So, more or less done with drilling and dimpling. The few that are remaining I'll do as I go in order to make sure everything lines up properly. So, pinball machines gotta have flippers, right?

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The base plates are the cleaned up original ones and modified per Vid to use the WPC style return springs. Original coils too although with new coil wrappers fresh off my laser printer (look a bit blurry in the photo for some reason, but they're crispy crisp in the flesh). Switches and caps all new though, the old ones were not worth trying to save. You can also see the reflection of one of the end stops on the playfield. I put down a couple of coats of satin varnish just so I can wipe it easily if need be in the future.

I just use regular coloured paper. There was a thread discussing options a while back, here -

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/how-do-you-make-your-coil-wrappers

Good question, it would have been whatever was in my "box o' bits" and I probably didn't look too close since 95% of my spares are for Sys11. I'll keep an eye on Vid's reply as I may end up having the same issue once I get as far as actually fitting flippers....

As well as flippers, we need lamps. The lamp holders on the original playfield are all kinda cruddy, and seeing as how this project already cost me a small fortune I've got all new ones (and new targets too). Nice and shiny. At least the screws are original

lamps.jpg

In addition to regular lamp holders, I'm fitting all the clear inserts with RGB lamps, not just the KILL ones. I'm giving the ones from FAST pinball a try, they're the same chip as the Neopixels I've been experimenting with so should be controllable just fine from the Arduino I'm using.

https://squareup.com/market/fast-pinball-llc/fast-rgb-led-insert

There is some debate about how well these kind of RGB LEDs (not specifically the FAST ones, but this type of chip in general) will tolerate the pinball environment and whether the data signals they use will be susceptible to interference etc from all the high power solenoids etc. I guess we'll find out

Next up is to get the GI wiring done as it'll be almost impossible once anything else gets mounted. I'm not planning on using bare wire though, less chance in shorting something if I use insulated. Then I'll see if I can separate the lamp matrix loom from the old playfield, clean it up and get it connected to this new playfield....

Purists won't like the non-original GI wiring, but then they won't like the LEDs or Arduino either. Using the bare wire would certainly save a ton of time, but this must reduce the chances of shorting something...

gi.jpg

I keep thinking how clean it all looks, then I go back to the old playfield and look at all the stuff that needs moving over. Won't be long before it looks like a rats nest I think...

Still working through the major mechanisms. From a scrap playfield ages back I pulled all the under playfield mechs, cleaned them up and put them away for a day like today.

So the lower sling shots, upper centre kickers and upper flippers are in, plus the mounting bracket for the pop bumper. That leaves 2 more kickers, ball eject, VUK and the rest of the pop bumper before moving on with fitting the new target switches and then looking to bring over the first wiring...

mechs.jpg

So, had a couple of hours spare this afternoon, so fitted 20 new standup targets, a handful more GI sockets and made a start on wiring up those LEDs......
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The +5v and GND lines are daisy chaining serially through the line of boards (in the same way the data line does). However I'm going to connect the +5v and GND lines from the last LED in the chain back to the first to reduce the overall voltage drop. I might connect them together in another couple of places in the chain too, will see how it looks.

As for power, I have a small separate power supply for the LEDs. The Arduino can supply up to around 500mA. One of these LEDs on full power output (bright white) is around 60mA, so I've got more than the Arduino can power. I've also got some plain red and plain white LED strip for augmenting GI in certain modes and the RGB "radar insert ring" to power, so having a separate supply made sense.

So finished wiring up the LEDs this morning.

LED2.jpg

Double checked all the continuity was OK, then needed to test that these are working properly before the wiring starts to get difficult to reach as the rest of the playfield gets populated.

Works a treat! This is just a really simple piece of control code that changes the lamps between red, green and blue. Small delay between each lamp so it kind of wipes the colours in. There is a very short video here. Couple of things to mention - I'm no cameraman, so it's not great quality. Yes, I know the targets aren't straight, I didn't fix them down fully yet! Thirdly the image makes it look like the insert is lit with a very bright spot of light from the LED. In reality the light is well diffused and looks really nice. I'll take a better video once I get this all back together and in the cabinet...

