Wood River, IL
Would it have made more sense to have a central internet connected “scorbit” processor per location running its own WiFi and relatively “dumb” cars in the pins (and less expensive) connecting to the central unit??
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Quoted from jsa:If your goal is to reduce the network distance and using meshing protocols to drive to a central unit, to some extent we do that are have the ability to do that already. This concept is particularly useful in situations where WiFi connectivity is limited in some areas and better in others.
If your goal is to lower the cost of individual machines, it doesn't buy you much, because most of the cost of the device comes from the features that are required to decode information (and display information) on the individual machines. The latency introduced by doing things like score extraction or game state management over a local area network was too high. That being said, we work every day to engineer greater efficiencies on the board itself so we can get the price down, so we hope to make this an obsolete question in time.
If your goal is to manage the information locally (i.e. a local API), you get much better performance and flexibility using the machines of greater capability in the cloud, which you have to send the information to anyway for various applications to reach.
However, let me know other reasons to consider a hub and spoke architecture locally. One of the benefits of this platform is it's flexible, so we'd love to hear it.
I will admit to ignorance as to how the scorbit hardware/system works particularly with regard to what the individual card needs to do within the various machines to gather and create usable data. I'm only speaking from my experience in automation where I preferred my various individual pieces of equipment to be as dumb as possible (but have an RS232 port and protocol), hard wired (nothing more reliable) back to a unit to handle communication/data transfer (Moxa NPort RS232->IP) to the "brain" (central processing unit). No individual unit in the system cares about what it is talking to or what language it speaks, it only needs to transfer data reliably back and forth with the processing unit where I write my own driver for it and integrate functions from various devices into functions calls.
I have never been a fan of reliance on a "cloud" and have always designed my systems to be self contained with an additional ability to be accessed remotely but fully capable of operating in the absence of a network connection. While I can use my cloud to monitormy installations I don't get a service call because the installed system can't access the cloud because it is still fully functional in it's absence. "Cloud" based solutions are seemingly all the rage in point of sale systems for restaurants whereas I've written my own overlying software for my POS system that can operate completely independent of an internet connection (internet is only required to batch credit cards and even then I can accept credit card charges into the system without the internet).
ie, I would prefer a system where the individual cards are as dumb as possible that is hard wired to a central processing unit that then communicates with scorbit's cloud while also still providing a local API.
In my particular application I would like to be able to set the pay modes on my pins in the bar from my control screen without reliance on the cloud.
screen (resized).jpg
Quoted from jsa:the_pump_house Your experience in automation is 100% correct. That should always be the goal. If you introduce points of failure and complexity into the system, particularly relying on ISPs (and we all know how that goes), you end up with a truck roll or worse an upset customer due to something not in your control. We definitely considered all of this when putting together our architecture, and elements of this "keep local as local as possible" I think are still in our future for certain applications.
I think your last statement is key; You would like to have localized control or a localized API to turn on and off free play, perhaps other settings, do I have that right?
Yes, localized control and API. The touchscreen remote I attached above is (supposed) to make controlling the televisions, audio and video source matrix, hvac, lighting ect ect as basic as possible so that any bartender can "put the bears game on the third tv from the left in the dining room".
So, a nice feature would be the ability to locally set the machines for happy hour quarter play (for example) and then automatically set them back. Volume control would also be nice.
Quoted from hocuslocus:that's interesting, I have a lot of tv's it's always a pain showing new people how to turn them on/off using this particular remote we have (the tv's want to go to the smartcast input sometimes). I need to get something like that to where they all turn on/off with the push of a button.
Then we have an HDMI switching matrix that makes things even more complicated for them... I've given up on trying to show some of them
What matrix, what kind of TV’s and what are your sources. List your hardware and models. I might be able to just write an Android/iPhone based remote control for you
Quoted from hocuslocus:its a 32X 32 HDMI matrix. only 10 inputs are being used 8 for DTV, 1 for a jbox and 1 for a DJ. all 32 outputs are going to TV's. I did HDMI splitters at the first location, and it works ok.... but on football days it's hard to accommodate patrons. Problem is you change one box and it has to change 2 or more tvs with a splitter.
