Here is some Tag Team gameplay. I will have another video soon going over the rules that have been added because I did not play well enough to show everything. I found three bugs during this game, so the play testing has been fruitful.

Thanks!

No, the ball is supposed to stay locked up top. That was building toward a 3-ball multiball that I did not achieve in this game. You lock the top and right holes, then you start the multiball by going in the left kicker.

I want the lock to persist across balls. I am also ok with it persisting across players. Barring head to head games, multiplayer pinball does not have as much interaction between players as it should. With this arrangement you can steal locks from another player.

Also, a virtual lock is not as useful without an autoshooter as the balls have to be staged properly in order to get a predictable multiball start.

Thanks @mistermoberg. It has been a fun project and it is starting to feel like a real game now.

@sys6, perfect. I have been waiting for someone to point that out. That callout is supposed to be a central element, but right now it is literally the only callout. I have to work on that.

And here is my rules explanation. It is 10+ minutes, so don't watch unless you are really interested in pinball rules/features. There are still a few more features to add and bugs to squash.

Thanks everyone!

I got the Tag Team 3 ball multiball with the sequenced jackpots today. It was incredibly satisfying. The sweeping light shows created with the Show Creator linked in the MPF docs really add a lot to the game.

I also tried out a 7 inch 1024x600 LCD. I think it will work great and is a good size for being right between the flippers buttons as planned.

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@ad72, yes. I used it for the multiball jackpots, the capture "shockwaves," drain swipe down, and a few other places.

Personally, I like to set the Show Creator to black and white mode to force it to output two colors. I then edit the output of the show creator in Geany to automatically find and replace all the 'FFFFFF's with the token "front_color" and all the '000000's with "back_color." Then I can use show_tokens in the call of the show to define the colors. I can also play with the fade setting to get the feel I am looking for.

As an example here is a snippet from the generated show from Show Creator:

- time: '+1'

  lights:

    l_gi_11: '000000'

    l_gi_12: '000000'

Using '000000' in the "Search For" and the following in "Replace With" (CTRL-H):
\n color: (back_color)\n fade: 500ms

You with have to play with the number of spaces after each '\n' to get the formatting correct. Pinside is stripping out my additional spaces in this post.

You end up with the same snippet being:

- time: '+1'

  lights:

    l_gi_11:

      color: (back_color)

      fade: 500ms

    l_gi_12:

      color: (back_color)

      fade: 500ms

And here is a call to a show in the show_player:

insertsDrainSwipeDown_token:

   show_tokens:

      front_color: tt_red

      back_color: black

   speed: 60

   loops: 0

It sounds complicated at first, but once you get going, it is very easy. Geany does most of the work.

Thanks @openpinballproj. I agree, this is a whole new game.

I like the cage match idea. I am not sure I can stomach completely disabling the pop, because that may slow down the game too much. I might try it with a disappointingly short pulse once a pop is knocked out. I think it would be pretty noticeable because my pops are pretty hot right now.

I have the 7" display and animating text is all I plan to do. Animations are an artistic rabbit hole that I do not have time for right now.

I did not like the original drop targets on Tag Team. They were boring plain letters in a plain font that did not match the theme. I plan to make decals for my plain yellow targets that are already installed. Here is my first iteration. The font is similar to the original font on the side cabinet and pop bumper caps. It is the same font that I have been using on my display. My test print was done on my BW laser printer that is running out of toner.

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I started hunting for a fadecandy issue I have been having. After a computer restart, the fadecandy does not handle fade commands correctly it ends up flickering or replacing a color altogether. Once I replug the fadecandy USB, everything is fine. Fearing a power noise issue, I tried adding silly amounts of capacitance (47x the original) to the USB voltage input to the fadecandy and the charge pump output to no avail. I think this is an underlying fadecandy firmware or server issue.

jabdoa pointed me to an issue he opened with fadecandy a while back. If you are having similar issues, please comment there:
https://github.com/scanlime/fadecandy/issues/112

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I got my drop target decals in and am happy with how they turned out. I have extras if you want to buy them on the pinside marketplace.

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I have been working on a new revision of my control board. This version uses STM32 boards natively, adds fusing, flyback diodes, and two neopixel channels supporting somewhere between 460 and 510 LEDs total depending on if you use RGB or RGBW neopixels. I have abandoned Fadecandy (flickercandy) altogether since OPP fully supports neopixels now. I had a number of other small tweaks and also had all the surface mount components soldered at the factory this time.

I got the through hole soldering done on one and still have a lot of testing to do with it. As a sanity check I hooked up a panel of neopixels and ran a test pattern...success.

