Thanks! That's really an excellent idea. It will be fun to make them... Great COVID project for our interns.

At least you're aware that $40/yr is a lot.
Truth be told; nothing about this product is "Earth shattering". If I won't pay $40/yr for CBS All access; what makes you think I'll pay it for this interesting; all be it somewhat useless product.

I'll wait for real people to provide real reviews... and show it being useful... then maybe I'll reconsider.
That said; you need to get your economies of scale in check. $300 for a gimmick like this when colordmds are only 100usd more... is well... crazy.

review:

I love it!

Thanks Neil! We still have plenty of bugs to fix and features to roll out, but we're thrilled it's working for you.

I think I’d say the scale is inline with what I suspect the investment of labour was or truthfully likely way out of line but not in their favour... one could argue quite literally any mod is out of line in regards of what it offers vs cost. For example I’m sure there are plenty of people that think $20 to swap out opaque drop targets for translucent ones is crazy! I’m not one of those people though cause I love them in the end the market will dictate the price and I’m not convinced calling someone’s labour of love crazy is onside.... Particularly if one also sells mods. Different strokes for different folks, lots of money to go around in this hobby for darn sure.

If stern can sell $50 Halloween store toppers for $1k they can sell these!

Scorbit customers with TNA:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/total-nuclear-annihilation-cluball-welcome/page/142#post-5848276

How does this work?

Is it fingerprinting the data that is "shifted" into the DMD similar to how colorDMD works?

A friend pointed out that it's a Snickerdoodle embedded board riding the IO.

Edit: Indeed, https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2019/0022519.html

I know that Scorbit connects to TNA via USB and I am sending data to the scorbit directly in real time. I cannot speak to the DMD side of things.
--Scott

The simple answer is it depends. We will use direct CPU/game information sent serially or via a CPU probe in certain situations. In others, we decode the display and extract score information from the display. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "Shifted?"

We do not do any fingerprinting of frames, if that is what you're asking.

That's pretty cool that a manufacturer has helped exposed this data from the machine rather then having to scrape it out

It's not all me. Jimmy Lipham helped by starting the integration talks/code and I have been working with the Scorbit team to add additional detail to the Scrobitron data from TNA. This should be a pretty fun little project that really did not take much time.
--Scott

Jimmy deserves the credit for really helping getting a number of manufacturers engaged with us, and those relationships have been fantastic.

Wow, that's a fantastic news and great step for Scorbit. As the happy owner of 2 JJP games, I'm gonna get into the setup right away !

The GnR machines should get the update today, automatically, if you've set up the wifi features. The other machines will get them with software updates (along with the wifi features) in coming updates, all the way back to WOZ.

GnR changelog including Scorbit:

http://marketing.jerseyjackpinball.com/gnr/gnr_changelog.txt

Awesome, looking forward to adding this functionality to another machine in the arcade!!!

Here's a live demo that Ron Richards and I recorded for TNA, integration with the Scorbit app, and the ScorbitVision scoreboard:

Here's This Week in Pinball's interview with Ron Brian and I about Scorbit:

https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/interview-with-scorbit/

Love this, was thinking about something much cruder with custom ROMs and perhaps blinking the score through one of the LEDs, capturing it with a RPI.

What's the API status? Would love an addon where a camera can perform face recognition for the player. I want to be able to walk up to the same, play, and have it automatically update my user. Something like that could be done with a raspberry PI.

Taking it one step farther - throw up another PI with a live scoreboard and top scores for each of the family..

Is support for R&M soon?

happy_camper I'm happy to report our API is up and running, and while some folks have been hijacking some of the ScorbitVision endpoints to make their own custom triggers for live streams, the developer version will be up soon (get your token, docs, etc). We want to put the finishing touches on that so people can jump in.

We're also developing a couple features related to what you're talking about in an upcoming app release to speed up the association and score submission...stay tuned!

The live scoreboards and leaderboards are already functional the way you describe! ScorbitVision was set up precisely for that purpose. You can check out a bunch of the ScorbitVision features here:

https://support.scorbit.io/hc/en-us/sections/360011974773-ScorbitVision-Guides

Yes, support for R&M should be available very soon!

Excellent, final question which may have been addressed.. but how easy is it to move between systems? I see when I purchase I have to specify the system, but I'll likely want to move around like a colordmd - is it a cable thing/programming/will it be possible?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that we provide power adapters and cable kits specific to a machine when you buy a Scorbitron, so we've had a lot of request for selling those as kits for other machines. It's coming soon, we're getting the website/store together for that.

If you're moving a Scorbitron between machines of the same type (like, for example, WPC or Sterns of a particular era), then you can re-use what you get in the package.

what is the plan for OS updates JJP with the games on line?

Will doing an apt-get dist-upgrade mess stuff up??

We can't speak for JJP to any specifics about their own OS/firmware update strategy, except to say we know the wifi features are being released for all the games.

so if an game get's hacked to due to an OS issue scorbit is off the hook?

Are the scorbit updates tied to game code updates on JJP games?

Scorbit's updates are not tied to game code updates on any games.

There is no way to use Scorbit to hack a machine. That's not how Scorbit works.