I'll have to look at the model specifically at the second location, but there are only two different models. 36 of the same model and 3 (for games) of a different one. all vizio's though.
the matrix has an app, I need to get an ipad up front and run it. Always good to get staff to learn the base way of doing stuff... but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen with them. turning on/off tv's is the main issue. I was contemplating running IR cable, but seems there has to be a better way.
here is the matix btw
https://brightlinkav.com/brightlink-new-pro-mix-multi-4k-function-seamless-32x32-hdmi-in-with-10-transmitters-hdmi-out-with-32-receivers-over-cat5-cat6-matrix-switcher-with-high-performance-4k-resolutions-3.html
The documentation is pretty poor on that linked matrix. I was hoping it would be able to pass IR or RS232. Do you have an HDMI cable running from the matrix to every TV or are you using some type of balun. This brightside matrix, for example, lets you pass control signals (IR or RS232) to the television.
Are your televisions bunched together? Is there network/cat5 at your television locations?
If your televisions have RS232 ports and you are on Brightsides HDMI over CAT5 matrix then you can pass RS232 signals to turn your televisions off and on through the matrix. If not you can send IR signals through the matrix to the televisions.
I use a Binary MoiP modular matrix. (https://www.snapav.com/shop/en/snapav/binary-moip) which lets me write IR hex commands and RS232 commands directly to the device (source or television). With your DirecTV receivers you can actually ask them what they are tuned to and what is on that channel. So, on my remote the tv's actually show what they are looking at. I also programmed it so that if a bartender tried to change the channel on a directv receiver to the same channel that's already on another directv receiver it just switches to that receiver instead (football sundays when there's 8 games on at 12pm and they set two tuners to the same damn game, put a stop to that)
So, if the someone asks for the Chiefs game on television 4 on the patio, the bartender just touches television 4 on the screen which pops up the source list, the source buttons all show what program they are looking at so they just hit whichever tuner says "Chiefs". It also has a built in guide so if the chiefs game isn't already tuned on one of the receivers, they can select a source and then select the chiefs game from the guide.
I'll have to shoot a video of it in action to better show what I'm talking about.
Quoted from Joe_Blasi:Just wait for NFL ticket to move to some steaming only service and really mess that system up + cut off bars that don't have the bandwidth to stream 8+ HD/4K live feeds at the same time.
Honestly, Sunday Ticket really isn’t even worth it anymore. Directv is constantly giving it away to home accounts.
I personally love football (and that’s the only reason I have it) but the decline in interest is pretty stark
If that came to pass I would cut my DTV receiver total in half and replace them with ATSC tuners
There are 15 possible games per week and 40% of them are free OTA.
Think I just talked myself in to dumping ST
Quoted from The_Pump_House:Honestly, Sunday Ticket really isn’t even worth it anymore. Directv is constantly giving it away to home accounts.
I personally love football (and that’s the only reason I have it) but the decline in interest is pretty stark
If that came to pass I would cut my DTV receiver total in half and replace them with ATSC tuners
The NFL scheduling is stupid as well. 9 games at noon and only 2 games at 3? Thanks a lot jerks!
Quoted from hocuslocus:Yeah they all use baluns (HDMI to Cat 7), I'm not 100% but there were a few more connections on them I'll have to check out. Is some documentation on how to write and implement these Hex commands for the TV's?
Most of them are clumped pretty close together. maybe like a foot apart? I just lined the walls with them, because at the first location we always had people fighting over what game goes where. People getting pissed and writing bad reviews because we couldn't have a golf game on when the home football team was playing... it gets stupid
Usually they just use the direct tv app to change the box, but changing a specific tv while knowing what's on it would be cool. I'm going to have to do a little more digging when I have time. Yeah we have sunday ticket, it makes things easier to some degree. Its pretty much 700-7something. Down side is it's insanely expensive for commercial businesses.
Your vizios may or may not have an RS232 port in which case you can do IR. Look at your baluns and see if they have an IR and/or an RS232 port.
Here's a video of one of our bar remotes.
