Rebuilding sound for DataEast & WPC using a pi

Hi,

inspired from a thread in the german flippermarkt forum I build a complete sound replacement for data east pinball & wpc. It is based on a raspberry pi and a couple of standard components, a piece of software and - of course - new sounds.

You can find a detailed description here: http://pinball-mods.de/2017/01/27/new-pinball-sound-for-de/

Sounds are replaceable and switchable, so you can use more than one sound set and choose while playing. Sounds are simple WAV files on the pi's filesystem on the sd card, so they are easy to change. The software uses the exact same directory structure as pinsound, so the soundsets from pinsound can be used out of the box.

Some impressions:

Steve

No sounds can downloaded from pinsound forum or extracted from game Roms with tools like M1.

Sounds get triggert by the CPU from the original game code just like the normal sound card.

- Steve

So far its not really plug and play, but I can deliver a ready to use pcb as adapter for raspberry pi / data east pinball machine and a ready to go sd card image.

All you have to add is:
- of course sounds
- some amplifier but there quite a few choices for that, just look at ebay for "2.1 Digital Audio Amplifier"
- maybe some extra power supply (to get rid of any noise)

- Steve

Forgot to mention: there is a new new clip with more or less the finished solution.

What is still missing is a better light control for gi. This is still in development.

I've started working on Williams, but I'm kind of stuck at the moment. Maybe Christoph the project initiator will join me again to make some progress with williams and the other systems.

Monday Night Football is DE Rev2, not sure if this will work. Not tested it so far, so I doubt it will work without changes. Unfortunately I don't have a rev2 to test. Sorry.

As far as I can see, yes. It still takes some time to boot up, I would normally the machine is ready to play faster. But especially for JP where the machine normally always does this t-rex testing, it is ready right in time.

And there's also a configurable boot sound and some progress notification when sound are loaded in memory (if configured) so you get an acoustic feedback of what's happing.

Yes the pcb mainly holds the level shifter that are required for the PI. For DE there is a replacement for the remote volume rotary included as well. It also controls the soundset setup if you have more than one. You can also go with a kit and do the soldering for yourself.

But other than this is it. Of course you need an additional external amplifier like described in the blog post.

I try to add shipping to the US to the shop. If not available simply send me a pm

Not to forget: actual software is working only for DataEast, WPC will come but not ready yet.

The free SD card image has the complete linux and also the software included. So far it runs without restrictions but stops working after 5 minutes and asks you to register.
To get rid of this you need to add a license file to the SD card. If you order a complete set including a license everything is preinstalled. If you already have a raspberry pi you need to order the license separately because it depends on the Pi's serial number.

Hope this helps.

I finally managed to get a first test running also on a WPC machine. A different adapter pcb is needed to do some address decoding in hardware, but it looks very promising. I can already read all the wpc sound commands on the console of to pi.

Need to adapt the software as a next step and then it should run on wpc machines as well.

I will provide some video if the first wpc machine is running.

CU Steve

I finally managed to do some real test on a real wpc machine, Dr. Who in this case. It works quite well as you can see:

PCBs for the new shield are already ordered. Need to do some more tests on different wpc machines, but I'm confident ...

The demo uses a nice sound set from pinballshark thanks for that.

/Steve

There is already some howto on my blog here http://pinball-mods.de/2017/01/27/new-pinball-sound-for-de/ and here http://pinball-mods.de/2017/03/19/howto-for-rasberry-pinball-sound/.

It basically refers to a dataeast machine, but beside the fact that I created a new shield for WPC, everything mentioned there could also be applied to wpc.

Also you can get the raspberry shield or a complete kit in my shop http://go-dmd.de/shop. As mentioned by the pinsider Vader77 it is not so hard to build a very nice sound enhancement with some hours of work.

Br Steve

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Yes it is already in the shop. But it is the old version (only dataeast) and this one is in stock. New PCBs for WPC arriving this Friday.

You can either wait until final tests are done or proceed and order already.

Stern / Whitestar requires additional effort, because sound is integrated with the cpu board and there is no header, where you can pull out the signals. And I don't have a Stern / Whitestar in my collection, so nothing to experiment. So maybe not.

