This is fantastic! Thank you for all the hard work putting something like this out there for everyone to enjoy and to give some love to some older pins that need it. I just picked up a Meteor yesterday and have ordered the a nano, sparkfun wav board, and Roy G Bev's PCB and am really looking forward to putting it all together and trying this out for myself.

I see the install calling for using PC speakers. Has anyone done a more permanent speaker install? I have had luck in Arcade1UPs using the cheep-o amazon amplifiers. I am planning to pair one plugged into the service outlet with with either inexpensive speakers or exciters that I can hopefully mount inconspicuously in the head, and wire to the boot selector switch so that it toggles with the selection and minimizes any feedback present. (I included links below to what I have used in the past)
- 3.5mm to RCA https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071R4R5B8/ref=ewc_sw
- 2 Channel Amplifier https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C1Q1FPT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01
- Small 3W Speakers https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CHYIU26/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01
- Sound Exciter Pair https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EYEM8C/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_5

Lastly, once I get this up and running, I was thinking about changing some of the background music to pull in some of the Space Mountain queue music, since it feels sufficiently "Spacey" without pulling you into any one particular sci-fi franchise. I added some clips from youtube queued up to memorable parts below incase anyone else wants to go in the same direction.

Thanks for putting this video together! Great job with it!

I did see one thing that might be a bit nit picky, so I'll apologize ahead of time. It's by no means a knock on your video, but it looks like you might have a few cold solder joints on your A1, A5, A7, 5V, and VIN pins. It might be worth taking a minute to reflow those 5 pins to save some headache down the road.

Thanks again though. This is great for us who like to see the work in action.

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Hey I’m a mechanical engineer and my soldering skills show it, or lack there of

My RoyGBev board shows up late Saturday so I’ll get a chance to try my skills on Sunday

I’m the mean time I’ve been working on trying to get a sound system working that doesn’t change the look of the cabinet. I think I’ve settled on using a mini 2.1 amplifier that I can mount at the front of the cabinet and have access to adjust the volume from just inside the coin door. I’ve been surprised by the sound I can get out of 2 small 2” 5w speakers playing down through the vent in the head with the glass on. It acts like a large speaker cabinet with minimal effort, but it lacks low range. I’m tempted to maybe someday make small enclosure boxes like the old Capcoms used to great effect. I want to wire the 6” cabinet speaker into the toggle switch to change between the SB-300 in normal boot and the the subwoofer channel from the 2.1 amp. I need to also find a switched 12vdc power source, or conversely add a 120v ac switched power source to wire up an outlet for the wall wort that powers the small 2.1 amp.

Nothing against computer speakers. I hack them and use them on a lot of my other tinkering projects like my vitual pin cab or the counter top arcade I made for my nephews. I'm going to be making 2 of RoyGBev's boards, and that's probably how I'll do it for the other Meteor install I'm giving away.

For my own I'm doing a full restoration including new CPR playfield, so I'm trying to make it pretty and have fun at the same time

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Awesome suggestion! I have something similar in my virtual pin cab to handle turning the monitors on and off with the PC power button and it works great.

I think I'm going to start with PinballHelp 's suggestion to use a lamp cord hardwired to the transformer for now since it is cheep and easy, and I already have one

I got mine up and running late last night. Aside from one cold solder joint on the J3 jumper pins, the whole thing went off without a hitch. My whole set up is still a jumble if wires, which is okay since I'm going to be tearing it down soon for a playfield swap and full cabinet repaint.

For the audio, I finally landed on using an inexpensive 12V 3A 2.1 amplifier and am driving 2 small 8 ohm 5 watt 2" speakers in the head sitting on some home made spacer rings made from a small piece of 2x3 with a 2" opening cut using hole saw . I connected the 6.5" speaker in the cabinet to the ON/ON switch to toggle the input signal between the original line in from the SB-300 and the subwoofer channel from the amp which prevents any extraneous noise in either original or 2021 mode. The 2021 code sound is realty great in 2.1 channel sound

Anyways here is a video of the set up in action before it gets torn down for refurbishment. Thank you again DickHamill for this awesome creation!

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Does anyone know if there is an special encoding to the Wav files? I was trying to swap out some of the background music using the same file name and encoded some MP3s to wav files at 16 bit 44.1kHz, and it won't seem to play.

Thank you! Do you use any particular online converter? I tried https://online-audio-converter.com/, while it plays fine on windows VLC player, it doesn't work on the wav trigger

My Meteor is finished. Now time to start on Trident!

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I put in full leds through out when I redid it. Nice and bright and less heat.

My trident is in rough shape so it’ll be a few weeks before I get any games in on its. I should start a new restoration thread about it.

Hey sorry I missed this. I didn't use the exciters in my Meteor, but did use them in my Trident. Worked great for higher frequencies, and used the cabinet speaker as a subwoofer to round out the sound. Here is the post where I talk about it

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/trident-2020-restoration-/page/2#post-6401701

I really only switch back to the original code before people visit. That way after a game I can pull the "Check this out!" and show them how much better the game gets.

I enjoy both my set ups where I use a cheep 2.1 channel amp to drive the cabinet speaker as a sub and 2 small speakers. In my Meteor I put the speakers in the head, in my Trident I put exciters on the bottom of the cabinet on either side of the cash box to keep the wire run short. Both sound great, and were pretty inexpensive.

semicolin I thought I remember you mentioning something about that on here. Did you write it up anyplace? I’d love to check it out.

I think I showed how I do it in my original post on the BSOS meteor thread

+1 for using Audacity to edit the sounds on here. I swapped out some of the music files for background music sounds clips from Space Mountain (Disney Ride). It's awesome.

I think the only trick is when you save out files to use on the wav trigger, you have to make sure you save them as 16 bit PCM, not Float, or they won't play. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Glad you finally got a chance to try it out!

.100" (2.54mm) pitch female connector housing works for these
https://www.amazon.com/Dupont-Connector-620Pcs-2-54mm-Housing/dp/B07BJ6WXT3

Lots of opinions on what crimp tool to use that have been covered on here
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/whats-a-good-molex-connector-crimp-tool

I personally use this one
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007JLN93S

That definitely looks like a home owner hack. They probably broke an old faceted post and had no idea where to get another.

You could just edit the point values in the code. It would be a pretty easy update.

You could write new game code using the BSOS platform. There is a lot of documentation on the GitHub site for this project. The existing code from Meteor wouldn’t work.

Check your wiring. Sometimes people tie the two switches together to set it on free play