Controls lights, hvac, televisions, receivers, pandora, security, a/v matrix
RS232 lets you do two way communication. With the TV's the remote knows if the televisions are off or on (and they turn on on the remote) for example.
Quoted from hocuslocus:Wow, yeah that's a pretty high level of automation right there. I like how most everything is right on hit the home screen, makes it easier to use.
security eh
I have volume control for my amplifiers running on old crown app.... sadly they haven't/and aren't going to update it. I need to figure out another solution, like a mixer or something. It can be kind of buggy anyway.
Normally the background is a 3D model of the floorplan of the bar, but we just remodeled the layout of our bar and I haven't had time to create a new background.
CDI 1000? Crown amps are pretty much bullet proof. What's feeding the crown? For volume control your best bet is a DBX Zone Pro with wall volume controls. A zone pro will also do priority switching (paging mic > jukebox > house sound) which you can get off ebay in the 250-300 range
remote (resized).pngMoved the discussion on automation here so as not to hijack the scorbit thread
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/automation-#post-5994201
1 week later
A low volt contact closure output (controllable) would be nice as well. Could then use that to drive a contactor to turn machines on and off.
Depending on the API I could automate giving house credit in our POS system for hitting scoring thresholds on machines.
Is the API publicly available?
Again, I haven't delved to deeply into your specs and current features but I keep thinking about your system and nice feature sets for applications such as mine.
Are monthly subscriptions for patrons a possibility through scorbit?
Patron can pay monthly fee for free play at a location (Price determined by location)
Scorbit collects payment through their app
Scorbit distributes payment to location monthly (minus a handling fee)
Scorbit shares contact info of subscribers with location/creates mailing lists for location
Scorbit App allows subscriber to add credits to location machines for their free play
App limits frequency of credits (so that a subscriber can't load up machines for non paying friends)
Scorbit app uses location services to ensure that subscriber is physically at location
Quoted from jsa:Our payment system is being designed to the needs of various operator types, so yes, that does include venue owners. The way to look at it is we will implement anything to reduce friction and get people playing games as often as possible.
We really appreciate the ideas, keep them coming.What appeals to the players in our research so far is both single venue value and multi-venue value, so if payment methodologies can also get them playing in more than one location, that would work well. I like the idea of "patron memberships" that layer on top of other cashless and touchless options, that follows along with promotions. We're also aware of time, so you can time bracket different options as well, like happy hours.
We will get the foundation elements working in a solid, reliable fashion, and build on top of it a number of models. Some will work, some probably won't, but that's the beauty of platforms like this.
Is your name Jay? If so we have a mutual acquaintance I believe you used to be a business partner with that help get you hooked on pinball (Keith).
Quoted from jsa:Indeed, I'm Jay. Keith just reached out. Small world. (Keith, a few others and I started Revision3 together.)
I don't think I've met Keith in person but I've murdered him virtually in WW2 aircraft since the 90's. He's never gotten me... not even once.
4 months later
4 weeks later
Cirqus Voltaire is missing background art in the slideshow
Creature From Black Lagoon is also missing background art in the slideshow
I've got 12 boards installed so far, here's our game/leader board
My judge Dredd scorbit never registers the end of ball 3/ game
The shadow also never registers the end of ball 3
Creature isn’t registering the end of ball 3
A panel for the slideshow promoting scorbit, what it is would be a nice addition. Or, the ability to upload a jog, gif ect in the appropriate size for display in the slideshow.
Additional promo material would be nice (poster or banner)
4 weeks later
Quoted from TonLoc777:We were there for the first time yesterday. Awesome place and awesome lineup. Machines played great! Scorbit integration is really cool as well with it being displayed in the bar. We will def be back. Oh and if you ever want to sell that TOTAN, holla. Love how that original Williams shoots.
We just got the Junkyard, will be shopping it when the parts come in.
Drove all the way to Pittsburgh for that Totan. Our B/W's are permanent acquisitions as it's the the DMD B/W's are the only pins we are interested in having. The only thing I would sell is that god awful Austin Powers.