Now installed the "radar effect" ring of LEDs. I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. May need to adjust the speed and amount of the ring lit at any time, but that's just software so no biggy..

All the standup targets are only loosely screwed in at the moment as I was doing them all from underneath. I want to see each from the top of the playfield when I tighten it up, so I can get it positioned accurately and I didn't get around to that yet.

Physically they are controlled by an Arduino Nano microcontroller. I'd never used any kind of microcontroller before this F14 project, but they're not as scary as they sound and if you have some programming skills then you're set. The RGBs themselves use an interface which has some standard code libraries, so the physical control is quite easy.

I use the P-ROC in my F-14, so use the pyprocgame (python based) framework to program the game rules and so on. I've made a small tweak to the framework so that if in the game code I refer to a lamp that's actually got an RGB in it now, then the command gets sent to the Arduino (over USB from my PC) instead of to the regular lamp matrix.

The Arduino is also controlling those alphanumeric LED displays you can see and the radar ring. The code on the Arduino is basically sitting and waiting for "commands" to be passed to it over the USB link. So for example, if I pass the string "A1FUEL" to the Arduino, the initial 'A' is the command for writing to one of the alphanumeric displays, the next "1" means display number 1 and the "FUEL" is the text to display on it.

For the inserts in the RGBs, a command might look something like "G41". That would be G for green, 4 for RGB number 4 and 1 meaning switch it on. In reality it's a little more complex than that as you actually send a lamp "schedule", but that will only mean something if you've been using pyprocgame.

All of my code (python pyprocgame and the Arduino sketch) are freely viewable/downloadable from my github site here, if you want to nose around. Not been updated for a few weeks as I'm working on the playfield at the moment, but coding will pick up again soon.

Code is all here:

https://github.com/Snux/F14SecondSortie

So, onwards....

The wiring for the matrix and GI lighting is on a single loom, so with some fiddling it's possible to remove it whole. So I labelled each socket with a sharpie to make repositioning easier (doesn't matter that they're written on as they old and nasty and getting replaced anyway). Desoldered and labelled the GI connections. With some gentle persuasion (and cutting of a couple of matrix lines between bulbs that had got wired *through* the switch matrix cabling) it came out.

Let the loom be free

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The loom, like all the other wiring, is completely filthy and leaves black marks on anything it touches. Didn't want that on my new playfield, so decided to have a go at cleaning it up. I removed each of the little plastic cable ties and replaced with new ones, but left them quite loose so that I could clean inside the bundles....

l2.jpg

Put it in the bathtub with hot water and detergent, gave it a good scrub and left it to soak. While it was in there, I removed all the cable guides from the old playfield, they cleaned up and transferred over quite nicely..

l3.jpg

Took the loom out of the bathtub, let it drip for a while, then blasted it with my wife's hairdryer. It looks much better now and you don't get filthy handling it any more. Brought it down and laid it back on the new playfield, lining up the sockets roughly with their new counterparts....

l4.jpg

I was going to start soldering, but then I realised I didn't have enough diodes. All the new targets I bought already have a diode on, I wonder why the lamp sockets don't? Anyway, ordered some which will be here tomorrow. So more progress in the morning clipping off the old sockets and soldering to the new ones. I also need to do something to tidy up the wiring for the lamps that are now RGB ones. The wiring to the sockets isn't needed, but I need to keep the continuity of the matrix so will have a ponder on the best way to do it. I also want to make sure that if this machine ever gets converted back to stock that I can replace the RGBs with standard sockets, so I'll need the wiring somewhere.

Sure, no problem. Getting data from Python to the Arduino is easy. Drop me an email if you want to know more, or start a thread on pinballcontrollers...

The "schedule" concept is something that's used in pyprocgame, so I used it for the Arduino code too to keep things consistent. The idea is that a time period of one second consists of 32 "ticks". Each tick the lamp can either be on or off. So when sending a command from the PC to the Arduino for a lamp you actually send a 4 byte (32 bit) value which represents what the lamp should be doing each second. The schedule gets repeated every second until you change it. Assuming you're familiar with hex, a value of 0xFFFFFFFF would mean the lamp is on all the time. 0xFFFF0000 would flash it on for half a second, off for half a second, rinse and repeat. 0xFF00FF00 is a faster flash, 0x00000000 would switch it off and so on.