As for connecting a game to WiFi for updates, and protecting it from hacking, that's an OS thing, not a Scorbit thing. I think you should ask JJP that question.

Maybe I should follow up with one point on that...we are a service (an API), so as long as the specifications are clear, it shouldn't matter what version changes happen on the manufacturer end, unless something falls out of specification for some reason. Our improvements are handled on our end, without impacting the functionality of that API.

so on JJP games is there scorbit code or is JJP coding the scorbit links?

Can you push scorbit code updates to JJP games or does JJP need to do that?

Not talking about that unless say on JJP games scorbit is running as an init.d / systemd service.

But it seems like that the scorbit code is running on the JJP PC and that can be used to hack it just like if the pinball PC is running stuff like sshd or httpd

Joe, can you tell us more about how you think Scorbit probably works? And all of the possible implications relating to how you think it probably works? Why hear it from them when we can get more conjecture from you?

This is cool, fun tech - let’s celebrate!

Just saying that putting pinball games on line with os updates tied to game code updates is something that may be an issue.
And the Scorbit thing is cool but but running it on the main PC may lead to no updates after some time.
Look at all of smart TV's that stop getting updates and the apps on just die on them.

Luckily it doesn’t work that way.

Getting my pinball hacked really keeps me up at night. Thinking of having my high scores sold on the dark web, scary !

when the code is running on the main pc / main os there is a lot more then just having your high scores sold?

What about some hacks your game on location to in to free play mode?

or someone installs an miner on it?

Valid concern as far as systems design goes. However the OS in this instance only communicates with Scorbit via serial link over USB. So unless you can issue a buffer overrun through the scorbit interface into the primary game code on the host machine and some how smash your way into root (much harder with stack randomization and modern mitigation tactics), you're probably fine.

But the game designers at JJP aren't running Scorbit's code per-se on their box. They've merely written code to communicate with it just like any other dumb USB device.

I bet Zero Cool could do it.

and he could pwn way more than 1307 pinball machines!

Will Scorbit be available for CGC machines?

I think the beagle bone should already support LAN

Chiming in here, though this discussion is awesome. The miles travelled to where we would be discussing network risks to a pinball machine!

It is true that when a Scorbitron is used, that is our hardware and network stack connected serially to the machine (or via a display probe or CPU probe). When a manufacturer embeds the functions, like JJP, there are many ways to achieve that, ranging from a dedicated network device on a node bus to a process running on the MPU.

In JJP’s case, we are using the same network connection they are using for WiFi updates. We believe the benefits outweigh the risks, but that doesn’t meant (like any smart TV or Alexa) we aren’t thinking about security. It doesn’t mean JJP isn’t either.

With any connected device in the home or commercial use, you must consider these tradeoffs. Clearly not everyone wants connected devices! However honestly I’d be more worried about your wireless cameras and baby monitors or cheap automation than this.

We are working on it!

i am a little bit confused .

I installed the app but could not check how many machines are already connected to this app and how could i find machines to check online scorelists ?!

JJP is not useing USB for Scorbit they are running code on the main PC. Also about security they need to do OS updates and not wait for the game code update to be done. Right now stern and JJP are slow with Updates and with stuff like stern they tie some OS stuff with the game code updates. So that needs to be split out to make on line work good.

We’ve posted application instructions here which can help you:

https://support.scorbit.io/hc/en-us/sections/360009621154-Scorbit-Application

Let us know!

You are missing that scorebit is a set of cloud apis. Jjp is the one who implements calling to those services.

This is not scorebit pushing code to jjp games... this is jjp implements a interface in their own game code to interface eith scorebit’s service.

This is JJP adding support in their base game code... they own maintaining it.

There probably was code sharing done to make it easier for jjp to get started... but your concerns really have nothing to do with scorebit.

I guess not commenting for Scorbit but more for manufacturers, I could see value in manufacturers of machines doing more frequent security-based code updates for their OS, but that (as flynnibus suggests) is their responsibility to maintain.

One way to think about it is that a Scorbitron has certain functions, such as authentication and identity, registration with Scorbit, game information and heartbeating/status indicators, and receiving information (like player name) from the Scorbit platform.

When a manufacturer is doing this on their own hardware, they have to behave like a Scorbitron. In order to do that, we had to share with them the API specification which allows that to happen (and yes, that specification for manufacturers is available for others as well).

The Scorbitron needs updates from time to time and that is 100% on us! Also, if we change the API specification, we would need those changes to be backwards-compatible and the manufacturer to change their code to match it. However, we recognize the design cycle for games isn't like your home desktop OS... Our expectations are realistic about that.

I'll add again that JJP was an absolute pleasure to work with. Very cooperative and creative in the process, and everyone will benefit from that!

My comment was referring to the sharing of existing libraries... either informally or as sdks to help lower the barrier to entry. Given this is all basic web dev stuff with i assume RESTful apis and common auth schemes... i figure you have simple python libs so people can easily mock and play. And the fact these modern games pretty much all have off the shelf linux kernals and platforms... easy to give prototypes or standard libs they can use as a skeleton.... and prove just how easy it is for them to roll out the functionality.

Getting the vendor buyin is great! Hopefully this will evolve into a platform everyone buys into so we don’t have the fragmented market where people pay in duplicate due to silos...