So is there anyway to tie one of these to the magnet trigger? Ideally I want him to only move when the magnet grabs the ball but not sure how to achieve this on Spike2.

Could you not use something like a voltage step down unit and tap into the magnet cabling? Basically when the magnet was energized it would send 5V to Grogu to activate him.

Free animated Grogu with purchase of a Mando LE

Machine - For Sale

The Mandalorian (LE) with Animated Grogu mod (York show) Archived

HUO - Documented (Home Used Only) - “Animated, motion Grogu mod is installed as well as the Cara Dune shooter lane ramp decal. Latest code installed that adds the fun challenge mode. External powered subwoofer reall...”

2021-10-03

Harpers Ferry, WV

PoMC

11,300 (OBO)

Archived after: 6 days

Viewed: 726 times

Status: Didn't sell to Pinsider

Give it til Friday, progress is actively being made.

btw, you could easily do this with a simple PNP transistor.

Hello all,

Just following up on my post from ~week ago. I have installed my interactive Grogu on a Mando pro in the Columbus OH, area. I've decided to start another thread on it so as not to confuse those who have followed the acejedi approach. And as most people here have, it seems to make the most sense. Here is the thread if you are interested...

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/interactive-child-for-the-mandalorian

Yea, this has already been done in my version of the child described in the link above.

Cool, although I don’t think this thread counts as an “acejedi-specific” thread. In fact, if I may be so bold, I find his approach lacking in some very significant ways that could use improvement. However, he showed us how to chop the doll in half and make it stay put, so he deserves as much credit as anyone.

tl;dr - I’m not sure your thing warrants its own thread, and it honestly smacks a bit of shameless self-promotion.

Please, all Grogu modding should be in this thread only.

Been working on this in fits and starts, trying to document the majority of it on stream aside from minor things like soldering, etc. Haven’t had a solid block of multiple hours to devote to it yet but I’m very pleased with the progress. http://www.twitch.tv/insanity_falls if you wanna follow along, I think out loud a lot and explain what I’m doing so you might accidentally learn a bit of electronics along the way!

So has anyone managed to hook it up to the magnet yet? So he only activates when the magnet does or would that cause problems due to the magnet pulsing and not being a constant signal/trigger?

I have tested my Grogu with the magnet in Star Trek so I am reasonable certain it will work fine in mando. He would activate when the magnetic force is first detected. The microcontroller is programmed to run the child movement for a certain time period. I have only played the pro, how long can the ball be held by the magnet during gameplay?

From memory it's held for 1-2 seconds then shaken wildy for a couple more then released.

OK, thanks for that, it sounds like there is no concern about the ball being held too long while the movement runs.

As best I can tell, the magnet stays active until another switch is validated. I’m about to get to work on mine again, I’ll pull the glass off and test for ya while I’m at it.

Struggling with the wiring of this. My Grogu continuously moves, whether there is light or not. The 12v on the step down converter goes to the CN1 ticket node on the board. The 5v on the step down goes to the ir board. The wires on the ir board go to Grogu. Any suggestions on the wiring would be a huge help!

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Did you try turning the sensitivity screw.

But your wiring looks wrong to me, or at least that’s not how I do it. You should have a power and ground wire coming into the side where the sensor wire is, that goes to game 12v. instead, I just see a black and green wire. On the other side, you should connect to the voltage regulator and then to the grogu.

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Do you mind sending a pic of yours? That would be really helpful.

Or better yet, post it here so all can see. Thanks

I saw this new moving Grogu today at the store. It actually has a control knob it can hold and raise. It’s over 9” tall though. I wonder how this one would be to mod.

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You can buy both of these boards for under $20 from Amazon and here's a schematic if you want to change anyway you get your mod. The way I did it was I used the low-level trigger and ran one wire to any rollover switch I chose I chose the C letter. Put it in the middle lug you can program the board to run for however long you want giving it has a trigger I have grogu running for 4 seconds on my pro whenever C is rolled over. I have him dialed to about 5.5-6 volts using a regulator. You can find a 12 volt source from the ticket dispenser plug on the cabinet node. I did it this way so he's not constantly running using a light sensor. If you are letting him run using a light sensor he is not going to last long at all, especially if you don't regulate him down.

