Tiny Medieval Madness pinball (Samsung GT-N7000 based)

[putto72]

This is my second "tiny" build; I promised to myself "nevermore!" after finishing my Ms. Pac Man cabinet (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=115395.0), but I just could not leave it without a little brother

So here we go again!

As usual, my word of warning: if you're going to try and build one for yourself, keep in mind that you need exceptional patience and dedication (and good soldering skills!). I worked on it many nights and a couple of week-ends; I began the project on september, 3rd and finished it on october, 14th.

The idea behind this build came to me when I stumbled upon "Pinball Arcade" (http://www.pinballarcade.com/), a very nice simulator that lets you play several great pinball tables. I own a Samsung Galaxy Note (GT-N7000), which I use as my personal phone; it's very nice, with an excellent display (I sometimes draw sketches on it - you can "paint" wonderful drawings).

Even though Pinball Arcade had great graphics and sounds, I was a little disappointed at first by the playability on the Galaxy (maybe a device-specific problem); to move the flippers, you have to tap the lower part of the screen, while the upper part lets you "shake" the table to save a ball. Unfortunately, there is a small lag between your tap and the reaction of the bat, and when the ball is heading at you at 100 mph a split second of delay becomes crucial (update: if you turn off energy saving, the response is much better, almost perfect!) Later I discovered a nice utility called "USB/BT Joystick Center", which can be used to connect USB or Bluetooth joypads to an Android device; this utility has an add on, called Joystick2Touch, which (as the name suggests) lets you map a key on the joypad to a "tap" on a specific area on screen. So I decided to shell out 5 Euro to buy a USB OTG adapter, and tried playing with a joypad through Joystick Center+Joystick2Touch: I discovered that the game played VERY well, and this became the "green light" to the project.

Among the games available in Pinball Arcade there is Medieval Madness by Williams; I love this pinball, it's mighty playable, with very nice sound effects and great artwork; moreover, the artwork has a blue background, which goes along very well with my Ms. Pac Man cabinet So the choice was really easy! I extracted the artwork from the Future Pinball reproduction, available on the net.

I wanted this small pinball to be several things at once:
- a playable tiny pinball machine;
- a "stand" for playing with the Galaxy Note using a real joystick;
- a charging unit for my Galaxy Note (which can be used as a speakerphone, when fitted inside);
- a "fashion" lamp, when the phone was not in there (there is NO WAY that I'm leaving there my phone all the time!).
I think my design has achieved all these goals, even though this small cabinet was really "crowded" at the end.

The basis for the size of the object was the Galaxy Note; everything was scaled from that.
The cabinet was built using 4 mm plywood, doubled and interlocked; the result is incredibly solid.
Just as I did with Ms. Pac Man, the artwork was printed on transparent adhesive plastic; the wood was treated with stucco and white gesso (Pebeo White), then I applied the printed sticker and over that another sheet of transparent film; the final appeareance is very "plastic-like".
I used Pebeo Black for the inside and for the black surfaces.
The black plastic details were created using a DVD box; the rivets are just pins, the frames are created from the dvd box covered with aluminium foil.
I decided to put 4 buttons on the sides (2 per side): one for the flipper and one for shaking the table in that direction.
The bigger buttons (used for the flippers) were two spares from my previous project (CKN1121, from Digikey); I sourced locally the smaller "shake" buttons, and the two additional buttons I added at the back.
I bought a cheap Trust Predator USB Joypad (GM-1150, another 5 Euro), which has 8 buttons and is really easy to wire (I already used one for my old joystick adapter).
At the back of the cabinet, I added a DB9 connector, to use my "vintage" Wico Super Three-Way; I soldered there the four directions and the remaining two buttons available on the joypad.
For charging the Note, I bought a USB Type A/Micro-B angled cable (another 7 Euro); I cut the Type A end and transformed it into a standard round connector: exactly the same used in my Ms. Pac Man cabinet, so that I could use the same cable to charge both units.
For the lights, I bought a kit: a 1 mt strip of white leds + 12V power supply equipped with a switch (15 Euro).
I studied a little the strip, and found that it was a series of three leds (in series) connected in parallel, so I cut the long strip in smaller strips of 3 leds; I used those leds for backlighting both the display and the "fake" table, which will be in place when I need the phone elsewhere.
I cut a white piece of plexiglass I had around at home in the shape of the display and another piece for mimicking the Galaxy Note.
To separate leds and electronics (so that nothing was visible when I removed the phone) I cut still another piece of white plexiglass, which is not visibile from the outside.
I carved two holes in the wood of the front panel, so that light comes out of the coin slots when the leds are on.
For the legs, I used four long steel "screws"; I don't know how to call them - they have about 2 cm of thread, but are smooth for the rest of the length and the cap is like that of a rivet; I painted with Pebeo Black all the length except for the "foot".
They are not like the original legs, but I wanted the pinball to be really "strong" and these legs (which screw on four bolts glued on the bottom) are rock solid. I took a few "artistic licenses" in my model; nevertheless, I believe it is very faithful to the original pinball.
In the end, I can charge my phone, play pinball using the side buttons, play Mame using my joystick connected to the DB9 on the back, or just use the pinball as a nice lamp!
I'm attaching a few pictures of the work-in-progress and of the finished product - I hope you like it, I'm happy enough of the result!

P.S. The pictures with the mock-up are much better, because they were taken with the Galaxy Note; the others were shot with my old Nokia N95, and have lower quality (the flash does not compensate enough the light coming from the display).

[putto72]

And more pictures..

[putto72]

And more pictures..

[Le Chuck]

      

Another great mini build.  Keep it up! 

[putto72]

Thanks Le Chuck, love your mini Star Wars! 

Here's a video in action, both as a pinball and as a Mame machine:

[youtube][/youtube]

Sorry for the low quality, I used my old Nokia N95 for taking the video; moreover, it's a little hard to play using one hand and shoot at the same time with the other hand..