Build Your Own Pinball Possibilities...?

[Mark70]

It's all about relays.  You can do whatever you want with a bunch of relays, sensors and buttons.

My experience with this was like this:
In highshool our physics class had an egg race.  The person who gets his egg from the roof of the gym to the gym floor the fastest with the egg in tact wins.  I built the timing system. 

I used:
-an old "laptop" about the size of a lage home theater amp.  I think it was a 186.
-a PLC that my brother built in first year electronics in college which had a built in time routine.
-a solenoid
-some metal sensing proximity switches

It was no more complicated than any individual pinball curcuit.  a keypress both started a timer and fired the soleniod (releasing the egg drop contest entry)  The racer hit a piece of plywood hanging on rubber bands, moving it away from the proximity switches, sending a signal to the plc to stop the time and reporting it to the laptop.

The plc was 12v, the solnoid and prox switches were 110.  It all interfaced very nicely and it used a few relays about the size of a cannon printer ink cartrage  (first thing I saw).

I have no idea how vpinmame works, but it seems like it would be easier to make your own software.  I'm wildly speculating on this now, but couldn't you figure out how visual pinball feeds input to vpinmame and tap the same inputs?

[RayB]

I'd like to add that programming logic for a pin is probably a thousand times easier than any sort of video game.   Think about it, all it is is inputs (ball touched this drop target "button", ball touched this hole "button"). That's all it is. A bunch of switches.

The coding would be alot of "if/thens", flags and maybe an array to help track what the last few inputs were. That's about it. No collision detection, no animation routines, no graphics drawing tricks, ... simple!

[ChadTower]

Coding a SIMPLE pin is like that... most pins have game modes, sequences, logic and timing periods... when you consider that you are writing for optimum speed and raw hardware, I'd say it's mostly the same as a video game in difficulty.

[allroy1975]

Allroy... you want to build a complex, LCD capable, completely custom pin as your first design attempt and are complaining about cost of existing boards at the same time?  Not only are those directly contradictory but they're unrealistic too.

My advice here is to start out with a reachable goal, that is, to retheme an existing pin and experience the process.  Then go forward building something more elaborate.  Don't go trying to build an atom bomb when you have never built a molotov cocktail.

Maybe I'm not being clear.  what you're suggesting is go out..buy a working Pin.  then destroy it.  make it into a monster that I want. 

Usually a good working pin is both hard to find and expensive.  to spend that much money on something I'm going to destroy just seems stupid to me.  I want to buy a trashed pin and resurrect it as my own design to SAVE money.  if you buy a pin missing board or with trashed boards, that's perfect.  like you said yourself, the programming is really the easiest part.  It's just coming up with a trigger set and scoring rules. 

I've worked on my own pins, I've built cabinets before.  you're acting like building the table is the hardest part and I should start with.....building a table.  Building the table IS the hardest part, and it's something that needs to be done either way. 

or are you suggesting that I ...take my F14, get new artwork for it and bury the original stuff under that and pretend like I designed it?  I don't think that's what we're talking about as: that's not what the guy with Futurama did. 

Getting video to play in a windows VB app is NOT hard.  that's the beauty of Windows.  Writing a game that would do all the things I'm talking about would not be that hard to do for a programmer.  I believe I mentioned that a friend of mine is a programmer and is VERY interested in working on this with me.  He's also built a mame cab and done his fair share of fixing original pins. 

I don't understand exactly why people do this stuff.....we ask a question:  is this possible?  and instead of giving constructive answers it seems like they just try to talk you out of it.  what if when Oscar went to make his first spinner everyone had talked him out of it?  I dunno...try to think more POSITIVE.  this IS possible.  So, how do we get there?

Allroy

[ChadTower]

Actually, I did not suggest buying a working good pin.  There are quite a few pins out there that are beyond salvaging that can be retooled.  Repair the boards but the backglass is gone, the playfield is toast, and the cabinet is rotten.  There are a lot of those out there that could be returned as a rethemed pin a lot easier and more likely than a decent pin.

You can try to tell me what a programmer can do, but I'm telling you, you're oversimplifying it.  I am a senior software engineer with more than a decade of experience.  A good programmer would not write such an app in Windows.  It would very likely be (and WAS, if you remember) written under a minimal linux kernel.  The only reasons someone would write something like that in Windows would be if they needed something already in Windows (such as PinMAME) or if they didn't know any other way.

I'm not telling you not to do it that way, but really, if you haven't ever attempted anything like this or even repaired a pin I suspect you don't understand the depth of what you are suggesting is so easy.

[allroy1975]

he and I have both repaired pins.  I'm not under the impression that this will be done in weeks.  I understand that it will take a VERY long time and will most likely cost a good deal of money.  yes, the reasons to do it in Windows is because that's what he's good with, it's where vpinmame is, and it's easy to interface video...from what I understand.  He's the programmer.

I understand it will be difficult.  I understand it hasn't really been done before.  I understand it will be expensive. 

I want to do it.  It can be done.  It may turn out like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- the first time, but it SHOULD be attempted.  if not by me, then by someone else, but it should be tried.