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Magnet update: it stays active until a rollover is validated or until it no longer detects the ball, at which point it awards “D” no matter where the ball ends up going.

Also, you could get the 5v@1A via the USB ports on the CPU node board without having to fiddle with buck converters. You might also be able to get it off the pins of CN8, but I don’t know how much current draw those can handle. Would have to do some testing.

Just wrapped install with AceJedi's instructions and Lermod's black box. First attempt at soldering and putting him back together after connecting the wires took some doing, but overall really straightforward and works great. Such an awesome addition

THIS IS THE WAY

Are you guys putting a 2A fuse inline as suggested in AceJedi’s write up? I tried a 2A and 5A and blew both. I’ve got it wired up as shown in post 171 above, with the fuse inline before the relay board.

Hey folks, I got my kit today and have been playing with options.

I found that the light sensor does not play well with Pinstadiums. They cause the light sensor to always trigger.

I am also a little concerned with the C-H-I-L-D inserts as they are seemingly constantly on during attract. It is not abnormal for me to power up games and leave them on for hours.

This concerns me with wear/tear on the servos/motors of the doll (thoughts?)

So to get around the pinstadium issue, I decided to wire a wedge socket in parallel to a light and tape the light sensor to a bulb in that socket. This is all under the PF. I decided to use the child flasher thinking it would be used far less. It works, but what I didn't realize is that the child spot is almost always on during gameplay. (It shuts of here and there for a few seconds like when the ball enters the upper PF or during end of ball animation)

And attract mode will loop through the flashers every so often so I still get movement during attract mode (but less than if I were to use an insert).

The child insert would be great for gameplay, but I'd then have Grogu moving more during attract.

I'd love to hear other's thoughts on this.

Costco...

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Attract mode is awesome with it moving. That's the idea of the attract mode....to look attractive.

Anyway, sold my Mando LE with moving Grogu at the York show, so I'm outta here

Installed the Lermods grogu and could use some advice. I apologize in advance for my lack of electronics terminology.

Maybe somebody can help me understand how the electronics are supposed to work in theory. When the light sensor triggers the circuit board, is grogu supposed to run through a timed loop? Does a "re-flash" (trigger) of the sensor restart the loop immediately? Here are my main issues:

#1 In attract mode my game sounds like it has its turn signal on. The circuit board in the black Lermods box has what I'm thinking is a relay that has a very audible click to it, is this normal? It is super distracting in attract mode.

#2 With the constant insert flashing in Attract mode grogu's animatronics are like a very short choppy loop. Ive played with using the child insert as well as the child letters and can't get it to smooth out to where seems like grogu isn't just spazzing out in attract mode. Ive also played with the sensitivity on the board without finding a sweet spot. Anybody have any thoughts on how to not implement him during attract mode?

#3 Getting him positioned is a chore and half. Seems like you may need to be very careful about where he ends up. His arm repeatedly applying pressure against the plastic ramp is worrisome. The only way I've found him to be reasonably positioned is with the ramp running through in the crook of his neck. Trouble is, between the head and neck movements he's constantly repositioning himself. Anybody else having these struggles?

edit**
Gonna try to embed some videos...

With the cover on the black box and the glass on you can barely hear that clicking, but the clicking is normal, it's just the relay going on and off when the sensor is activated. During game play you can't hear anything.

The movement of your grogu in your video looks pretty normal and I think he's moving well. the left arm hitting the ramp is nothing to be concerned about, its not like it can be stripped or do any harm.

Getting him positioned is the hardest part. One thing you can try to do is trim a little more plastic off the bottom of his body so he sits just a little lower in the back position. just pull back his coat open to expose the plastic body and either dremel or snip off a bit more of the bottom.

