Need some suggestions on PF switches.

http://bayareaamusements.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=SW-515-5138-00

http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=1772

Other options?

EDIT: Found these later in my search. Seem like the best choice so far. All lefts? All Rights? 75/25? 50/50?

http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=535
http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=536

Anyone looking tp sell just their PROC board? ALMOST done with my Snux board assembly. Figured I would reuse one if someone was done with their's. Just need the PROC for now. No driver boards.

Got my 3D printed Gamer of Thrones wall lift wired up and working. It is a bit slow at the moment, not sure how much I can speed the stepper motors up.
However I will likely play an animation/video when the ball enters the lift and then eject the next ball into the shooter so the player doesn't have to wait for the lift if they don't want to.
Also need to clean up a bit more of the support material that was harder to get off.

Next step is to build the ice wall that it mounts to and stores the locked balls.

Don't think Id be able to do half of what I want for my pinball machine without a 3D printer!

guh? You're making one even though Stern made one?

I'd suggest looking into a less fine pitched thread

It's alive!!!

http://www.scottdanesi.com/?p=733

The game looks awesome man. You are plowing through it!!

Looking sweet!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Will that cap board help prevent GI lights from dimming when the flippers fire? This is one of those things that bugs me a lot on machines. I'd love to have a solution/option out there to take care of that.

Sure thing. A while back Koen from Dutch Pinball created a tool that assists in building lighshows for pinball machines. He did a presentation about it a few years back. It is a really cool tool and I think a bunch of other manufacturers have made similar tools based off of what he made. It's currently proprietary, but there are a bunch of others in the homebrew community making similar pieces of software.

Hope that clarifies.

Dimming GI is not an issue with these new games. I have actually never seen a homebrew machine with this problem. My filter cap board it to ensure the coils can pull the current they need to remain strong during heavy usage. The GI is in no way tied to this voltage. All of my GI is running off the 5 volt line of my PD-LED boards.

To be fair, stern forgot to think about whether they should, not if they could when they made that monster.

i would really like to use the lightshow software Maybe i can bribe Koen by sending pics of my new machine J/k lol

looks like a russian user has spammed the forum:
http://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:WikiForum&forum=1

Any suggestions on displays to use. I want to mount it to the existing backbox board. SO that give me a little over 1"of clearance. With my lights installed I have about 20" horizontally and maybe 12" vertically. Looking to go more or less for a tractional DMD size or maybe with SEGA style larger size since I'll have the room.

Seems a laptop display will fit in there fairly well (a la Color DMD or DMD Extender style). Is everyone doing pretty much that? Getting a laptop display and buying a controller board?

You can get the parts you need here if you want to use a standard laptop display.

http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=4175

Thanks! So then looks like I need to get a 12v power supply too in addition to the full kit. Any idea how many amps I need AND I don't see dimensions on that page. I wanted to make sure it'll fit in my space. Oh and how thick the whole thing is...hahahah hopefully you or someone knows

2 amps @ 12v is plenty.

The whole assembly with the cable attached to the back is about 1.2 inches thick.

Cool. Thanks! Might have to do a little cutting out or the light backboard as I think I have 1" clearance now. But cutting isn't all that bad. Thanks again!!!!!! Maybe just cut where the cable goes or something

that display will fit in a standard height speaker panel, and have clearance. You can use an opening of 13x6.5 which will keep in the standard height and fit between speakers, that is with a half inch margin on top and bottom for the brackets/moldings. It will hide a little bit at the top and bottom of the display, but can use a resolution of 2 effectively in the opening, I run one machine like that at 192x96 and another at 900x450

Well I am working on a update for Road Kings so it's a little odd with the all in one backglass. Planning on making my own BG but there is still the stock light board. Which I am going to modify or make a new one. But yeah, I think this will work well! Thanks!

Fixed! I knew when people were requesting a forum it would only be a spam magnet...

So, without reading 32 pages, did we ever determine the minimum parts to get a Whitewood up and flipping? Anybody offering a kit yet?

