Yes, I have heard of LISY. I only have the populated playfield (no cabinet or boards) of Tag Team and I rarely have Gottlieb machines anyway. The one APC board and some power supplies just seems easier to me than building up multiple Gottlieb style boards. Additionally, I just don't like edge card connectors.

IMHO main differences are with Lamps & Switches. Williams do use a Lamp matrix where Gottlieb has one transistor for each lamp. For Switches I'm not sure if the Matrix is compatible, I know that Bally & Gottlieb have different concepts as Gottlieb do strobe with 'low' signal, resulting in different placements for the diodes in the Matrix between Bally & Gottlieb AmokSolderer can you explain how Williams do sense the switches?
For the solenoids I see no problems, For Displays you have to use Williams Displays.

cobra18t If you do not like edge connectors and do not have the Gottlieb driverboards you may think about 'LISY_Home'; just have a look at http://www.lisy.dev
LISY_Home is a 'LISY80 clone', so the switches will work out of the box and for Displays & Solenoids I have designed a driverboard.
For Lamps I do not have a Lampdriverboard yet, as for my LISY_Home project I plan to use LEDs.
You can use LISY_Home with MPF but as a LISY80 clone, it is also possible to let run system80(B) pinmame romsets.
However keep in mind that LISY_Home is in early testing phase ...

hope that helps

Thanks for the info bontango and @amoksolderer.

I was already considering using addressable LEDs for lighting, so lamp differences are moot. I don't want to get too hung up on the Tag Team playfield as it is just a test bed. Think of it less as a 1985 Gottlieb and more as a convenient collection of solenoids, playfield machinery, and switches. My main focus is on the Williams machines that APC was built for.

It is good to see that you two seem to have a collaboration in the works with LISY_Mini. I will keep an eye on that project.

Any chance you will release the KiCad files for APC? I am interested in making mods to the board.

That is what I thought.

I want the audio amp to be a plug in replacement, so some cheap class D amp board from China could be used. I also want a number of surface mount parts to reduce size, use more available parts, and make room for things like optional onboard alphanumeric LED drive, Ws2812 LED drive, etc.

In short, I like customizing to my exact need.

So far everything is looking good. I had to make a small number of MPF config changes, mainly related to the special solenoids. Normally in F-14 and the other earlier Sys11 (and earlier generation) machines, the CPU doesn't get involved in firing coils for things like jet bumpers and slings. For those kind of devices you want the coil to fire as soon as the switch closes, otherwise it appears to lag. Williams were concerned that the CPU wouldn't be able to react quick enough to the switch closure, so they set up these "special" solenoids to fire immediately the switch closed, without any action from the CPU. Nice and snappy.

APC is quick enough to not need that, so instead all the special solenoids need to be activated by the CPU. So I needed to add an "autofire rule" into the MPF config. This basically says "if switch x closes, fire coil y". Instead of MPF handling this, it's then sent to the controller to handle itself. Here is an example from my code for the jet bumper

autofire_coils:


  jet_bumper:


    coil: c_jetBumper


    switch: s_jetBumper


    enable_events: mode_base_started


    debug: false


    ball_search_order: 0 # ball can't get stuck here


    disable_events: mode_base_ended`

So adding those in only took a few minutes. I had some concerns over the latency, but as you can see from the video (not the best quality, sorry) it works really well. APC also has individual enables for the flippers, so that opens some interesting game play options where I could disable just the left or right flipper from software.

I also spent some time getting the original F-14 display connected. We had to fix a couple of lines of code in MPF to get the segments mapped properly and now that works really well too. I added some simple attract mode text, and during the game it displays the score of player 1. I'm undecided at the moment what displays to put where. Maybe I'll the little matrix displays on the apron and keep the segment displays for the old school look, not sure yet.

Mounting the APC board was a little time consuming. A lot of the connectors are in different places compared to the original MPU board (plus the board is only one third of the size) so I needed to cut open some cable ties to loosen off some of the wires. Still a little work to do to make that tidy, but no big issue.

Anyway, here is a quick video. Starts in attract mode. You can see that MPF is running the show. On my F-14 the white inserts have RGB lamps behind them and are controlled from MPF via a small FadeCandy board. All the other lamps are regular matrix lamps and run via the Arduino Pinball Controller. They all stay in sync just fine. During the game you can see MPF with APC is controlling all the coils just fine, including the slings/jet, switches are reading fine. All looking good so far

A huge thanks to Jan for the work in MPF and to "Black Knight" aka "AmokSolderer" for support on the hardware side.

Excellent. Thanks for posting the KiCad files. That F-14 is looking good...time for some sound!

Following this project closely, great work. I'm working on a pinmame-based cabinet that supports multiple hardware platforms and I need an interface controller that will accept remote commands from pinmame.

The first platform I'm implementing is Gottlieb System 1. I was looking at LISY but the pinmame source looks like it only is able to communicate with the LISY board via the Raspberry PI's GPIO, and it didn't look like the ad-hoc command interface MPF uses is implemented at all in pinmame.

