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Thomas the tank engine. TTTE.


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  • 2 months later...

Yes I'm still alive. I've been putting a lot of my spare time into tidying up our property and working on setting up one of our sheds as a temporary makerspace.

Inspired by a visit from @Pash yesterday, and what a nice surprise it was I've spent some quiet time in the Makerspace shed working on the Thomas the tank engine pinball machine today.

I thought I'd start on the display.

The display in the Thomas pin has its own Arduino as the library I'm using requires the display to be refreshed frequently or you get flicker. The display controller (Arduino Leonardo) is connected to the Fat controller board via a serial cable.

I've set it up so that the Fat controller board sends a value from 1 to 15 via serial to the display controller which interprets this as a value from 5 to 500,000 which is added to the score and I'm happy to report that it's running well.

Now that I've got the display working I can use a similar technique for the stepper driver board.

The Fat Controller board has 4 serial ports.

Cheers Trev

 

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

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if you @oldhank are there, Im sure there will be hugs :D Oh and Battle Pinny….

 

Im not shure if its can make it but I will try ive taken 10 days off work for the brisbane pinball masters asking for another two days off a month after might be asking for too much

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As of today the display controller is programmed to take a serial input in the form of a number from 0 to 255 and act on the signal recieved.

It can increment the score by set amounts

ie. If it receives a 0 from the fat controller board it will increase the score by 50 points, if it receives a 6 it will increase the score by 5000 points. Following on from this an 8 will turn a relay on for the Game Over lamp and a 9 will turn it off again.

10 to 14 turn the Ball number lights on and off using Neopixels and 15 resets everything to off and the score to zero. Other values will turn the topper lights on and off and possibly the smoke machine.[emoji16]

The picture shows push buttons connected to the Fat Controller board for testing of the serial link. It also proves the switch debounce circuit works.

These buttons will be replaced by the playfield switches and the game start button later.

I want to get the satellite boards working correctly before I finish the Fat controller code.

 

All this from 4 wires: 5v, 9v (for the score display) Gnd and a tx pin on the Fat controller board that does all the work.

Cheers Trev 0c0264ed7a6c83f49025303829780045.jpg

 

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

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It was the stepper driver's turn today.

After a fair bit of stuffing around I realised

1. My board design is wrong (but can be modified)

2 the stepper motors I've fitted to the playfield don't work with the controller chips I'm trying to use.

 

I did get a stepper from a CD drive to work in the end but I think it's time for a redesign.

Cheers Trev 38295eb94dd1aebedc3bd2ca570bcf65.jpg

 

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

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I'll give it a try.

I think the motors are the wrong voltage and they're overheating

 

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

 

If the voltage is to high you could try regulating it down but just one regulator on the common rather than each of the stepper motor drives.

 

If the supply to the steppers is 12 volts but you want only 5 getting to the motor, you could swap the common ground to 5volts and then the potential difference from the 12volts to the 5volt is 7 volts. this will work perfectly providing the 12volts and 5volts share the same ground. To get the 7volts down to closer to 5volts, run the DC voltage through a diode as each diode drops .7 of a volt for a silicon diode or germanium diodes 0.25 to 0.3 V....Two silicon diodes in series will drop the voltage 1.4volts etc. Better than a resistor because there is no heat generated and providing the diode is high enough current rating, no problems.

Edited by Autosteve
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Here you go @BIG Trev, this is my high current diode voltage divider board for Battle Pinny I just made, it drops the voltage by 6.6 volts !

https://www.aussiearcade.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=149431

 

I altered the diode voltage drop figures and added the germanium diodes voltage drop figures above so you should be able to fine tune to the required voltage. While some silicon diodes do drop .6 of a volt, most drop .7 of a volt. Not a real issue till you start adding multiple diodes in series but worthy of noting.

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Does this maintain the amps? It looks simple can you post the schematic?

 

Theoretically, it should not effect the amps...but its all theory just yet. When I put it in, I will see the real world effect. Its just 11 diodes in series. The are 12 amp 60 volt. There will be a heating effect, so that's why the heatsinks. They will run the coils so really only 50m/s bursts. When the flippers are on they will draw a bit more juice , if the flipper is held.

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