$40 each flipper mech
$40 each sling mech
$90 4-ball trough
$14 pair of lane guides
$15 1/2 x 24" x 48" plywood
$20 - set of playfield hangers
$20 - OPP driverboards
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507097900/open-pinball-project-open-source-pinball-hardware
$30 - 48v 7A power supply off ebay
$1 - 5v from usb
$1 usb cord
$3 - 6 posts for slings
$2 - bands for slings
------------------------------------
$356

All of this implies you are capable of cutting basic shapes out of wood for trough, shooter lane, and can print out a template for your layout of parts. Also that you already have a cabinet to put it in, and it has a shooter rod.

I'm reworking a new playfield layout, and I'm seeing how many things I can 3d print so I don't have to buy mech assemblies.

If your buying new, I'd put it closer to 5-600 bucks, but the best part is you can, buy it as you go, or save some by salvaging parts from a well worn populated playfield.

Even if you buy the complete flipper mech from Marco (50-80 bucks each), you still need bats and bushings, buttons, switches, screws and bolts.

As you work out the layout, other things to consider, switches, steel wire or banding for guides, inserts, sockets, bulbs, wire (lots of it and in different colors), pop bumper, drop target, spinner etc... as you design. I personally would add 2-3 pop bumpers in as standard for testing. The rest you can mock up with foam, but ultimately you'll want to test hitting and ejecting from a pop bumper to tune placement, and you can't do that without an actual bumper.

What's nice is you don't need to buy it all at once if your on a budget.

If you buy a populated playfield, you can get a great 'starter' set of little bits and pieces, but you might push it pretty close to new prices if the parts are worn and need to be rebuilt.

I'm keeping track of mine and will tally up when I do my cuts in the fall when I can get back to work on it. I'll share here.

I wouldn't suggest this, unless it's a modern pin. I salvaged a stern memory lane, and ended up only salvaging the ball trough (which I'm now changing anyway), so I feel slightly guilty about that. The flipper mechs were big and bulky, the sling mechs were multiple pieces which were too painful to line up. Having modular sub-assemblies makes it much easier to lay them out (hole for opening, couple mount holes).

Yes.. this. It's not usually worth it.

flipper mechs are $40 from pinball life.. and you're right I forgot the bats and rubbers aren't included. Buttons should be with a cabinet. Switches aren't necessary for a flipping whitewood, that implies code (which doesn't happen until you have a good layout). screws are negligible in cost.

Agree, think it depends on the pin your salvaging from, I'll have to compare more between pinball life and marco, wonder if the coil size has anything to do with it, or if its patent costs that varies parts costs.

I can't make head nor tails of the Open Pinball Project. His website has nothing about where to order or use these driver boards. Mostly blogs about him building a machine.

What does that leave us with? Fast? P-ROC?

He's always pushed for "oh just download the files off github and assemble". However he had a kickstarter that sold 6-8 board packages, and he's trying to get fully assembled boards up on your favorite mod site soon.

The github is still tough for me to navigate, but this project was the first time I used the site. There is documentation on there for building the boards and how to assemble them onto the dev boards (the long red one). On the MPF docs site there is a writeup for how to set up your config file to work with OPP boards.

3d printed lower end proof of concept. I dont have a coil mounted yet, and probably need to make a few slight adjustments after assembling, but not bad for a first try:

I do have a scoop printed, I just didn't show it mounted for the purpose of showing the concept. Everything you see printed is at fast speed, and no support. I think parts printed fairly well considering.

Very nice!!!! Basic parts we all could use!

I'm currently hip deep in building a game with the OPP boards and going back and forth with Hugh on the details. Once I get my game flipping, I'll do a whole HOW-TO write-up on Pinball Makers, in English, to clear up a lot of the questions.

I was part of the Kickstarter so I got all the boards and parts from him - however, no one is selling the boards, but I just used his open source files and submitted them to a PCB builder (seeedstudio was cheapest) and I'm getting 20 more boards delivered for only $14.

His system is actually very clever - it uses a $4 PSoC board as the controller, which is what you plug into your computer via USB, and then you can mix and match up to four switch, lamp or solenoid boards on a single controller. They are then connected via a custom serial connection to other boards in a chain.

Each controller supports up to 32 switches, 32 lamps or 16 solenoids via four "wing" boards. So you could have 8 switch on one wing, 16 lamps on two other wings and 4 solenoids on the final wing. Or however you want to mix and match.

The repo has a complete BoM for each wing that you can basically cut and paste into Mouser or Digikey to order the parts.

