Holy crap!! Sorry mike - that absolutely sucks! Good luck to you .. Man wish I could help you out somehow; you've kicked your own ass getting that house in great shape
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Totally understandable, Mike... big of you to put it out there rather than keeping people hanging. This was definitely one of the best mods ever - maybe the community will figure out a way to keep it going (that is, with your blessing)
Mavantix, I'd be into helping you out if this gets going. Im a programmer by trade, and I'm not entirely sure what is needed to get this mod up and going, but it's so awesome, seems like a good way to "give back". Plus I'm down the road from you...
Quoted from mavantix:cooldan rdoyle1978 Mike replied to my email, and explained the challenges, mainly regarding supply of the various components, and software changes needed to support newer model RPi. It sounds like a ground up project really, making options for resurrection analogous to just building a new mod in the same spirt as this one. Thoughts? I'm wondering if there is any way to accomplish a similar mod to what Mike has built using more off the shelf components, making the kit easier to obtain/build... I'm assuming the most complex piece is the switch matrix intercept board, so it can track the modes? Pascal Janin did similar with his PI-SIM board, wonder if we could recruit his talent?
Understood - the software should be the easiest part. I'd be more than happy to jump on that, but we'd need Mike's code to start with (or somebody to copy an SDcard with it on there). I have 5 or 6 Pis ("Pies?") that are up to the challenge. I think I have a Pi Nano somewhere, which might be the most cost effective option, but only if we can source some of the other parts.
Is there a BOM somewhere? I don't have one of these mods so I don't know what is required. Yes, a 19" LCD screen (cheap) and the Pi, but I am not familiar with the switch matrix board. Can somebody post some pictures? There's almost certainly a way to do this, parts are swappable. Did Mike mention which parts are the most difficult to find?
Quoted from rubberducks:One thing to improve, which I gather Mike intended to do with a mooted updated kit, was improve latency between media playing and modes starting or events being triggered.
I think my kit is from the second run of kits, and in common with all the youtube footage I've seen, the lag is quite considerable. Still a huge improvement on the static hologram, but something that could really make it way more interactive if the latency is significantly lowered.
Not sure whether it's an issue of low storage read speed, low processing power, or both (probably both).
TLDR don't go for the cheapest Pi (they're all cheap) as it may prove rather limiting.
Well the Pi3 has the most advanced processor and most RAM, but all of the PIs share the same exact GPU, which is doing most of the work in playing the video (which is, I think, the most resource-intensive thing this mod would do). Reading switch voltages and doing fairly simple logic evaluations should be blazing fast on any of them. The playing of video, unfortunately, takes time on these things. this can be sped up a tiny bit with a super-fast SD card, but the Pi GPU is just not the greatest. I'll have to do a test to see which one uses faster RAM, which can be more important than how *much*
Quoted from mavantix:You can get a sense for the components required in his documentation here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pmd-cftbl-lcd-hologram-mod-version-20#post-1369973
The hard to obtain part of the hardware is the part Mike refers to as the interface board, it's his own design AFAIK, not an off the self board. It feeds the events to the RPi.
I don't know Mike's stance on the code, if he open sourced it or would even care if we try reinventing/copying from it. Probably best to have his blessing if we do proceed.
Edit: I see Mike replied while I was typing the above, thanks for the info Mike! Makes sense. Thoughts on the interface board and code? Do you care if we reverse engineer/copy your design?
Understood. I wouldn't want to do this at all unless Mike was ok with it. Hopefully he'd be ok w/ sharing the code, but if we have to move to a new computer-on-a-chip then that's more or less moot anyway. Still, mapping out the logic wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
I am going to look at the Pinduino, since that's kind of a similar thing; that has an interface that may be useful.
Quoted from rubberducks:The 3 really has the same GPU as the original? Not even same type but more cores or higher clock?
I'm pretty sure some of the Taiwanese or Chinese Pi alternatives have much stronger GPUs. They may be a better bet in this case, then.
Yep, sure does. Broadcom VideoCore IV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCore
Quoted from PinballMikeD:First of all, the MOD isn’t looking at the switch matrix. The MOD’s RPi intercepts trigger signals from the lamp matrix via the GPIO inputs.
Video start/stop delays are programmed to ensure modes aren’t activated/de-activated by false trigger conditions – this was done initially. For example, every lamp in the game blinks when an extra ball is awarded, so we had to program around game play conditions like this that would falsely activate (or deactivate) videos features. In addition, we wanted to give people the ability to load their own videos for every interactive feature, regardless of the file format (.mov, .avi, etc.). Loading videos on the fly does add some processing delay. However, the flexibility of giving users unlimited customizable videos for every game mode is the best part of the MOD – just my opinion.
The GPU on the RPi is fine.
There is no current BOM that is relevant, virtually everything has changed: RPI, TV, etc.
This MOD would have to be re-engineered from the ground up. This is why I pulled the plug, just don't have time at the moment.
Thanks, Mike, this all makes sense. Including why it's kind of a PITA to build it 
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