Allroy

[yugffuts]

I'm the one that dragged VP into this originally, so let me explain why:

By creating the table in VP originally, you can play the game, test the game modes/rules, and look for dead spots on the PF to a degree.  This can help finalize your design before you attempt your first cuts.  It is also a very straightforward scripting environment; if the script exists, why not use it?

Another reason to use VP is that there is already a community using it that is familiar with the scripting engine, which means a source for toubleshooting help.  If you are programming on your own, you can't turn to anyone for assistance.

couldn't you figure out how visual pinball feeds input to vpinmame and tap the same inputs?

I agree 100%.  VP has you set "Bumper1" as an object, registers a hit and searches the code for any instance of "Bumper1" and operates those commands.  What you would need to utilize VP is a plugin that allows you to map each item on the VP game to a keypress, to allow for wiring.  Logically it seems straightforward, but I don't know how hard it would be to implement.

[yugffuts]

Since VP is based on Visual Basic, what would happen if you put something like this in the script, to check for keypresses?

    If (GetKeyState(vbKeyA) And KEY_DOWN) Then
        Score = 5
    End if

I'll try that when I get home, unless someone knows the answer (or can try it before I can).  Obviously, the keypresses will conflict with what VP is looking at for input, I'm just curious if the script will register the input.

[SithMaster]

didnt knex make a pinball set we could use?

funny i checked ebay and theres a xeon machine that has 10 dollar shipping to me when i used the calculator.  good for me.

[yugffuts]

I don't know who or what Knex is...Any pointers?

I tried to put the code in VP, but it did not work.  It did compile, however nothing happened when I pressed the "A" button in game.  I'm not sure if it was a syntax issue.  I had hoped to try it in a VB script outside of VP, but didn't have time this weekend to try it.

[RayB]

K-Nex
Kids building toy.
Just ignore that. It's not a serious option.

[yugffuts]

Yea, I would never get that on a Monday morning...

[allroy1975]

yugffuts, how's it going?  I see you've had some discussion on the pinmame-hw forums.  like..the ONLY discussion almost. 

I think I'm going to try to pull a Brad O. and set up one of my Baby Pac-Man's to run pinMAME.  this should give me a good understanding of how it all works, and to be honest, I LOVE that game and don't plan on ever getting rid of it.  The only problem I have with it is the inconsistancies of the board.  my good one burns a transistor from time to time and the left kicker won't kick the ball out of the hole.  I'd rather deal with a minute of boot time than having to take that board out, replacing that transistor...not to mention the other freaky problem I have with that game...after about 45 minutes of play both the GI and Switched Illumination lights all start to flicker and stuff just stops taking score etc.  Turning the game off for a few hours "fixes" this.

Anyway, once I've had some experience "restoring" a game I think I'll be more ready to take on a full blown DIY pin. 

waddaya think of that?

Allroy

[yugffuts]

Sounds like steps in the right direction.  If you read the thread at pinmame-hw you'll see that Reg thinks that setup could be used to control any pin, as long as you can write the code for it. 

I'm going back and forth now working on my VP table to finalize the design and scripting, and working on a simple standalone script that will monitor for keystroke input and act on them.  Once I have that script worked out, I plan to revisit the pinmame-hw and sift through all that information and try and figure it all out.

I had a baby-pac myself, and once I got the acid damage fixed, it worked pretty reliably.  I just sold it off a few months ago.

[allroy1975]

I started e-mailing Brad O.  Here's what he recommended when I said I was with him 100% that I'd rather set up a PC and wait a minute for Windows to load than have to take the pin apart every few months to replace that stupid transistor....

here's what he suggested to me:
My recommendation would be to buy the components and hook them up so that
you have ONE lamp working and ONE solenoid working.  Once you can do that,
the rest is just busy work.  That is the approach I took and I was surprised
at how easy it was after getting the one lamp and one solenoid working.

Looking at the circutry they have over there it's obvious that there's just a LOT of the same thing to do OVER AND OVER again.  nothing really COMPLICATED, like he said..just busy work. 

Another really exciting thing about it is that they are alive over there.  I've written to Brad 2 times today.  He writes back quickly and has offered help if I need it.  Anyway, I'll probably get started in the next few weeks.  I'll keep you posted with progress...maybe a project announcement.

Allroy

[yugffuts]

Yes, those guys are very helpful and responsive.

I had mapped out the way I would go about doing this in terms of steps:

1 - Set up flippers, a bumper, and some targets
2 - Hook up switches to bumper/target through an IPAC
3 - Write a script that catches those switch closures and play a sound
4 - Work with Pinmame-HW (or other solution) to successfully drive the solenoid.

The first 3 steps should be fairly straightforward, although it would take a while for me to get around to the project, most likely.  Please post any progress you make so when I get around to it, I can use your work as a reference.

I also agree that Windows is the way to go, simply because that is what most PC users are familiar with.  If I had to use Linux, that would just be one more thing I had to learn before I could get moving on the project.

FYI, there is also a post concerning this kind of project on the VP forums.  Perhaps someone needs to try and organize the people that are interested, and use that pool of knowledge to move forward?