Since I don't have mine working yet I can't comment beyond that, but if you use Mission Pinball to control it, it handles all the configuration of the controllers, you just have to put the code on them.

It's more work than P-ROC, but I did my entire machine for less than $100.

I'd be VERY interested to see the costs on the trough, the Pinball Life one is almost more than I paid for my whole machine!

Aaron from Fast emailed me today to say he's putting together a kit that will be what most people want to get up and running. He's supposed to email me tomorrow with more details.

any details what that includes? boards, components, a whitewood starter?

Here's what Aaron wrote me.....
....

The bundling options that we have coming will be on the store tomorrow night, but I wanted to give you a heads up.

We are adding a FAST Starter Bundle that gets you the base requirements and also includes all the connectors, pins, network cables, power supplies, mounting brackets in addition to the boards needed. You can still buy the boards and connectors separately, but for new users, this is what people have been asking for. It includes everything but wire. We will have wire bundles through a partner website soon though.

FAST Starter Bundle
----------------------------

FAST Nano Controller w/ pins, connectors, cables, mounting brackets, etc.

FAST I/O 3208 (32 switches, 8 Drivers) w/ pins, connectors, cables, mounting brackets, etc.

FAST Power Pack (FAST Power Filter Board, 48v Supply, 12/5v Supply) w/ pins, connectors, cables, mounting brackets, etc.

20 FAST RGB LEDs

FAST T-SHIRT (free add in on all order $599 or more) Men's M-XL

----------------------------
$599 + Shipping

We have gone back and forth on the bundling, but enough people have asked for a "put everything I need in one box" option that I figured it was time.

All the boards will have a modification in the shopping cart that includes all the pins, connectors, cables, mounting brackets needed for that specific board. For those savvy to all the pin and connector options, you end up saving a little money getting them in bulk. But the response from those who counted wrong has been "I would gladly pay to get it right and not have to make multiple orders from multiple places and still possibly get it wrong." We listened.

Nothing worse than finally having some time to work on your pinball project and find out something is missing. We all have busy lives and that is such a heart breaker!

We will likely do other bundles when we release the FAST RGB DMD ($299).

Wiring will be through a 3rd party. It was just so much shipping cost sending it to us and then sending it off with an order. Wire is heavy!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

On the topic of a whitewood starter, I would love to get some opinion on what I want to do with a Prototype Whitewood.

What I thought would be slick was:

- Standard 20.25x46" playfield with the "lower third" cut including:
--- WPC Style Trough
--- shooter lane with switch cut
--- Flippers
--- slingshots
--- inlane and outlane switches
--- wood cut to size for side rails and back.

This part is pretty straight ahead. Where it gets more personal is insert placement. I thought that perhaps the inlane / outlanes could have a standard insert placement. Maybe one for "shoot again?"

The idea would be that this could line right up with the FAST Starter Kit mentioned above. We have new FAST Ball Trough Opto boards out soon that are setup to plug right into the FAST I/O boards which fit any WPC style trough. So if you took the Starter Kit, the ball trough and then a set of compatible flippers, switches, slingshots, etc., you could have all you need to start up a game (well, a very boring game!) but it would be a start.

The hope would be that we could help people get to the fun stuff faster. I don't want these to be really expensive wood, because you are most likely going to go through a couple turns in your design. But definitely something free of knots and voids and that will sand smooth. I would forgo any clearcoat for this pass.

I will be visiting the shop who we will be working with to be able to make these prototype whitewoods on either Monday or Wednesday this week. Our goal is to make it so that people can get a prototype whitewood "lower third" ready more or less "off the shelf." The next step would be to have templates that we can share around that could let designers create more detailed playfields. Adding inserts, pops, toys, etc. and be able to send them in to get cut and shipped flat pack style.

The most important thing is that we DONT want to be in the business of "finished" playfields. Just trying to find ways that we can pass on the work we are doing on our own projects to others who want to make pinball. Get over those daunting first steps and get to doing that stuff that inspired you to make a pinball machine in the first place.

Did I miss anything? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Just a heads up, Pinball life now sells spinner sub-assemblies (with no lower components):
http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=4118

He didn't really announce it, I just happened to notice it in the homebrew section. I just picked one up today to play with. Loves me some spinners.