Just a FYI, I noticed a significant game event missing from the visualizations. I distinctly remember cursing at the machines periodically during gameplay and both the invective used and time of utterance are missing
10 months later
2 months later
What is the recommended troubleshooting for a scorbit on WPC that doesn’t always power up when the machine is turned on?
I have one WPC that I have to often power cycle to get a display on
2 months later
Quoted from jsa:Hey there! We do know of a condition where (and we've simulated this in the lab) where on cold start for a specific set of WPC games, the way the power driver board's caps create a power in-rush that somehow interferes with the USB hub chip during start up. It's really bizarre. It only happens once, on cold start, and doesn't repeat itself.
I can't guarantee that this is the only cause, but if you swap the Scorbitron into another DMD game an it works repeatedly under the same conditions, it's probably this issue.
I don't think the answer is to you replace or fix your power driver board. Our product has to work in these conditions always. We're trying different methods to see if we can't either fix this in firmware or in a board revision in the future and won't give up on it.
Any solutions to this? Seems like every few weeks I have to disconnect another scorbitron because they don’t reliably start up
Quoted from jsa:We have never seen a Scorbitron that won’t reliably start up on the second power cycle in this condition. As I referred to previously, are you disconnecting Scorbitrons after a single failure, or are they they continuing to fail? If so this is new, so please reach out to me directly.
Also do you try the swap I suggested? Let’s narrow down the root cause of the issue.
I’m not there every day to power cycle scorbitrons that fail to initialize the display. Our pins are on dedicated circuits switched by contactors controlled by our lighting system. They turn on automatically at 11am and off 5 minutes before close.
So, when they fail there’s just no DMD for the day. When I notice a machine do it several times I just disconnect the scorbitron
I guess I could program the contactor to be switched on, wait a couple minutes then off and back on but that’s not a very elegant solution
2 weeks later
Is it possible to connect to a guest network with no password on a scorbitron? The app won’t let me try to connect without putting in a wifi passeord
Quoted from jsa:I’m afraid not at this time. There are many WiFi setups we’ve seen where a dedicated network SSID is used where it is a hidden network, but not an unsecured one. What is the goal, isolating the devices from the main network?
I put two machines on location and the only wifi available is an unsecured password free guest network
2 weeks later
Quoted from jsa:Understood, and I'm sorry for the trouble. We certainly don't want you to have to disconnect Scorbitrons. I'm afraid I don't have anything to report yet on the firmware fix, but we're still working on it. I believe we can resolve this with a short delay (100ms) during the initial power up, but it's proving a bit difficult to replicate. Rest assured I'm not giving up.
For the time being I have set our lighting control system to cycle power to the pins 60 seconds after their scheduled turn on time which seems to have alleviated the issue.
Suggestions
1) pick a metric or imperial unit system, or allow a user selection. Viewing radius is in miles but machine locations are in kilometers.
2) Find Machine - This tool should be more “find a physical machine to play” focused. The default scrolling list (prior to entering any letters in the search field) should be restricted to a list of machines that are within the viewing distance radius set by the user in their preferences. When searching for a specific machine limit the initial returned list to realistically accessible locations and hide the remainder behind the “load more machines” button. The search function is slow and machines 100’s of km away aren’t relevant
3) finding people to follow - it would seem natural to try and follow people that frequent the same venues you do. So, searching by venue for people who have logged games there would be a good way to increase following.
4) left and right navigation swiping. Leave some empty space and implement left/right navigation swiping
5) machine history under a persons profile should be limited to pins they actually played, it’s completely pointless to try to search every machine to find a persons history on a pin
6) UI consistency. Main menu at the bottom of the app (people, machine, venue, settings) and submenu along the top. So, for example, the settings list should appear in a top bar as should the profile buttons in the picture in the next post.
Quoted from jsa:I'm less into that particular layout but good feedback about consistency. The UX needs a cleanup after so many years of iteration!
All fantastic input, keep it coming. You also can always reach out to us on Discord as well if you have questions. Thanks!
My UI experience is all in home automation
00301F53-F1AA-4306-AAE4-64EB9FA3FA00 (resized).png 1 week later
I was very disappointed when there wasn’t actually several thousand quarters in our T3
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