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No, I had it configured for 255 LEDs, so it is just not being commanded. OPP told me a way to do 256 after I posted this.

I confirmed with testing today that, given the proper configuration, I can command the full 256 LED panel. That means 512 LEDs should be possible with my new board since there are two OPP-enabled STM32 boards present.

I actually have no plans to use the panel in an installation, it was just a convenient way to test 256 LEDs at once. Using an LED strip is fine, but you end up with quite a coil on the desk and you really should have multiple power taps along the way. The panel routes the power much more favorably so I am only using one tap. That being said, I probably should come up with a demo light show just to show off what MPF and OPP can do now.

I finally got space on the floor to setup my Tag Team again (fairwell, Stargate and Cue Ball Wizard).

I installed the new driver board and had to do some minor rewiring of the connectors. openpinballproj and jabdoa did some amazing work on the OPP firmware and MPF support for the new board. This was the first test of the new MOSFETs as well. I only have one game on it, but it is working great!

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Thanks!

The LEDs driven by OPP have been looking great. No glitches or flickering after a few hours of heavy use. It is also kind of nice not to have to start the fadecandy server.

The FETs have been performing well, too. The kids have been playing a lot and their style is to hit both flippers repeatedly as fast as possible. It is a great way to stress test the system. Maybe this week I can get some infrared images to confirm nothing is heating up too much.

I eventually want to get pinball cabinets CNC routed. I also want interlocking parts to minimize the jigs required and any assembly issues. Rather than paying to have someone CNC route my prototypes, I decided to try pattern routing.

My first test was on a single interlocking joint. I laser cut a 1/4" MDF pattern for the interlocking parts. It turns out that not many tool brands make the 1/4" diameter pattern plunge bit that I needed for the inside relief cuts, but Amana makes some. The test piece was 3/4" MDF. On the first try, the parts fit great! I checked the critical dimensions and I was within 5 thou (0.127mm) of the target dimensions. Not too bad for some handheld routing. (Pictures below).

On my laser, I cannot quite cut a pattern large enough for my future cabinet in one cut. I can either split it into two interlocking pieces as was done here:

Or I can leverage the alignment features in Lightburn to cut one large template by using two separate setups/cuts as was done here:

Interlocking Joint Test:

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New plan for the cabinet making. I picked this up from the Exploratorium in San Francisco...

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Yep. It was not part of the plan, but the deal was too good to pass up. It is HEAVY. We did not have a forklift to unload it, so it was a 3 hour dance with 3 cherry picker shop cranes and 2 floor jacks to get it off the trailer and into position. Who rented all the forklifts in the area and left me with nothing?

The vacuum pump and spindle are 3 phase, which I don't have, so I am learning how to use VFDs.

Well I finally decided to do it after some nudging from friends. I am going to release my pinball controller out to the wild using a Kickstarter. Now I have some documentation to catch up on.

The planned launch date is January 15th and you can sign up to be notified of the launch here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1862357036/cobrapin-pinball-controller

And the obligatory Kickstarter video:

Thanks for the help!

It is pretty thin right now, but I started drafting a page on Pinball Makers for the CobraPin board: https://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php?title=CobraPin

I hope to get that page all dialed in and then use that info to update the OPP page as well. The OPP page is fairly stale since the move to the new STM32 processor.

Thanks for updating it openpinballproj !

The CobraPin Pinball Controller Kickstarter campaign is live and it has already reached the funding goal! This is going to happen! Check it out, get yourself a controller, and share with your friends:

http://kck.st/2KjE8B1

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Thank you!

I cut out the Gottlieb edge connectors and rewired for low side drive. That was a cake walk compared to stripping out the lights and rewiring for RGB LEDs. RGB is fantastic, though.

bjmclrn that is great! The Arduino implementation of the STM32 may not be as optimized as the Atmel version. The STM32 is certainly more capable than your standard Arduino.

I installed my new CobraPin controller prototype into Tag Team this evening. I had changed the location of the GND on the switch connector pinouts, so my switches did not work at first. Once I corrected that, everything worked great! The new transistors are behaving nicely and will be easier to replace if someone ever burns one out.

I tried a higher initial resistance thermistor for the power filter, but am not thrilled about it. The first 5-10 flips after powering on were a little on the weak side until the thermistor heated up. I am running at 25V, so it is much more noticeable that it would be in a 50V game, but I think I will revert to the previous thermistor. I need to do some testing at 50V to confirm I am not going to have different problems there.

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