On the P-ROC IRC channel (Freenode: #p-roc, everybody's welcome), we recently discussed the possibility of hosting classes or a multi-day camp on custom pinball control systems (electronics and programming). It would be hosted by me and Adam Preble. I designed the P-ROC board and associated driver board system (PDBs), and Adam designed the pyprocgame software framework that a large portion of the custom machine designers are using for their projects.

We would also pull in some pinball royalty (designers, programmers, etc) to do talks on various other aspects of pinball development.

I know John Popadiuk discussed hosting a design school last year with some time allocated to the technical side of things, but after discussions with John, I'm not sure when or if it will happen, and we want to get people the training they need.

The general format we're thinking about is:
- 1 day on control system hardware, electronics, wiring
- 1-2 days on programming

Days would be broken up into lectures, labs (actually implementing what is taught), and sessions with special guests.

If you're planning a custom machine build, please vote in the poll above. If you have specific suggestions (length of camp, desired topics, etc) or want to express significant enthusiasm for this idea, please comment below.

Thanks!
- Gerry Stellenberg
http://www.multimorphic.com

Thank you for your thoughts, and good luck with your project!

Good point, dealing with different experience levels in any kind of generic class could be a challenge. That said, one really cool thing about the P-ROC, PDBs, and software framework pyprocgame that's been proven to us over and over again is you don't have to be a high level engineer or master programmer to use them. In fact, we have many customers who have no electronics or programming experience at all, yet they're still able to get up and running very quickly.

So there really wouldn't be many prerequisites besides simply being willing to learn. I think we could jump into wiring and configuring the PDB and P-ROC very quickly, even with inexperienced hardware folks. We would show people what to consider when planning their machine and then run through some basic configurations. During the 'lab' time, we could spend more time with each person answering individual questions.

The programming classes could be similar. pyprocgame comes with a skeleton game (starter.py), which provides a generic game into which people can add their specific rules. So while we'd probably spend some time on the low level, getting started details, we could quickly jump into the guts of game programming in a way where just about everybody could be successful.

- Gerry
http://www.multimorphic.com