Hey Aaron, I have a suggestion on this. I think this is a bit too much to have out of the box. Cutting a playfield template that will make most people happy is going to be very hard. There are all sorts of different configurations in the things that you mentioned. For instance, what if someone wants a Stern style trough instead of a WMS style? What about flipper gap width? There are also 2 different plastic lane guides that can be used easily, but some may want to use wire lane guides. What about the length of the shooter lane groove? These are all things that I personally decided when I cut my first playfield for Total Annihilation. I think if you are wanting to make a custom game, it's kinda all in or nothing. It is not very hard to cut an Italian bottom using standard woodworking tools. I know Josh Kugler did an AMAZING job on his first whitewoods for Casino and The Kuglers and did not use a CNC at all. There are also many many others that have cut their own playfields and not used a CNC. I know a bunch of them will be at Expo this year.

Sorry if this seems harsh, but it really is just making more work for yourself and your CNC guy. I guess if you and him want to make the blank whitewood customizable, it could be cool, but honestly, I think people are going to want to do that themselves. You are opening a Pandora's box that although would be nice for some, would not be worth the time investment on your part.

I could also be wrong. Would not be the first time.

--Scott

I hear you. Not harsh at all.

I have been meeting people who want to build games for fun or as a family project who aren't already deep in it like we are. People coming from different backgrounds and, for many, this is their first time doing at least one aspect of the whole project. Not everyone is compelled to read a dozen blogs and hope the bought the right ball guides to go with the right measurements, etc, etc. The idea that you could take a partially cut whitewood, a bunch of pinball parts selected to match it, some pinball electronics and some software and follow some instructions and get to something meaningful is very interesting to some. Those of us who have been around the block with playfields want to dial it in just the way we want for our game, but others are stuck at "how do I even start?!" aren't at a place yet where they are shifting their flipper placement fractions of an inch to make the shots exactly the way they want.

I certainly don't expect anyone already building pinball games to have any interest in what I am talking about here. I don't have any better photos handy, but take this playfield I started years ago:

IMG_5910_(resized).jpg

Take out the few random posts on the left, but this is the basic idea. If you are making your first pinball game, and you can get everything wired up and put together to this point, now you are ready to get creative. Your power supplies are all setup and tested. Your FAST hardware is all setup, wired and tested. Your mechanical parts are all mounted. You connect your PC and run some FAST Protocol test commands to make sure your hardware and mechanical parts are all setup correctly, while you download and install MPF. You drop in the config file provided which matcher the playfield kit you put together, start MPF...

Press Start, Player 1, ball launches.

This is as far as you can take this wild idea. What I described above can be turned into a step by step guide that gets a new pinball builder up and running and ready to get creative. I am convinced that if you can put together some IKEA furniture and setup a high-end stereo system, you can do this.

Along the way, you are learning. How to safely setup your power supplies and test them. How to use a multimeter! (Believe me, this is new to some!) Cut and strip wire. Crimp your first pins and make your first connectors. Solder well (ok, well enough). Make a terminal connection to your FAST hardware and test your switches, drivers and LEDs before you even get to high level software.

At the point you are running MPF you know that everything up to this point is rock solid and tested. You don't want to be wondering if you hooked up you hardware wrong while you are playing with a pinball framework for the first time. I promise any newbie that if they went to the MPF forum with questions and started it out with "I am building my first game. I have started with a FAST Starter Kit and and that prototype playfield kit and completed all the steps and tested 100%. But what I am trying to do with my game is make something that does (wild & original pinball concept) but I cant seem to get (cool hardware/software wizardy) to work. Can anyone help?" you just saved Brian, Jan and Quinn from having to ask a dozen qualifying questions.

Will their first game be awesome? Highly doubt it. If it is, I am jealous. But it got them started. Maybe their next playfield is made by hand, using the whitewood they started with as a template. Move the parts from one to another, start again.

Like I said above, this is not going to be the kind of thing that anyone already making pinball is going to have any interest in. But some of the people doing it for the first time, have asked for something like this.

