[Bear with me - short intro first]

For those that don't know me, my name is Davey. I'm an Australian, now living in London with a lovely English wife and two kids who sounds like they're extras in 'The only way is Essex'. Over the last 3 years I've gotten heavily back into pinball, buying and selling, and shopping out games when time permits. One of my recent shops was creech. Even though I promised my wife I would keep a lid on it - I went completely OTT (shhh). Spending way too much and creating all kinds of tasty mods for it.

I've been slowly bringing these mods to market, and have been humbled by how much interest, appreciation and support I've received. Some of you may have seen my first mod, Move you Snackbar, which was a lighting mod designed to light up the Swinks Snackbar as though it was a vintage neon sign.

Which brings us to the main event.

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*THE CHASE ECHO*

The new mod I've been working on is a replacement chase board in CFTBL, and is called the "Chase Echo". It aims to introduce some new patterns to the chase lights in the ramp and bowl, and (most importantly) fade the LEDs in a nice way so the don't look so static and on/off-y. A few of you might know that there has already been a couple of attempts at a redesign for this board, both as a direct repro and also some that provide additional patterns, but none so far that has managed to implement proper LED fading.

Until now of course.

Features:

* Plug and Play! Old chase board comes out, this board goes in.
* Arduino Nano microcontroller
* Trailing edge AC dimming
* 14 Unique Chase Patterns
* Fully controllable pattern selection (via DIP switches)
* Random or Linear pattern selection (via DIP switch)
* Fully compatible with LEDOCD & Afterglow GI boards

Here's a little video that I produced to show the lovely patterns. Put your headphones on, the music is great.

Build log, which covers the initial attempts using DC, and the move to the current 1.1 AC powered version.

Documentation

Price is £129 (approx $169 USD). Postage to US and AU (and pretty much anywhere else) from the UK is approx $25, slightly cheaper for EU. If you need the additional cabling for LEDOCD GI or Afterglow GI boards, it's another 10 pounds on top.

Let me know what you think. The list is now open!

Woop woop great stuff.. thanks so much everyone! All on the list.

Nice one - many thanks!

Yep - gotcha from the MYS thread Eric, thanks!

Great, thanks for the support! On.

Yep the old chase board comes out and the new board goes in with the same connectors. The old chase board is center back under the playfield, you can see the location in the documentation I posted above. I designed it to be as simple and plug n play as possible. The only consideration is if you are using an LEDOCD GI board or an Afterglow GI board, then a couple of extra leads are required (which are supplied). Let me know if you like to be added to the list.

Two steps ahead of ya! I noticed this also after comparing it to the original, the one in the video is the older version. I'll post another video soon showing the updated version. Also added you to the list, many thanks.

As for configurability, I've written the pattern sequencer as an API, which means that new pattern configs should be easy to implement - even by the community should people be interested in doing so. This might take the form of a daughter board sitting under the Arduino Nano with an SD card reader containing the new pattern config files. The files would specify what pattern to edit (1-14), what spin function to use, what fading function to use, and how fast each of them should be. The spin and fade patterns can also sidechain each other, meaning that as the spin increases, the fade width can be increased or decreased accordingly (see the pattern called 'Changer' for an example of this).

This is just an idea at this point. If enough people are interested I'll try to get something put together - hopefully with a better explanation!!

Haha, 'fraid not! USD. I'll update the main post to better explain, thanks. Added!

Ah thanks a lot Jeff! Nice of you to say. I also bought one of Bill's boards before the idea occurred to me to have a go myself. Bill is a top guy.

All added - thanks very much!

Thanks Tim. Yeah it's been pretty nuts. London in under 'Tier 4' restrictions at the moment which meant that we had to cancel the relatives coming over for Christmas (my cousin and his new family are in London too). Not having as much stuff to cook and prepare meant that I hit the sauce a little early yesterday so am paying for it a bit today! Gotta work out what to do with all the leftover turkey too..

Just finishing off the last round of 'Move you Snackbar' mods (10 or so - plus Swinks' one!), had a couple of requests for extras before I close the line down, such as it is. MYS mods will still be available ongoing, but will have to sit behind whatever mod is being focused on at that time. Once that winds down, I'll start building the Chase Echo. Couple of weeks away yet, likely mid jan before all the parts arrive and I start fulfilling the first orders. Hold tight, more updates on that coming very soon.

In the past few weeks I've been approached by a bunch of people who are looking for a bit of Arduino and/or lighting help for projects they are working on, which is awesome, and I'm keen to help out anywhere I can. There's talk of edge lit acrylics being triggered by shaker motors, topper lighting triggered by game modes, auto calibrating eddy boards triggering lighting rigs - and some other stuff. Lots of fun, and loving the enthusiasm from people coming up with these ideas, so trying to fit the designs in where I can.

