Hello all, my first attempt at a post here on this wonderful site that I've been lurking around for a few years now. I run a diy music, art, coffee, and pinball spot, which is pretty much just putting all my hobbies together for my community to enjoy.

I'm thinking about a project to attempt later this year. I want to buy Black Hole and setup some black curtains around it to create a dark ambience, setup up a black light shining on the machine which could highlight stars or other designs I've painted on the black curtains as well as uv hi-lites on the machine itself, glo balls, paint hi-lites, etc.

My big question is, I haven't researched the schematics for black hole, but I thought it would be cool if I could hook up some led strips that would be mounted to the curtain around the machine to create a lighted tunnel effect when the relay activates for the lower playfield lighting.

I also thought in addition to some lighting effects if I could also trigger a fan mounted to the top of the machine too, similar to whirlwind, which I think would pair well to the wind-like sound effect that happens when you're on the lower playfield. I'm not sure how hard it would be to trigger those actions from a relay or whatever activates the lights on the lower playfield.

Thanks for any input! I have some years of experience of working on pinball machines although I wouldn't call myself an expert. I've also owned one gottlieb system 80 so far (Genesis) so I have a little bit of an idea on the type of fiddling I might need to do for black hole, although as usual with all my projects I'm probably being too optimistic

Thanks for the idea! Really appreciate someone taking the time to read all my silliness and propose something. I get more excited about this project idea by the day, unfortunately it will take a while to refill my fun money budget after my last recent pinball purchase, so this project won't probably happen until late summer or fall.

While I was researching this idea, I stumbled across another product that I think might be a more elegant and less intrusive solution for what I'm trying to do:

https://mezelmods.com/products/game-on-interactive-power-supply

This thing will solve for power consumption and as a trigger in the way I had hoped, and I shouldn't have to modify the electronics in the machine at all. It uses a light sensor, which is perfect for me as I basically wanted my led strips and fans to trigger off the lower playfield GI. Plus I can use LED strips and fans that run off 12v so this shouldn't hard at all to pull off.

I'll be sure to add more comments to this thread whenever I start my project, and hopefully before the year is up I'll have a video to share of the experience, assuming I'm able to pull it off.