Steve

To make mounting the whole stuff even easier, I have ordered some laser cut acryl that has the same dimensions as the original soundcard 153x208 mm. It can be used as mounting plate to assemble all part like Raspberry Pi, amplifiers, usb soundcard ...

I will also share the svg file, so everybody can do the cutting / order individually. Otherwise I have some "left overs" that are available here: http://go-dmd.de/produkt/wpc-montage-platte-fuer-raspisound/.

/Steve

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Today the PCBs arrived from manufacturer. I've already assembled some kits and also two ready to use shields. Testing is all good so far. Pending orders will be shipped on Monday

Cheers Steve

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Good to know, thank you for that. Even if its maybe easier to have someone in the same timezone. I'm 6 hours ahead, which will make test session more challenging

Best Steve

I finally had time over the weekend to build something for my getaway. I used the mounting plate shown in one of the previous posts, two amplifier modules and a completely new speaker set: two McGee for the backbox and a bigger visatone for the cabinet.

Sound is created by a usb soundcard not with build in sound from the pi. Mounting is easy as it just replaces the original soundcard. As you can see there is also a pin2dmd led dmd installed.

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To get an impression how it "feels" watch:

The video features 3 different soundsets from Mr_Tantrum, that can be switched by reducing volume to zero and then pressing "decrease volume" again.

As always it sounds much better in real life as in the mobile phone video

Cheers Steve

PS: forgot to mention: I use a new 12V power supply for sound, no extra load on the old transformer.

Today the new PCBs from china arrived, together with some amplifier moduls that could be mounted directly on the main PCB. This make assembling of a RasPiSound board really easy. Additionally the board is optimized for use with Pi zero, which can be mounted on top (see images).

A short test video is available on my channel

After I updated shop offerings, you can also order this new kit including amplifiers.

Best Steve

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Software version 1.8 is out see changelog http://go-dmd.de/changelog/#raspinsound
Wpc Dcs is now working as well.
For testing you can now also record and playback game sessions.

New version of the RasPiSound hardware is now also available ...

completely assembled (only USB card, speaker cables to add):
http://go-dmd.de/produkt/komplett-set-raspberry-pinball-sound-v1-9/

or as a kit for self assembling / soldering:
http://go-dmd.de/produkt/kit-v1-9-fuer-raspberry-pinball-sound-projekt/

Note: the kit offering actually only contains pictures of the assembled PCB. But you still need to build it!! I will update the pictures ASAP.

Thx Steve

Disclamer: I did not have the time to test this until now, but ...

As the WPC95 A/V board is just a combination of the "old" sound board and the DMD board, you should be able to replace the audio part. This could be done by just unplugging the audio output of the original board and using raspisound instead. It should also be possible to replace the complete A/V board by a combination of raspisound and an older WPC DMD controller.

In either case you need a new ribbon cable for the data connection from MPU.

It basically should work like this: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinsound-wpc95-audiovideo-board-replacement

Br Steve

regarding power there is of course the option to pull the power from the original power supply. My latest boards also have a dc-dc regulator on board so that PI and amplifiers can use the same power source. But I still recommend a new separat power supply. If you want to have a crystal clear sound and avoid any interference with the original machine, use a separate power supply. They are cheap and not that hard to install, although you need to grab from mains.

Br Steve

Whitestar is indeed more or less like DataEast without separate sound board. One could in fact use the adapter pinsound is selling, it should work with LOTR, it will be handled like DE. But I haven't designed a PCB for that, its just address decoding pulled from the CPU directly. Any volunteers?

Performance is better with Pi3. Faster bootup time, can hold all sound in main memory, avoid some (rare) delays on first load of a sample.

The actual image has a minimal arch linux bundled with it. Start time is (on Pi3) <20 sec.

The wiring for the shaker is: the TX-Pin is controlling the shaker motor (either active high or low, configurable). You need to add a small driver circuit or relay in between, like one of these amazon.com link » They are completely decoupled by an opto and can directly driven from the Pi.

The general expansion idea to have more than just a shaker is indeed the UART interface that is exposed on the adapter board. I will simply output the sample ID when a sound is played, so that a secondary board (or many of these) can listen and control additional toys. But this is not ready yet / no tested, just as idea.

Of course one could also simply add control of more GPIO pins instead of just TX for controlling a shaker.

Thx Steve