A couple of people have asked for an update on this project. General summary is that things are going well with no major issues. I am at least 5 weeks out from having something to send out to my first play testers. More details for the curious;
1) I have been play testing quite a bit. Like a dummy I haven't kept an official record of # of plays, but it is at least one hundred and counting. The good news, nothing has broken and the mechanical bits continue to work exactly as expected. This is important as I wasn't sure how the material or design would hold up to pinball use. So far, so good. I think I can call the physical design pretty much done. If I get a chance I might try to downsize the servo used. I think the one I am using now is overkill.
2) It rises correctly 90% of the time. 
For the remaining 10% my trigger logic gets confused by events and scenarios other than the start of the Cross MB. I have some coding work ahead to fix this. It never gets stuck in the wrong state, meaning it will right itself during normal play. It is only confused temporarily. That is good news. Also it goes down 100% correctly, so that is also good news.
3) I am redesigning the PCB for compactness and to ease assembly. I need to finish the deisgn, send it out for fab and then retest. This will be my long pole lead time. This is probably 4-6 weeks out (~2.5 weeks just waiting for boards to comeback). If I screw something up, it will tack on more weeks.
4) I am still not set on where the board will mount. I had a a good plan, but then realized part of the stock harness that plugs into my board doesn't look like it will reach. There is still more fiddling here to figure it out, but it's good activity while I wait for PCBs to come back.
5) More play testing. My plan right now is once I am happy with the above, I'll find a couple willing local MetPro owners to be first testers. I want more test time on this to feel better about it.
O'fallon, MO
Regina, SK