I'm only using Red, Green or Blue for my inserts as that's all I need in my game code, so I'm not playing around with fancy fading or anything.

If you look in my Arduino code at the github above, it's fairly well commented so you can probably pick out the code handling the scheduling....

So, started to get busy with the soldering iron today, at least until I ran out of diodes as my order didn't arrive as planned.

I have a number of lamps in the matrix that are no longer required, because they've been replaced by those RGB LEDs. However, the matrix wiring that loops in and out of each lamp needs to stay continuous so that others on the same row/column continue working. I decided the best way to remove the lamps was to cut them out, then solder together the 2 wires that would have met at the socket together and cover with heat shrink tubing. Then it'll tuck away into the wiring loom quite nicely, but means I can put the sockets back in again someday if I ever need to.

So this picture shows all that's left after I removed 3 unwanted lamp sockets.

l7.jpg

And here's a section of the playfield all done from a lamps perspective....

l8.jpg

I did discover that I've got the wrong height sockets for some of my GI (the ones between the TOMCAT targets mainly), so I've ordered some more of those too. Unfortunately I discovered this after I'd soldered in 2 banks of lights, so will need to redo those but no problem.

The extra diodes arrived today, so all the lamp wiring is done now except for the GI which is still waiting on the correct sockets.

l9.jpg

They are connected in series. The green and red wires are just GND and +5v. The blue wire is the data wire. Each LED has a "Data In" and a "Data Out" connection. You connect them in a chain, each LEDs "Data Out" goes to the next LEDs "Data In".

In the Arduino code, you define how many pixels are in the chain (along with some other things, like which Arduino output pin provides the input to the first LED). Then you call something like this :

chain.setPixelColor(LED,RED,GREEN,BLUE)

The LED parameter is which LED in the chain this is, the color values specify the amount of red, green and blue. So

chain.setPixelColor(1,0,255,0) would set the first LED in the chain to red. When you've set all the colors you want, then

chain.show()

will update all the LEDs physically to the state you want.

I know, I've been reading your posts on the BOP 2.0 thread. Cool stuff

Maybe some day, but getting a good display with cool graphics is very time consuming and I really want to focus on the game rules first. I can always do more with the display later, but for now it'll stay a regular DMD. Plus I don't want to make it look "too" modern. BOP 2.0 always looked like it should have had more than just the alphanumeric display, so for DP it was worth the effort.

Got the switch matrix loom off the old playfield with all the switches attached. Unlike the lamp sockets where I put all new ones in, I'm planning to reuse the switches as much as possible. The whole thing though is as filthy as the lamp wiring was, I'm just thinking about the best way to clean it up. I think I'll desolder the 3 or 4 microswitches that are there then do the bathtub trick again. The other switches are all leaf ones and probably won't mind getting wet.

I've laid it out on this plastic sheet in more or less the same shape it occupies underneath the playfield. I've removed all the old target switches as I have new ones, and taken a stack of pictures of which wiring goes where (the manual will help too here if there is any confusion).

l10.jpg

Got the switch wiring all connected up on the new playfield and finished off the GI wiring too. Only mechs still to fit are the ramp divertor base which is up next, then the trough eject. The latter I'll leave a little as I need to juggle that around with the autolauncher to make it all fit, space is at a premium down in that corner.

l11.jpg

Next up is transferring over the coil / flasher wiring along with all the snubber boards and that monster flasher diode board.... onwards...

The second part is correct

I have 2 boys, they're 11 and 13. As for finding the time for the F14, we had a pretty hectic year at work in 2014 and I'm owed a bunch of time, so I took last week off plus a day or two this week. I also have a very understanding wife. That said I need to have the playfield done a couple of days before Christmas as I'm using our main dining table for the workshop. We have a dozen guests on Christmas Day that need to sit around it.....