I built the Kids Pinball game that is at the NW Pinball Show each year:

Photo Credit: Pinball News

It's a metal surface that let's kids place a bunch of magnetic toys, ball guides, flashing lights, etc. in different places around the playfield to make their own game. Not a single kid has ever complained, "aww man, you didn't let me setup all the common parts and connect the power and stuff!" They are too busy putting their ideas on the playfield and trying it out to see if it is fun... You know, doing the part that all of us who want to build pinball are drawn to.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Wow. Looking through old photos for the examples above, I spotted some gems!

My First Pinball game design mockup. It is a ski mountain theme.

Cold Rush Mockup

Trying out spray foam carving as a prototyping method. (It sucked)

Spray Foam!

Early, early vision for a pinball building kit!

Ancient Days!

First clear coat and shooter lane channel cut.

Shiny!

This last picture is how I usually go about working on a playfield. This would be a "lower 3rd" setup and flipping and then I start shuffling stuff around. See what I like.

Early MC Layout

Thank you for indulging my trip down memory lane!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Every now and then my youngest asks about the Minecraft game. Any newer pictures floating around from that?

No new pics to share right now. I just got word back last week from the folks at Minecon that their space filled up and bringing a Minecraft Pin prototype wouldn't work out this year. It's a bit of a stress relief though, honestly. I will take pics of the game with me in the hopes that I can run into the right people that let me pull the trigger on an officially licensed game. My kids would be oh so happy.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

I agree. I guess we just have not seen what demand this would bring since it is not readily available. I would be curious to see where this goes if Aaron decides to go this route.
--Scott

So glad there is so much building going on. Really inspires me!!! I laid out a very reasonable goal of having my game shooting by Xmas. My summer got crazy busy but after selling a few games and finishing some projects I'm back at it. Thanks in part to this thread for giving me ideas!

For those that really want to experiment with shot layouts and such without having to do any of the foundational work, the P3 will be a great option (available soon). In fact, a good number of P3 pre-orderers have signed up for that exact reason. In addition to having a basic and completely working bottom end, the upper playfield interface was designed to allow people/designers to easily experiment with new shot layouts and concepts. Further, by building a new upper playfield to try out your idea(s), you're not sacrificing that lower end. If it doesn't work out as planned, make another upper playfield and swap it in.

The P3 also provides functional software (existing games) and a full development kit that handles all of the low level functionality needed to run a game. In that sense, it fully delivers our vision of providing the foundational work for a pinball machine (hardware and software) and allows designers to just "implement the fun stuff" (game specific rules).

The biggest argument against buying a P3 for developing custom games concepts would be the cost, but you'd also be getting a state of the art platform machine with working, complete games like Lexy Lightspeed, Cannon Lagoon, ROCs, etc, and you can swap those back in when you want to play an existing game instead of working on your custom game. Truth be told, most custom game builder spend more than the price of a P3 developing their custom games, at least those that compare in complexity to modern machines from existing manufacturers. Further, if you develop your game on the P3 and decide you want to sell it commercially, your path to market will be much much easier than building a traditional game, the cost of your game will be significantly less than a traditional game, and you'll already have an installed base of P3 owners who will likely be eager to expand their game libraries by buying your game.

Ultimately it comes down to how much work you want to do yourself (relative to prototyping, hardware, software, production, marketing, etc). Many want to do absolutely everything themselves, whereas many don't want to do any of the foundational work. We used to offer P-ROC starter kits like Aaron is proposing (though without the connectors and crimps), but the market spoke. We actually had 3 different starter kit variations in an attempt to appeal to designers of machines with different complexities, but most people still opted for custom board combinations and specific power supply specs. Relative to a starter whitewood, based on experience with the majority our customers, a blank playfield with a pre-installed lower end isn't that helpful to new custom machine builders. They still have to route it to install their own mechs, and at that point it's no big deal to include the lower end in the CNC data. Having flippers, trough, and control system pre-installed will actually get in the way initially instead of helping. Testing top-side shot layouts is far less important than most beginner designers seem to think. It's pretty easy to judge flow and shot accessibility with simple 2D drawing tools. Send anybody in the P-ROC forums or slack chat channel a playfield layout, and we'll be able to tell you with almost 100% certainty where your issues will be (not because we have any unique skills. We've just been through the process so many times). It's when you add in the complexity of posts and mechs that require drilling and routing that positional dependencies start to require minor corrections.

- Gerry
http://www.pinballcontrollers.com
http://www.multimorphic.com