I have been in the hobby for a while and I am starting to attempt to build my own...
This will be a EM style pinball with modern controls. Simple pinball for starting in to homebrew. No displays, no sound (only chimes)
I have started a white wood, and am getting ready to start ordering controls.
Would love some input from the guys who have done this already!

Here are some concerns-
1. Thinking of going with P-Roc and a Raspberry-Pi. (Not set in stone and would like to hear opinions on this)

2. Would like to go with single color white LEDs. There are no products that fit this as they all are RGB leds. Anyone have a solution for this? The RGB will look terrible in a EM style pin- IMO

3. The current “donor” pin has 24volt coils. Can the P-Roc handle this?
Any thoughts would be very appreciated! Thanks
Here is the start of my white wood.

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Thanks- I was afraid that the lower voltage would cause higher amperage.

Hopefully be complete for TPF 2020! Maybe...

This is a good idea!

Jwillson- your project has been a huge inspiration to me. Mine will hopefully be half as good as yours.

About to pull the trigger on a large order to you. Thanks Gerry

I have know idea....
Any thoughts one way or another?
Which is easier?
I have programed many PLCs... this is all new to me- I got alot to learn.

Thanks for all the tips so far!
Here it is- getting further along.
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What are people using for power supplies?
I think I need to get the following-

5volt DC- for the P-ROC, LED driver boards(2), Coil driver boards(2), and the Raspberry Pi.

12volt DC- for the swich boards(2)

48volt DC- for 18 coils.

Does this sound right? Any thoughts?

Getting further....

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Here is a pic of the playfeild wires I did this weekend.

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Mounted score reels.
Bonus- I blew my first fuse on this project today!

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Playfield back in-
Need to get programming soon.

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Update time.
My original layout was not very fun, so I made a new playfield. As this is a EM style pin it was easy to make another

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Got busy programming using MPF.
I am not a great programmer, but I have stumbled through it. I also have been working on the cabinet.
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Here is some pics of the painting. Learning a lot about stencils.

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This project has been for my family and here is my daughter helping paint.

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And my wife working on the stencils

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Here is the coin door modified-
Any guesses on the theme?

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Yes- it is Quidditch

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Here is the cabinet art...

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I got the playfield back from the printer today- very excited!!

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The idea with this pin is it would be a pin you would find at Hogwarts student lounge.

My family is loving these magical words of wisdom and great ideas. They are also calling me a muggle since I have to have most if these things explained to me.

Put some of coats of Varathane on today.
The tough part is going to be the couple of weeks of waiting for full cure...

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Pop bumper caps- done!

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Getting alot done as we wait for the Playfield clear to cure.
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Plastics back from the printer- made two sets as I tend to screw stuff up...

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I don’t think I will be ready for TPF...
Here is one pick of the Whitewood.
I took a lot of pics before disassemble, just none that show the whole field... I wish I would have.

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Started final assembly today.

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Mostly done...

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I did have a donor pin that was really rough. I used a few of parts from it including the cabinet. Most of the above playfield parts are new.
I used the original score reels from the donor pin, no steppers. All of the guts are Proc and new stuff. I made my own lights as I only needed one color- (most of the stuff you can buy for lights are RBG type.)
The main goal is to make it appear to be a EM...

Thanks for all the compliments, greatly appreciated.

I don’t think I can make it to Texas this year.... I have some work crap that I have to wait on...

Here is a short video of my wife playing.

Here is some more game play and rules

This is a long awaited day.
I finally feel like it is ready to go into my lineup.

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No real updates... I am hoping that Texas Pinball will happen in 2021 so I can take it....
Thanks for all the kind words!

It has been working well. Thanks for asking.
I added a center post between the flippers to make it slightly easier to catch a snitch. Other than that, it has worked better than I expected- I thought it would be more finicky being a homebrew.

Yes, the chimes are slightly late… I am using MPF for programming- it doesn’t work correctly unfortunately. I sure wish it did. I just think that the chime part of their program is not used alot so they have not fine tuned it.

This had been a real bummer, and I remember trying everything to get rid of that lag…
I had problems when set it up for auto-fire, they way chimes work, it doesn’t always fire the same chime for a switch, sometimes you needs it to fire the 10 point chime, sometimes that same switch needs to fire the 100 point chime (at 99 points -next 10 point needs to hit the 100 point chime.)
I am very open to a neat way to solve this problem. Please help!

Yes, I do use the score_queue_player or the score_reel_player(I can’t remember the exact name) It works, for keeping track of score and the score reels, just the chime part doesn’t work.
I admit, I am not the greatest programer- I am probably missing something… I did try everything I could think to try.

I will have to look at it again. I do use a raspberry pi, but everything else seems to work fairly quickly. I think I have the chimes auto-fire off the coils off the reels- because the score reel group did not work with chimes…
I am also using a PD-16

I have no problem driving the pop bumpers with auto fire, and there is no latency on the reel coils, so it is not the raspberry. If I remember correctly, there were limitations on using auto fire- like how many switches it could be tied too?… I need to take a look at it….

I am not sure how to get auto fire to work for the chimes. Auto fire only works when one coil is tied to one switch, I need to fire different chimes based on the score at the time the switch is hit. There is a chime for each- 10’s, 100’s, 1000’s.
Example- switch “1” scores 10 points per hit.
When switch “1” is hit, it would trigger the 10’s point chime. But if the score is currently 90 and then switch “1” is hit, the 100’s chime needs triggered. That would be one switch tied to two auto fire coils…
Maybe there is a way to disable and enable auto fire based on current score(that may lag?)
I really appreciate everyones thoughts!
Thanks for the help.

I am currently using “reel_(name)_advance” to activate each chime coil.

I think the above would work if the score only increased in 10 point increments.How would I handle Points scored like 110 or 150. When larger points are added to the score, I am not sure the score increases in 10 point increments while waiting for the reels to catch up…

Thank you guys for the help- I will have to stare at this for awhile to soak it in…
Another day of wishing I was smarter…

One of the things I would change if I could…
It is funny how when your working on stuff you don’t notice the big things right in front of your eyes….

So I started to look into eliminating the chime lag. It seems that “autofire” HAS to be linked- one switch, to one coil. I am not sure how this would work with some of the above programming suggestions. I understand how to make the coil for the chimes to function based on score. And enable/disable autofire would work if you could have more than one switch tied to a coil, but you can’t.
Any tips are appreciated and given lots of thought.

Thanks guys!

WOW! I had know idea you guys were working on this, thank you so much.
It is amazing how little time difference between chime sounds can be so noticeable….

Well, I spent a lot of time and got rid of the latency issues with the chimes. I used a similar programming format that Bingopodcast had mentioned. I also used “modulus” of the score to determine when to chime and it worked great. And I learned what a modulus is
I am so much happier with the machine now- the slow chimes really, really bothered me.
Thanks to everyone who helped, and thanks to the guys who work hard at MPF.
I wanted to post a vid, but not sure how? Did Pinside change how to post vids?

Here is a link to a short video of the latest changes. It is with the glass off. Thanks for all the kind words.
Edit- the resolution is super crappy-

With all the cool new pins being announced, I will add one more announcement.
I will be bringing Quidditch to Texas Pinball festival this year! See you there.