Your project looks exactly like what I'm looking for! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Happy to help when it comes to questions about LISY, can you give a bit more details on what you want to achieve?
If you have a System1 plattform, LISY1 would IMHO be the best choice.
It could work with pinmame OR with MPF via the integrated MPF Server.
With APC you are more or less restricted to Williams Hardware.
I have also created a more flexible plattform called 'LISY_Home', maybe thats what you are looking for?
https://lisy.dev/lisy_home.html

I want to have a Windows PC running pinmame or MPF, controlling an interface board via USB/serial.
LCD display, no original displays. With APC I'd probably end up making my own board because as you mentioned it is geared towards Williams hardware. In this setup I think a microcontroller is a better choice over a raspberry pi.

Of course, happy to share anything I come up with.

I need to look at the latest Pinmame source, but if I end up having to implement anything I'll share my work with that project as well.

I bought an Arduino Due, but noticed in your pics you have an Arduino Due R3. From what I'm reading, the regular Due is a 3.3V part and your schematic has 5V IO going to the Due off the 74HCT244.

Did I get the wrong Arduino?

Awesome stuff! I went a similar route, with a Teensy 3.5 as the realtime controller. I added a hack to pinmame to drive a DMD to emulate Scared Stiff, and I've got another similar project running MPF with the Teensy controller. I just got a couple of RGB DMD panels from China, so I'm waiting on another Teensy and a SmartLED board to build an RGB DMD for that machine.
Rpi driving DMD:

Good to hear! I have an official Due but ordered a cheap clone for testing & development.

I later realized the 74HCT244's worked as level shifters, and it doesn't matter anyway because they're connected to outputs (don't drink and read schematics). To make sure I understand your design, in the switch driver section it's using R77-R85 and RR8 to get the 74BCT760 output to 3.3V?

The nice thing about the Teensy is that most of the work is already done for you: https://docs.pixelmatix.com/SmartMatrix/shield-v4.html

The newer Stern monochrome DMDs seem to work fine with 3.3v, so any of the recent Teensy boards should be more than sufficient. WPC style displays are a compilation of 3 subframes, each 4k-bits long. You could feed this directly to a stock DMD. To drive an RGB pixel n with red as a the base color, multiply subframeX[n] by 85 and add the 3 results together. You will end up with #000000, #550000, #AA0000 or #FF0000 (assuming R is the first byte in your serial LED library) for the final pixel color. Should be easy to blast that out in real time with a Teensy. That was my plan if I end up using the color panels with my Scared Stiff project.

This is how I update a DMD right now. I need to finish converting it to a threaded model, but it works from a Raspberry Pi 3 with the WiringPi library. The Pi was too fast for the DMD, so I had to introduce delays during testing.

=========
/* Take in array and update the DMD directly */
void oppaUpdateDMD(UINT8 *dotData) {
//printf("In update DMD\n");

int row;
/* Row data - This signal is the first line marker for the scan.
This input should be held high to correspond to the first row
of pixel data
*/
digitalWrite(pinRowData, HIGH);
for(row = 0; row < OPPA_NUM_OF_ROWS; row++) {
int index;
/* From Vishay doc: Once each frame the ROW DATA must be asserted to synchronize the column serial data with the beginning row */
/* Latch the row of data */
digitalWrite(pinColLatch, LOW);
for(index = 0; index < 16; index++) {
shiftOutSlow(pinDotData,pinDotClock,LSBFIRST,dotData[(row*16) + index]);
//shiftOut(pinDotData,pinDotClock,LSBFIRST,3);
//delayMicroseconds(40);
}
if(row == 0) {
digitalWrite(pinRowData, HIGH);
} else {
digitalWrite(pinRowData, LOW);
}

/* Turn off the display while we latch in the this row */
digitalWrite(pinDisplayEnable, LOW);
digitalWrite(pinColLatch, HIGH);

/* Advance the row pointer */
digitalWrite(pinRowClock, LOW);
/* Minimum 1us dip */
delayMicroseconds(0);
digitalWrite(pinRowClock, HIGH);

/* Reenable display */
digitalWrite(pinDisplayEnable, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(2);

}
}

void shiftOutSlow(uint8_t dataPin, uint8_t clockPin, uint8_t bitOrder, uint8_t val)
{
uint8_t i;

for (i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
if (bitOrder == LSBFIRST)
digitalWrite(dataPin, !!(val & (1 << i)));
else
digitalWrite(dataPin, !!(val & (1 << (7 - i))));

digitalWrite(clockPin, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(1);
digitalWrite(clockPin, LOW);
}
}

Since I just discovered this project less than 2 weeks ago, I haven't had time to pull down the Gerber files and have a board made. I'm inclined to rework it slightly for a Teensy(since that's my main Arduino compatible board now). The Scared Stiff project mentioned above is meant to be driven from a Raspberry Pi connected to a Teeny via USB, so I may be able to help some with that part of the effort. I do have a Blackout that is currently under reconstruction(and a lead on a WCS with no boards), so I may be able to duplex some of the work for my projects. I opted to base my serial protocol on the LISY protocol in MPF. If you do the same, most of my work would be reusable on the pinmame side.