In case it helps anyone, a zip tie did the trick, secures him and hides well.

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Did it go around his body or just his arm?

Just his wrist.

I haven't had issues with him moving so far but that's a great idea. I'll remember this if he ever decides to wiggle out of position.

It also has me wishing there was a way to swap it so his right arm is the one that moves since it's not obscured by a ramp. Looking at the mechanism taking it apart I don't think there's any way to make that happen, but would certainly be nice to give him full range of motion...

nope, impossible to switch arms, but I agree would be nice to have the option.

Thanks for posting all this information here. My buddy is figuring out how to do it and is going to help get mine going to

In the meantime I painted up my necklace. I’ll add some leds soon too.

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Nice work. What paint do you use to get the chrome?

Painted it all black. Then dry brushed metallic grey, then I hit the highlights with a product called rub N buff.

This day has been a long time coming. Fan of the show long before pinball machine was announced. I have had an animated grogu in my possession since last December, Knowing damn well he eventually would get chopped and shopped to one day find his way into a mando pin. Yesterday was that day! (Also gave him a paint makeover while he was apart)Thanks Joe for the tireless efforts you put into the tear down instructions and to Lermods for an extremely simple wiring solution! digging this game even more now,can't wait for my grandkids to see grogu in action.

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I installed DPannell’s Grogu mod today on my Mando Premium. I really like this because it triggers off specific game events. Here are some videos of game play triggering with the upper playfield diverter, the child magnet and movement from the left upper ramp gate.

I want to thank Acejedi, Lermods, PoMC, Dpannell and everyone else who has helped bring a moving child to Mandalorian.

Very nice result!!

Is dpannel selling his mos now? I might have missed the memo.

Same. I love mine already with just randomly triggering off the C insert, but it WOULD be cool for it to fire off of certain events if that's what Dpannel's adding

Lermods Any idea when the full Grogu kit might be back in stock?

Error on our website, they are in stock now, sorry and thanks for the heads up.

https://lermods.com/shop/ols/products/the-mandalorian-animated-interactive-grogu

Who is selling the add on to trigger with magnet ? I don’t like it running all the time in attract mode

I agree on the running all the time thing, it's a bad idea.

if you take one these Grogu toys apart, you'll see it isn't made for the long haul. It's a cheap toy, designed for 4 year old kids. The whole mech is flimsy plastic at best. So i don't want it running all the time either.

I bought a Grogu at Costco for $50 and took it apart. I removed the internal board and discarded it. I'm in the process of hooking it up to a Gottlieb pop bumper driver board (set for a 10 second pulse by changing a resistor), directly to the Grogu motor. Then i can use a playfield switch to trigger the movement of the Grogu through the Gottleib PBDB. I'm not quite done with the whole thing, but it looks like it will be the answer i'm looking for. Of course your mileage will vary...

Oooo id like to get in on this!

I believe you are referring to my version of the child. It is triggered by game events, one of them is the child magnet that invokes "the force" movement. It is not an "add on" to the acejedi approach. It is driven by a PCB/microcontroller that I developed. I created a separate thread linked below to avoid confusion.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/interactive-child-for-the-mandalorian

Refer to my post here #171 under 20 bucks with Amazon and you can trigger it on any rollover(I chose C-lane) for any amount of time you want.

I have mine running off the child insert on the left orbit. It will run in attract mode, which I like, but using the child insert, it’s nice that it coincides with the callout “go see the child” and then he starts moving. Originally, I had it triggering off one of the letters and I felt that was too much and too random.

Having taken apart many of these, I don’t find the quality to be particularly cheap. The motor, which is all we reuse, seems fairly decent and while I can’t speak much for longevity as I’ve only been running mine a few months, it’s still going strong and I have no reports of any failing.

As you say, your mileage may vary and it’s interesting to see others come up with alternatives to suit what they want.