I've recently started putting together a website to document some of the EM pinball related stuff I've been building for Maker Faires for a while now. The idea is to use pinball to get people interested in how things work. It's been fairly popular at the Faires. I hope some of you enjoy it too.

Here's a sample:

The Baseball Game

http://markgibson.zenfolio.com/fun-with-pinball

/Mark

Thanks for the kind words. They're very much appreciated.
One section of the website features a few original games built from scratch like this one:

The Horse Racing Game

They're not typical pinball machines, but they are built from EM pinball parts to show how they work together. There's also a video for each game showing details and how it's played.

/Mark

I've added a bunch of new video to my web site. Now every piece from the exhibit has a demonstration video. Some are simple demonstrations of how the thing works; others are more in depth to explain what's going on with slow motion, annotation, etc. (like the flippers, pop bumper and score motor videos).

http://markgibson.zenfolio.com/fun-with-pinball

More to come...

/Mark

Thanks for the feedback and for taking the time to look through the site. It's a little bit out in the weeds from the pinball main stream but I'm glad some find it interesting.

/Mark

For future reference I sprung for the domain name to avoid the clunky URL. You can now find it with more new content at

www.funwithpinball.com

For those who are unfamiliar, highlights of the website are at:

www.funwithpinball.com/highlights

/Mark

Hi Bruce.

Thanks for going through the website. All of the small boards and games are powered by EM pinball transformers that are either off camera or hidden behind other, more interesting mechanisms. The clock has a transformer added in the head to drive the EM devices and a wall wart to drive the arduino.

All of the small boards have a screw terminal block in each of the back corners. 24v and 6v busses run between the terminal blocks on each board with fuses for the devices on the board. A pair of 2 conductor wires runs off the board from the back left corner to connect to the neighboring board. The idea is that each of the small boards is self contained and modular so they can be strung together in any order in an arbitrarily long string. On one end is a transformer with a matching terminal block that drives power to the whole string.

Here's a closer look at one board tied to a transformer.

Transformer 1 (resized).jpg
Transformer 2 (resized).jpg
Transformer 3 (resized).jpg

When they're set up at a Maker Faire or other venue I usually string 4-6 boards together on each transformer, depending on the layout of the tables. The modular design allows me to group them any way I want, or to remove one if there's a problem. If you do an image search on google for "fun with pinball" (in quotes) you'll find photos of what it looks like in public.

The games all have their own transformers built into the game. In fact the horse race and baseball games each have two transformers because I need 6v, 24v and 50v to drive parts from various manufacturers. Each of the games also has a terminal block so I can drive some of the small boards from them if I need to.

/Mark

As part of my recent trip to the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show I gave a seminar about the Fun With Pinball back story. For those who might want a little context:

/Mark