I guess I'm one of the two

There are a few things which might make it more "user friendly", but I know for you this was never intended for "mass market", so these are just my thoughts and not intended as criticism. Your board is actually awesome, driving the original displays and being able to run game code locally is really cool.

- The often discussed self-build with SMD. I'd done a lot of soldering before, but never SMD, but watched some videos and gave it a try. It is actually easier than it looks. But many people are "just software folks" and the thought of building something with through-hole is already scary. SMD adds a new dimension for them. I initially sold my Sys11 board just as a kit, but in the end support was so high that I used to spend a day building and testing maybe 6 of them and then sold them ready. I added a little "beer money" to the price. Those 6 would normally last a year, they never sold huge numbers.
- Connector positioning and board mounting. On the board I developed for Sys11 that connected to the P-ROC, I tried hard to make it mountable on the positions that the Sys11 MPU had used. It was half the size, so used the right and centre mountings from the original board - see the photo below. That's the P-ROC on the left and my board in the middle. I also tried to get the connector positions "more or less" in the same position as the original, to avoid so much cable-binder removal and replacement. With your board this is harder I guess as it works with so may generations, although maybe the various WMS generations have their connectors in the same place? I can also see that moving the connectors on the board is quite a lot of work, although if the board was a little bigger (to fit the Sys11 mounts) there would be more space for tracks. To fit your board in my F-14 I had to do a lot of cable re-routing and it still looks messy.
- Maybe add a few LEDs? My board has them for 5v,12v and 18v and also from the P-ROC enable line. The latter made it quite easy to see that software was running and connected. Maybe if you have a spare Due pin, connect that to a LED and just blink it when the code is running.
- Pinmame is nice. When I started P-ROC with Sys11, someone has already built the link to P-ROC from Pinmame and I added the missing Sys11 support. It is then nice to play the original game code when you get frustrated with the ongoing development. I don't have time at the moment (which is why I've been really quiet lately) but once Ralf gets it working for LISY, it should be almost "plug and play" to build for Windows. Then you can either run MPF on the windows machine, or Pinmame, or run the local game code on the Arduino.

DSCN4998 (resized).JPG

You might find that the Teensy doesn't have enough pins - the Due has 54 of them and I think (but haven't checked) that they're fairly heavily used. The Teensy has 40 or thereabouts I think, depending on which version.

The 3.5 and 3.6 each have 62 I/O pins. For my OPPA project, I opted for i2c boards based on MCP23017 serial chips, since the 3.5 had 3 i2c buses(giving me 384 direct I/O pins, plus the rest of the Teensy pins for things like PWM). I used an i2c buffer chip on both sides and connected them via phone cord(RJ11 connectors).

I'm also one of those mostly software guys who hasn't made the jump to SMD.

They are both Cortex ARM. M3 and M4. I think the conversion wouldn't be terribly hard.

This I understand 120%. Life is already too busy.

Finally picked up my project playfields, at this point I'm working on Gottlieb System 80B first.

Down the road I'll be working on Data East support as well, but that should be pretty straightforward as it's a copy of System 11.

From my experience with LISY most people want to have a 'plug&play' solution or at least a 'Kit' with the PCB and all components included, and they do not want to read documentation A 'quick win' with basic functionality of the board is important, then in a second step 10% or so of the people start to read documentation and will try the advanced features.
Also SMD components do scare people, I do have only ONE SMD component on my LISY board and most people would like to get rid of it.

But I don't think that you can solve that without putting a lot of additional effort in your project.

My personal wish list is (in that order)
- put some DIP switches on the board ( e.g. to start direct with LISY/pinamme without the need to select that either in the source or via the menu)
- integrate LISY onto the board, connected e.g. via I2C
- split the APC board into different 'variations', so that the connectors fit with the original

With all of that you would have a minimal 'plug&play' solution.
O course I need to finish the pinmame integration, which I promise I will do, at least for System9, ASAP

I've been looking at this with interest. If I am understanding correctly, this board is doing the equivalent job of a p-roc except for system 11, etc.? I understand that p-roc does not work with system 11 without additional hardware so if the above is true then this is great and I want one.

From what I am reading the experience should be similar to p-roc as far as hardware. Connect a host controller (pi or PC) and the app does all the interface. Am I understanding correctly?

When I started working on the code to run pinmame on a Pi and drive a physical DMD while talking to a Teensy running the playfield, I got zero responses from the core developers.

hi guys , just found this thread the other night , very interesting stuff going on here! , will be ordering some pcbs in the coming days

I'm trying to order a board from JLCPCB and they are asking for the dimensions of the board. Does someone have that? I haven't found it listed in the wiki so far.

i'm having the same issue, hopfully someone can enlighten us.

i have a williams scorpion im looking at fixing up , have a mate with a phoenix aswell , have soldering skills , just have to work on my SMD skills hahah

In normal cases JLCPCB does calculate the board dimensions from the gerber data.
But same issue here with the current Gerber data (0.12) but I remember with an older version it worked before.
I will contact Amoksolderer and ask him if he can check

In the meantime watch my video of the first game with my Williams Comet (System9) controlled by LISY_Mini and APC, more to come ...

just ordered my pcb's , dimensions i used are 200mm x 237mm