So it can be hooked up to 18 different switches in a pinball machine to make 18 different quotes or songs?
How do the 256 remote tracks work on a pin, if at all?
Can you hook up two boards to have effects for 36 switches?

Do you want to replace an old soundcard with this one ?

How about to install this sound system card playing "AC/DC" in case of SPECIAL in an EM or SS machine ? .

Waiting about the results !

I'm pretty sure you can boot up a pin without a soundcard but not sure about having it plugged in missing the roms.

That's amazing for such a small board. Imagine stepping into a time machine and going back to the seventies. Then enter the Williams R&D department and show it to those guys. The possibilities are so much greater nowadays.

In fact, I was just admiring the fact that my new Family Guy pin only has two small SMD boards in the back. Compared to the cramped back box of the Whirlwind pin next to it, that an great achievement in little over 15 years.

Anyway, sounds like a great soundboard for a custom pin like the one you've built. And if it's good enough for Grant Imahari then its good enough for us Pinsiders, right?

I am resurrecting this from 3 years ago I am about to use this board on 2 of my Pins. My El Dorado:City Of Gold has messed up "Background Music" and the audio/music is rather simple to begin with. So, I am going to remaster the audio and make it better with this board. I will have the board Saturday and I am very excited to play with it. I think I will add one to my EM just for fun

Question: Are their features to have our audio Loop?

I know I will find out via the website/docs sooner or later. But would love to resurrect this thread because I think its damn amazing for mods and a great rescue for dead/defective soundboards for pins.

I notice, no one mentions the name of this board lol. So here it is as well a link to buy.
MP3 Trigger v2: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004G2KRXS/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

Curious what kind of headers/connectors did you use for this board? Or did you just directly solder it?

*lol I need a time machine to go back 3 years ago to ask this question dont I hahah

All about the MP3 Trigger v2 and pinball...

-Brian

You are a god of pinball thanks for sharing!! Now I really can do my El Dorado: City Of Gold conversion to Indiana Jones with Sounds and Backglass!!! So Exciting

BTW! Your conversion is beyond inspiring. Great work! I was not sure if this board could play multiple tracks at once. So I assume all 18 slots are independent

EDIT: Boards can only play one track at a time. So two boards are needed if you want background music to not be interrupted.

How did I miss this on Youtube? I've been collecting bookmarks on customizing for a year now!

I'm planning a project using a Gottlieb Time Line. With the Tic-Tac-Toe gimmick, I thought it would be cool to do a "Battle of the Bands" thing. You pick your side on the first ball, and as you win, the game changes to a different track of your band. And if you lose a round, the opposing band's music plays.

I'll probably need two of Sparkfun's boards. One for the background music, and one for the sound effects. There are a few 'spare' controlled lights according to my pin manual, so I may be able to use those for some sort of control. Or I can use an Arduino. I'm not that far along yet. The first step is to get the game running like it was designed to originally.

Yes and no. It will only loop if the switch is continually closed, like for attract mode or something. There doesn't seem to be a limit to the length of the track though, so you can could have it loop multiple times in one mp3 if you edit it that way.

I directly soldered mine, but I'm sure there must be headers/connectors in this size too.

No, one board will not play multiple tracks at once. That's why 2 boards are needed to replace the music and sounds. You can however set priority for each sound, so if you want to have some sounds that do not cut off quotes you can set them to low priority and they wont trigger during another sound.

I have no idea! It must be one of the best kept secrets in pinball customization, because it hardly has any hits compared to my original beta video of gameplay.

Not to derail this Evil Dead thread, but I hope this information helps more people build customs of their own.

Brian

Interesting. Still not a problem since these boards are only $50. My board will be here tomorrow

I guess if I use a large enough Micro SD card I could have the background music be a 1 hour loop if I wanted.

I guess I could also solder just about any kind of quick connector to the board, that way I can plug-n-play.

Yep, same spacing as an old IDE hard drive connector.

That is cool! I am tempted to buy some just to add the Defender/Hyperball Extra Ship award sound somewhere in every game I own including the EMs. Actually come to think of it that would be a great thing to put in a Stern in place of the screech knocker!

Question for the experts. Is it possible to wire this board up to multiple 44/47 LED's so when that in-game triggered led is activated/turned on it will also play a sound track?

No, for 2 reasons:

1. there's a rated limit of 3.3-5 volts to activate the switch, lamps are typically 6v.
2. The featured lamps are controlled by the CPU. Hooking up one of the switches of the mp3 trigger to the socket will only continually fire it (AC waveform). If you could somehow isolate the switch from the matrix, it may work but I'm pretty sure you'll end up with the same thing.

