacaj

RPC

Rochester, NY

11y 158K 10,387 85 122 1

Nice! I was wishing these existing a few years ago...

To be clear, it comes as pictured above, right? (With the two ICs) Are there any other surface mount parts that need to be installed, or is the rest all through hole?

How exactly do you program the chip? Would I have to solder a USB jack on to some of the wires?

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2

#3 7 years ago

JIG

jwilson

Pinball Art Prints

Toronto, ON

9y 106K 5,052 6 7

There's already a working, tested solution for the DIY budget pinball designer.

http://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php/OPP

You can control 16 coils for about $15 in parts.

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#4 7 years ago

WVM

waveman

Pinside+ Frequent

10y 63,550 209

bump! Kickstarter campaign has about three days to go and is just half funded. I see value in a single board that has the arduino chip already on it vs. the OPP approach. Good luck to the OP.

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#5 7 years ago

OPP

openpinballproj

Inactive member

Westford, MA

11y 32,150 167 4

bump. just to give more visibility. (fair warning though, designing the PCB is one of the smaller pieces of work to integrating into a full pinball machine. There would be much more work ahead to finish all the needed pieces).

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#6 7 years ago

RCA

alexanr1

Pinside member

12y 74,550 1,338 85

Quoted from openpinballproj:
bump. just to give more visibility. (fair warning though, designing the PCB is one of the smaller pieces of work to integrating into a full pinball machine. There would be much more work ahead to finish all the needed pieces).

Agree!

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#7 7 years ago

RPW

flyhigh

Pinside+ Frequent

11y 65,350 186 1

Less than 2 hours to go for this project before its funding period ends. I looks like it needs $1800 for reaching the funding goal of $5000.

Any other pinsider's interested in getting on this project?

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#8 7 years ago

OPP

openpinballproj

Inactive member

Westford, MA

11y 32,150 167 4

That being said, you can get a near equivalent right now in OPP boards. The equivalent is 4 solenoid wing boards + 1 interface wing board.

Solenoid wing boards can be ordered here: https://mezelmods.com/products/open-pinball-project-solenoid-driver-board (thanks Kristin)
Interface wing boards are here (don't forget the 40 pin header): https://mezelmods.com/products/open-pinball-project-interface-board

The list of parts that you need to build them up are on PinballMaker's site: http://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php/OPP#Getting_Components (thanks Jeremy)

My guess is that the total cost for a 16 solenoid board (excluding shipping costs) is about $20.

Bonus is the OPP stuff is already supported by MPF. (Thanks Jan/Brian)

If there is a desire for an all-in-one board that has four solenoid wings and the interface board all together, tell Kristin, and I'm sure if she sees enough interest she can talk to the right people to get that to happen.

By adamlhumphreys

7 years ago

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Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!