Thanks very much! Added

Sure thing, added. Hey, I'm from Canberra too ! (Torrens)

Last time I was there I went to the Basement in Belco with my nephews and had a great afternoon playing all their rock themed pins. It was only last year but seems like a lot longer considering everything that has happened since. Are you northside or south?

In other news, it's time to start building! *applause*

The first round of Chase Echo emails have gone out, look out for yours in a pinside inbox near you!

Yep multiball and attract are the main ones, but it does also seem to come on randomly throughout the game for a few seconds at a time as well.

Loving the enthusiasm! Won't be long now, but a couple of rounds to get through first. The Chase Echo takes a bit longer to build than previous mods just due to the sheer number of parts that are on it, but I'm keen to get things moving as swiftly as is possible. Appreciate everyone's patience. We'll get there!

Sure thing Tommy - just sent you a PM!

Thanks Gord, that's kind of you to say. It's been a long time in the making - development for this took about 10 times longer than usual due to all the DC/AC problems - so it's nice to finally be in the position to get them out to people.

There are 37 currently on the list, which is amazing considering it hasn't been open very long. I try to build in batches of 8, as that is the easiest for me to manage and keep track of. If I'm doing well (and people respond promptly to PMs!) then I can get through a batch in about 2 weeks. You can PM me for your position number if you like, not sure if people want that information posted publicly.

Apologies about the lack of updates recently - the Stumblor lab has been working round the clock, cooking up the next round of tasty pinball mods. Lots of exciting stuff on the way, all of which will be announced in due course. Alongside that development work, I've been in the workshop with a hot soldering iron, sucking up the fumes, and getting the final round of MYS mods out the door - and excitingly, starting on the build the first Chase Echo boards. *woop*

So let's get em out the door! Tag em and bag em!

Round two imminent - aiming to get 8 done this round. These guys take an AGE to build. So many parts!

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Yes mate only just started - the second build round kicked off last week. Got you down on the list now, many thanks for the support.

Fashionably late Sure thing got you both down now. Thanks!

Rightio!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been deep deep *deep* in the trenches, debugging some annoying issues that Fifty raised with regards to GI OCD compatibility. Although it's never great to find issues with products out in the field, great that they were raised early(ish) and could be addressed. Nice one Tim, I owe you a beer, even though it's been a rough few weeks.

* Warning: Nerd talk ahead *

GI OCD (and its cheaper EU counterpart, the Afterglow GI) both use a method for drawing power that involves converting the 6.3VAC GI lines into DC, by way of an 'ideal' diode bridge. After doing this conversion, the ground that is generated from this process is then combined with 'pinball GND' - the GND that comes in via the ribbon cable. Unfortunately, a by-product of the ideal diode bridge is that it shifts the AC ground reference up by 0.6V. Usually fine, but since creech still uses the AC lines, this artefact culminated in the reverse facing ramp/whirlpool LEDs appearing dimmer than their forward facing counterparts.

If you're still awake, and enjoy flagellating yourself with obscure pinball debugging, feel free to checkout our path to a solution over on pinballinfo. Special thanks to Vimtoman and DAFlippers for their help and expertise.

https://www.pinballinfo.com/community/threads/one-for-the-boffins.49015/

So where are we? A new board revision is what!

Introducing... v1.2. New board design, GI OCD fixes, new GI OCD cabling. All my boards will now be SMD fabricated as much as possible, which will mean better quality, and faster order fulfilment. I'm super stoked because it will mean less hours in the dead of night inhaling solder fumes and freaking out that I'm going slowly going bat sh-t crazy because of it.

Existing users have been contacted and offered swaps on the new boards. Those in the current production batch - not long to go now! I'll be in touch soon with everyone laying out the finer details. Massive, massive thanks for everyone being so cool and rolling with the peaks and troughs of small-guy mod production. It can be a rocky road sometimes, but its heartening that everyone without exception has been supportive and cool with the delays.

All the best and here's to looking forward!

Davey
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Also here's a bit of a sneaky peaky on whats coming up next. This one would have been out sooner, but well, you know.

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Those 3D renders are tasty aren't they. Too pretty not to share!

No way, my uber professional excel spreadsheet has a mind like a steel trap! Nope everyone is accounted for and will be getting PMs soon. Part availability has also been a little bit tricky, with my fabricator running out of an opto coupler I need and mouser running late on orders due to the texas power outages. All fun and games. Rest assured everyone who has expressed interest will be getting PMs, hopefully in the next 1-2 months, and many even sooner. Thanks again for your patience.