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Starting my first virtual pinball cab


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Hi all,

 

This is my first post and first attempt at starting my very own virtual pinball cab. I hope to document the journey here.

I have always been a massive fan of pinball and having multiple cabs at home is just not practical and the cost of a real pinball would approximate what I intend to spend on a virtual pinball to get to as close to a real pinball effect with the ability to play more than one machine.

 

I am totally new to virtual pinball but watched and ready about 25 hours of content over the weekend to get an idea of what is involved but I am still a noob. Any help you guys could offer would be much appreciated.

 

 

I want to have a standard cab set up with lockdown bar etc including pinball legs and glass.

So the first thing I intended to sort out was purchasing a play field , I have read that 4k is best but find it difficult to get the dimensions right to fit a standard cab.

I have found a 40inch ( see below link)

 

Any advice on the selection of the playfield would be appreciated.

 

https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/kogan-40-full-hd-led-tv-series-7-gf7100/

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the advice

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For solenoids and shaker motor:

 

Seen it suggested to use zeb board for control of solenoids/shaker/knocker to use the zeb board and then ledwiz for the lighting

Also has attached the link for a shaker motor from the same site

 

Anyone had any experience with these boards? or an alternative for management of solenoids etc

 

https://shop.zebsboards.com/Boards/DIY_BOARDS/24p_HighPower

https://shop.zebsboards.com/DIY_Parts/Shaker_Motor

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Welcome to the forum lowmac, and good luck on what I guarantee will be an eventful journey building your pincab :D I started out in exactly your position, being a lifelong fan of pins but only having the room and spare cash for one machine and thus deciding a virtual cab was my best option. Getting that dream to reality ended up taking me three years (with a number of unplanned interruptions in the process) because there were so many things I'd never even considered which I needed to learn along the way! Very satisfying to get it all completed though, and to know you did it all from go to woah :)

 

As you've surmised, a 40 inch screen is the current norm for a playfield for a standard sized cab. I'm not sure I'd recommend buying a playfield TV from an online vendor though ... there's a few things you probably will want to ensure the screen will do, and the easiest place to do that is in a store where they have one on display because some of them probably aren't going to be mentioned online in the product's specs or in a downloadable user manual.

 

Firstly it's best if the screen will return to the previous state after power loss - that way the playfield will switch itself back on when you start up your cab without you needing to find the remote. Many TVs have this as a setting in the menu somewhere but it's not always obvious ... the playfield TV I bought had the setting hidden in a "hotel" menu which needed a special code to reach. Having access to a real TV you can unplug/plug in the store makes this simpler to check.

 

Similarly you'll want it to return back to the last input it was using (eg. HDMI) before it lost power, so you won't have to use the remote for that. I reckon most TVs do this automatically, but again you can check this easiest when you have an actual TV to play with.

 

Most TVs perform some form of image processing by default to try to make the picture look its best. Sounds good, but this causes a delay between the picture signal it receives and the output it shows and for pinball that lag is super frustrating. It's likely there will be an option in the TV settings to switch off processing (might be a profile called "computer" or "direct" or something instead of just an option that can be set to "off") and a user manual might mention this one at least.

 

And lastly, you probably just want to be able to check the quality of the picture with your own eyes! Is the image crisp or not, is the colour balance good, how visible is the picture from an angle since that's how you'll be viewing it in a pincab. You can't judge these things unless you see one working in person, so it's really worth going into a store if you're able to. And once you've found a model you're happy with then by all means look for it cheaper online to purchase ;)

 

I can't give any feedback on the Zebsboard question - I went with SSF instead of solenoids, and didn't include a shaker in my cab.

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For solenoids and shaker motor:

 

Seen it suggested to use zeb board for control of solenoids/shaker/knocker to use the zeb board and then ledwiz for the lighting

Also has attached the link for a shaker motor from the same site

 

Anyone had any experience with these boards? or an alternative for management of solenoids etc

 

https://shop.zebsboards.com/Boards/DIY_BOARDS/24p_HighPower

https://shop.zebsboards.com/DIY_Parts/Shaker_Motor

 

This kind of method used to be widely used for feedback but there is a better way to do it, it's HEAPS easier and cheaper to achieve too.

 

You use sound-based feedback with special speakers that output sound as a vibration instead of a sound wave - they are called exciters and are cheap - $20 each. You use a seperate amp and seperate the sound channel in the VP settings which routes the real physical table elements (pops, slings, kickouts, flippers etc) to the exciter speakers and the rom-based sounds (music etc) go to your other speakers.

 

With this method you gain MUCH more realistic realtime feedback through your cabinet than you would with solenoids. With solenoids, everything feels the same. CLACK. But with Exciters, everything feels and sounds exactly like a real machine. pops, slings, feel like pops and slings. You can feel the ball dropping out of a wire ramp onto the playfield. you can feel the flipper feedback. You feel the chimes in EM's. It really is heaps better than solenoids - i had solenoids originally but switched and using exciters is SO much better and for minimal hassle and $.

 

Search the threads here there's lots of information about using sound-based feedback for a VP. Also - use a real pinball cabinet - or use plywood if constructing your own - if you are going down this path as they resonate the feel heaps better than MDF.

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How did you fing the SSF in your cab? Also how difficult is the SSF to set up, considering setting one up in my cab.

Seems Jed is a fan of SSF too! :cool:

 

I've not played a vpin cab with solenoids to be able to compare as Jed has, but I find SSF to be great. I had to do a bit of fiddling around at the start - balancing volume between the front and rear channels and finding where on the cabinet resonated the most to give the best "feel" - but once it's set up it just works. Because it's been in my cab all along, I turned the SSF amps off at one point to see if it was really adding anything and did I miss it. It's like night and day ... the cab really does feel more alive and real with that feedback! I absolutely would recommend every cab should use it and forget the solenoids, unless you specifically want those too for some other reason. Oh and like Jed says, it works best if you DON'T have an MDF cabinet!

 

It's simple to set up ... you just need your pincab computer to have 7.1 sound output (if you want 4 exciters for accurate positioning, and why wouldn't you? ;)), and then pick up a few exciters, an optional sub, and 1-2 cheap amps depending on how many you need for the configuration you want to implement. The whole thing probably costs 100-130 bucks total, and you can implement it in a few hours. Find the discussion threads on here or on other vpin forums, and look for the SSF facebook page and join it - it has details of the common configurations other cab owners use, and people chatting about components to buy and how they implemented it and so on.

 

You know how you watched 25 hours of info about vpin cabs? By the time you get this project "finished" (not that they ever are lol) you'll have watched loads more, and have spent a hundred hours reading forums! :D

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Seems Jed is a fan of SSF too! :cool:

 

 

totally ! it's been in my cab for years now and it is the single best upgrade I ever did - the difference is mega. Suddenly, your video game pinball feels like a real machine and that adds SO much to immersion. You can get so much more into a game when you have decent feedback, and forget you are actually just playing a video game and not a real pinball....

 

I'd say the next best upgrade I ever did was a Pin2DMD.

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Hi @Lowmac,

 

Drop me a line if you need any advice, or to hook you up with some of the hardware you're probably after. You're best to call otherwise I find I spend all day typing! You can get my phone number from my website.

 

One thing I will say is be wary of that Kogan TV - many of their models won't remember their power state so when you go to turn everything on for your cab you have to use the remote to fire up the TV, which is a pain. Many people are starting to go with monitors instead as they are less likely to cause that issue and offer other benefits as well.

 

Cheers, Chris

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