Now, if you want to completely separate a lamp (or add a lamp) using a completely separate DC voltage from the playfield voltage, and run it at around 5 volts, then yes it can be done.

Wow! This is a really cool device! I've been wanting to add some background music to my Bally Star Trek and this would be just the thing! Now that I think of it you could actually hook this up to multiple pins and run it into a game room sound system. Start the play on one machine and it starts a song. Start play on another machine and it plays a different song.

Will need to look into it some more. Thanks for resurrecting the thread!!

Dang, was a great idea. It would have allowed me to completely re-do my CoG. I want to disable my sound board 100%. In this case, I am limited to only switches. However... There must be some kind of switch that can be added that could send a single output 3.5-5v signal to the Mp3 board with a resister for each line to the board to drop the voltage? (I have much to learn about electricity) But nothing is impossible right?

I ask this, because if I was able to use the lights I would be able to trigger my system 80 (Game over, Tilt, Shoot Again, Extra Ball, Bonus etc.)

Anything for a fellow Trekkie

You could use a relay, photo transistor, optoisolator, a........ if the voltages were different.

I haven't tried this yet, but I've been working it out in my head. From what I can determine from the System 80 Service Manual, the sounds are driven with a clock signal and 4 input lines, making a binary number for the processor on the sound board to play a sound (0101 would be sound 5, etc). There is a chip called a 74LS154, which takes 4 binary inputs and activates one of 16 outputs. I think it's possible to wire something up to directly control the Sparkfun board to the System 80 CPU. It's going to be a few months before I can try it on my Time Line, so if anyone good with electronics wants to try this thought, by all means go ahead.

I've got to get my machine playable first.

Also, question for Toyotaboy. You mention that the light would constantly fire. However the boards do not loop audio. So correct me if I am wrong, it should still work? As well I heard you can set priority over different triggers. If I am correct, I only need to drop the voltage to less than 5v?

I wish I was skilled in electronics. All I can do is make creative guesses.

Lamps are on an AC signal, which means it's cycling on and off at (I guess) 60 times a second, which would probably look like 60 triggers a second to the board.

Ahh this makes sense. (also a very clear explanation, very helpful) I need to refresh on my Edison vs Tesla 101 lol So, I would need some kind of toggle switch that may not exist, in order to send one trigger to the board as on or off.

This is where I probably approach overthinking a solution. If you could wire up an optoisolator (which is basically a LED and a Light Sensitive Transistor in a sealed case. Turning the light one one side on allows the transistor to pass a signal) to the lamp wiring, you could pass a signal to a microcontroller. The microcontroller could take the signal (which would still be pulsing, but would be a 5V signal), and a little bit of code could treat the pulsing signal like it's constantly on. Then the controller could activate an output to the Sparkfun board like a switch.

That sounds complicated to me as I reread it. But it's after midnight and my brain is shutting down. :p

Very interesting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opto-isolator) This makes sense. So you wire the Opto-isolator to the 6v light. Then the Opto-isolator detects if the light is on which then sends only one signal to the sound board vs 60 triggers per second. It makes sense to me However, I understand this will need a chip for each light and a board to process it. Doesn't sound like a very cost-effective solution but a very very cool one.

Actually, scratch that. Instead of the microcontroller bit, you could wire the optoisolator to a "one shot" timer circuit using a 555 chip and a couple resistors and capacitors. Like I said, I was overthinking it.

Sadly, I do not have the knowledge to figure this out. Unless I had product numbers of what I need to buy and how I solder them together lol. I will need to add this to at least 60 lights. So, I really need to find a cheap system or I guess I need to just stick with switches.

Yeah if you're doing every light then it would be a mess. doing 6 or so lights in this manner wouldn't be too bad.

The optoisolator wouldn't give an always on or off signal if it's reading the LED attached to an AC signal. While it will give you a 5V DC signal to use, it would still be pulsing the same rate as the 6.3V light. You'd have to come up with a circuit that would convert the pulsing signal to a constant on signal for the Sparkfun board

I would be interested in the 6 lights still. At least to cover the basics since I want to disable my soundboard that is defective. Anyhow, that's my last comment for the night. Thanks everyone for your input.

OK, I just ordered one of these things from Amazon. Free shipping. Also just dug out some old Star trek CDs from 15 years ago. I've got a great CD with a lot of the different Star Trek Themes from both the movies and TV series. All By Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops. Great orchestral recordings. Also found my CD with all the original TV series sound effects. There is also a great website that has a ton of Star Trek sound effects MP3s that can be downloaded.

