favorited.

Looking forward to progress!

What are some more details about the project, theme, vision?

Good luck to you.

Oh my

You might want to bump up to a Raspberry pi3 especially if you are considering color assets.

Wheeeew. That's a relief!

I thought it was going to be a tribute to that band of nutsacks, Journey......

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this should be fun to watch, I hope you plan to use ply for the final, I bet that particle board will become a little unforgiving while working on it

cool theme name, lots of possibilities

The 17/32" lumbercore Maple 7-core used for pinball playfields is not manufactured for any other industry.

No plywood wholesaler in the USA or Canada has it, nor can they order it.

You would have to order 2 boxcars of it directly from American Plywood's mill.

Bally used to sell blank playfields with the shooter lane and ball return already routed for $35, if you can still find one.

Otherwise, your best bet might be to buy 5/8" Baltic Birch, and then use a CNC surfacing bit on the backside to bring it down to 17/32.

Remember also that because the plys on Baltic Birch are thin, the face ply is not as forgiving as the maple Lumbercore when you sand the inserts flush.

Ahh a horror title. Nice

What OS are you using on the Pi3? Curious how you are going about that part of it. I tried, but it was too much for me.

Sounds like fun! Favorited.

My biggest frustration was to get the code updated. I didn't like trying to type it on the Pi, and doing the mount write thing was very tedious for somebody trying to also learn MPF. I ended up with a Kangaroo windows 10 machine. Was going to go Latte Panda, but then saw the Kangaroo and it has all of the features I wanted and more for not that much more $.

The Pi3 didn't go to waste though. Pup RetroPie on it and am enjoying that from time to time.

In.

scp, svn or git should all work on the pi. I personally use scp, but I'm just shuffling images back and forth. For my main computer, I'm using git, routing through the pi's wireless. Mostly cause I'm lazy.

OP: this sounds great! Posting to follow progress!

...or do great minds think alike? Haha!

To be (more) clear, I'm using an Intel NUC with networked pis for score/instruction card display. So I use git to update the NUC, and scp to update the pis. I too was impressed with how versatile the pis were... Great piece of hardware!

Thank you for listening! Yes, the score and instruction cards changing were received very well by the playing public last month.

If I can help in any way, let me know!

nice start, will be following

Me too. Looking forward to following along. Good luck!

I've been working on mine for over a year and your farther along than I am heehee.

Escape! sounds like your on a doomed space station and you need to run a bunch of modes to restore power/life support/etc long enough for you to get to the escape pod. Lots you can do with that theme... Look forward to seeing what you come up with!

You have the same setup I do so far as well (PSU, boards, framework). I went with a NUC instead of the PI as I didn't want any hardware limitations when developing. I was going to move it to a smaller/cheaper CPU once I have it finallize. I have a recording studio and I really wanted to go nuts on the sounds so I didn't want any limitations starting out. Then I'll pull the NUC and it will be used to develop my next machine...

--Kevin

I see sliderpoint lives in washington (far stretch from nevada). I was honestly thinking just today, could a group of pinball enthusiasts (each with a talent) all collaborate on a project from a distance and get a pinball designed? Seems like every homebrew person struggles with at least 2-3 out of 4 aspects of design. It would be nice if experts can focus on each part of it. I can do mechanical, and a little bit of art, and can struggle through electrical, but I know almost nothing about programming.

Sorry, a bit late to the party.

Hey, don't stop believin! We may add a 'midnight train' to the machine, just for you! LOL.

Yes, technology is a huge help in keeping us together. Skype is a great tool. The distance is itself a kind of validation of our build methods. There will be at least two if not three of these pins put together. I'll be assembling one up here in the NW myself as well and we'll see just how repeatable and precise our tooling works out. Obviously there will be some shipping costs for parts. I plan to try to replicate shots virtually as best I can before we build a 'final' part and ship it out. But I have full faith in Jim and Max for the precise building and testing of the layouts and components and will be kind of excited to see how it physically builds up in my shop versus the NV guys.

Looking forward to this!
-Mike

Escape, by Rupert Holmes for the soundtrack? ...I can only hope.

Look forward to following along guys, might have to make excuses to go visit Mike more often when things get rolling at his place

HEY! I wanted to make a Journey Pin for years. it would be awesome. I was hoping it was from the Escape album.

someone beat you to it
http://pinballbuilders.com/?cat=2

they had me until I saw superbands on the machine. Then I lost interest.

That midnight train would certainly lead to nowhere if Journey was laying out the routes.

"Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit".

There is no such place as 'South Detroit'.

South Detroit is ......Canada?

I wanna tag along too don't know you guys but would love to meet ya and check this project out. I'm getting very close now to embarking on my own - I know I'm going to have a lot of questions!

Out of interest, has there been much discussion internally - in a non formal sense - over the increasingly huge gross margins that NIB pinball machines are for the moment commanding?

It can't have gone unnoticed ..

Wonder whether CPR would sell plywood, they seem to have a supply now independent from Stern's supplier. Look here: http://www.classicplayfields.com/updates.html

"We took in a major load of wood that will get us through the next five titles as mentioned above. It's really nice stuff. Two internal layers of hard maple, three layers of white ash covered with two .080" full face veneers of maritime hard rock maple. These face veneers are 25% thicker than what Stern uses on their machines and we pay for that good thick veneer on BOTH sides of the PF so it stays straight and true better than using one good grade and one lower grade."

If you hang out on the pinball controllers forum, you probably could convince some of the guys there to help you out with your project.

There's also the pindev slack channel.

So, wait, not Escape from New York with Snake Plisskin? Because that would be pretty bad-ass.

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Thumbs up for games affiliated with Zaccaria.

not so much help.. Help means "I can't figure this out, help".. "Ok, so get this framework, get a basic running game, then go look at this example code to see how it could implement on your design". Believe me, I would love to do every aspect of what it takes to build a pinball machine (like ben heck), but even if you know what you're doing it can take years of working nights and weekends. If you're on a learning curve, your project will get really stale from grinding it out.

I'm talking about sharing the workload, but you'd have to convince 2-3 other pinball enthusiasts also excited by the same theme (nothing drives a project more than something you're passionate about). I helped Hugh from OPP with all the artwork and voicework for sharpe shooter 3 because I felt it was payback for letting me beta test early OPP boards. Hugh is good at electronics / programming, but he might struggle with a layout from scratch (hence re-using the sharp shooter donor playfield).. And when I saw what he was planning for artwork, I had to jump in. Not to say I'm a great artist, but it turned out pretty good for homebrew.

SS3_cabinet_art (resized).jpg

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What size playfield are you working towards? Standard-body 46-inch?

Hell yeah that's what I was thinking too.

Actually it can be done with the help of only 1-2 people and even from a great distance. Buffy was completely developed between me, my programmer Michael who lives in Boston and my artist John who is out of MO. Michael and I hadn't even meet in person until well over a year into our project (still havent met John in person). Now I know some think Buffy is only a SOF with some clearcoat, but it is probably one of the most ambitious retheme project out there and at this point is just as hard to replicate as a new build would be. At any rate, it was done by 3 guys that are over a thousand miles apart, and only in our free time. Its amazing what you can get accomplished with someone so far away, and even without meeting them in person.