pinball "force feedback" opinions wanted

[Techoverload]

First I should state I only have the idea and little to no way/knowledge/programming ability to apply it.

How hard would it be in visual pin mame to include a "force feedback" option to trigger a either usb or probably easier game or serial port lead that would in turn trigger a relay to fire a selinoid from a actual pinball machine. The hardware end would be easy enought to build and if mounted to the side wall of a control panel/box and given say a wood plate o strike would give a very nice tactile response for playing pins on a pc.

I dont know much about programming but wouldnt think it would be to hard to make the program fire of a signal evertime a bumper was hit.

And if you wanted to get fancy even have a few diffrent signals available for say flippers bumpers low on the playfield and ones higher up to give three diffrent signals so you could make three difrent strength selinoid striker plate combos??

Just an idea but I think it would fill a big peice of the gap to making pins a little more "real on the pc.

Any programmers want to give it a go?

[paigeoliver]

You would definitely need to use a few different coils/solenoids. The "free game" one, which is generally the only one in a pin that just strikes at nothing, is so loud and powerful that it would drive you crazy if it was constantly firing because you had it linked up to your virtual pop bumpers.

You also have a whole nother issue in addition to driving these things (which would probably easily be accomplished in software via a parallel port interface). That issue would be the voltages. Pinball coils/solenoids are not 5 volt or 12 volt, they vary by type and manufacturer, but they are all a lot higher voltage than anything you are going to get out of a PC power supply.

That would mean that you would need a pinball power transformer in your cabinet which would certainly complicate things.

[Techoverload]

actually power wouldnt be to hard to cope with as all they are is a coil and a metal rod which actually effectively solves the other hitting to hard problem because lower voltage means less power in the arm movment.

You will find the input power on the coils is actually fairly small as it doesnt take much juice to create a fairly strong magnetic field. And if true pinball coils for some strange reason are wired for higher current (cant imagine why) I live right up the road from a graingers wharehouse/store and can get other similar type coils ie doorbell which are under 2 volt ie aa battery powered

Ok I stand corrected upon further poking around looks like pinball coils range anywhere from 10-50 volts so I guess I stick with doorbell coils though even 50 volts at fairly low amps would be easy enough to acheive

[Inaba]

From the software side of the house, it would be trivial to add a basic knocker to the bumpers and such.

All you'd need to do is add another method to the bumper object (or whatever contains the bumper object) and call that method right along with the action methods of the bumper.

if (knockerActive) bumper.knockerActivate();

You could even give the knocker varying amounts of juice depending on the force of the ball against the knocker.  Just have your method include an int or double variable to indicate the strength of the knock you want.

The root of the question (from software) is how to impliment the knocker.  Once that's settled, the actual code would be really easy.  If you or someone else wants to send me the hardware for it (and instructions on how you expect it to be connected to the PC), I can see what I can do about a patch to PinMAME to send a set of knockers on over

Mmmmm knockers....

[Ken Layton]

Modern electronic pinball machines only use 2 voltages for the coils: 24 volts DC and 50 volts DC.

Flippers and the coils that have to work hard (like below playfield hole kickers) are 50 volts. All other coils (like knockers and slingshot kickers) are 24 volts.