What I plan to do is work up my Bally Star Trek. Attract mode and between balls I will trigger the bridge environment sound with the ball drain switch. Should be cool to just have that bridge sound while the game is waiting to be played. Once the ball is plunged it will trigger the plunge lane switch that will start the motion picture theme music. When the ball drains it will trigger a Klingon disrupter sound effect that will cut off the music and then revert back to the bridge environment sound as you wait to replunge the ball. One more switch on the drop target reset solenoid will trigger a Klaxon Red Alert Sound and then go to one of the other Star Trek theme songs. Each time you drop all the targets your multiplier goes up and you get a klaxon and a different theme song. That should keep things from getting too monotonous and should help to build the excitement. I plan to keep all the original game sounds going as is and just have it mixed with the orchestral theme musics.

One technical question. Can this MP3 Trigger be powered by the pins 5 VDC output off the power board? Would make it a lot easier to just get the power directly from the pin.

Interesting thing I just discovered while listening to all the different themes. Did you know that the theme used for "The Next Generation" TV series is the same theme as used for Star Trek "The Motion Picture" the first movie and the movie this Bally game is modeled after? I never realized that before.

This will be a great mod project to work on especially since I just finished the full LED retrofit. I will use the time while I wait for the MP3 Trigger to arrive working on selecting and mixing the sound effects and music for the 5 different sound files I will need to make this happen. Can't wait to start on it!

I cant wait to see a video of yours. Make sure to keep us posted over at the Star Trek Club
I just wish I could figure out a simple solution to trigger these off the lights. In terms of triggers, I was under the impression we just wire these to all the Leaf switches, micro switches etc. that we want audio for.

Do you have to piggyback a second switch onto the switches in the game for the soundboard switches?

yes you have to put a second switch for the sound, you don't want to corrupt your switch matrix...

What is the best way to do this? How would the second EOS switch be triggered?

you have to used a lot of your imagination and be creative... sometime I just piggy back a second switch with an actuator (outlane, inlane, outhole, standup switch, etc...) :

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/180-5006-00

Sometime I use a micro switch with a long actuator that you can bend like you want (slingshot, spinner, stop for the background sound, etc) ...

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/180-5010-00

I have to made some custom actuator for the background sound and the bonus countdown...

I still not find a solution for the drop target...

Ahh yes! This makes perfect sense. In a nutshell, your solenoid is pushing (2) Switches at the same time. However, this will still be independent from the pin. So I will need to give these switches their own power supply. For example I could use a 5v DC A1 supply and daisy chain the power to all my new switches?

-----------
Strange/Stupid Idea: In regards to triggering a switch via the lights. Couldn't I use some kind of low power 6.3v or less solenoid or some kind of electrical switch that could trigger micro switches for the lights?

If you scroll up the thread to the video Betelgeuse posted, I think he shows how he activated a sound of his drop targets.

Perfecto! Makes sense, as well not very complicated which is nice.

He activated the switch with the rubber behind the drop, so it,s not perfect, but it's work... My problem is my drop are inline drop target, no rubber behind for a switch to be activated... I have magnetic switch that i have to test if I can do something with it...

the board give the switch their owe power.

I see that now, using a 5v DC A1 to power it.
I can't remember what El Dorado:City Of Gold has. But I need to fire audio when all are down, all reset and each target hit. For 15 targets. Will look under the hood when I get home.

Study the video and the MP3 Trigger manual. If you use a separate switch you DO NOT need a power supply for those switches. The MP3 Trigger board already supplies that for you. Each of the 18 trigger points on the board has 2 contact points. You just wire each end of the switch to each point. The switch will just close the circuit and trigger the sound. Very simple.

I've been reading that the audio output of the MP3 Trigger was designed to drive a set of headphones. I would like to instead plug it into a set of common add on powered computer speakers. Does anyone know if this will work or do you need to add the circuitry to isolate to audio ground? How are some of you getting this hooked up to play through speakers?

An opto isolator.

I think you just need an amp to use the speaker in your pin (assuming it is not an EM) But, adding computer speakers will sound much better in my opinion.

Yep, I notice this. Already built in. However a 5v DC A1 power supply is sold separately. The board doesn't come with any accessories.

However, Amazon pairs an power supply which is 9V DC 650mA? I also read on the board the Input voltage is 4.5-12VDC. So that brings up a question, why 6.4v won't work with this board or why is the power supply paired with this product 9V DC 650mA?

http://www.digikey.com/product-highlights/us/en/tt-electronics-opi1268s-super-blue-optoisolator/130

Our industry spells it Optoisolator, lol.

My next EM project is Centigrade 37. It would be cool to add some scifi sounds and Xenon-style speech. Would be funny if when you hit the top of the thermometer, you heard Sinistar saying "Beware, I live!"