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Generic Tech Device Section For HomeBrew Pinball.


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Yeah.

 

Got a couple designs pre done and tested. Just starting to cab up and start flipping to double check shots.

 

Need to clear my backlog of work first.

 

Yeah I was thinking system 11 NC EOS with cap style setup.

 

Micro switch sounds good but as a former comp player, I need the feel of a leaf switch and to be able to half shoot too.

Backshots arent normally a problem.

So not worried about sparking for now and can dial in the power later with coil ohm changes or flipper stroke lengths.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Just trying to find some cheap Transformers for now.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Ended up just going with Transformer > 50v (75v) > BR > Direct to coil and NC EOS.

Basically System 11 setup.

 

 

 

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Ended up just going with Transformer > 50v (75v) > BR > Direct to coil and NC EOS.

Basically System 11 setup.

 

 

Probably the best, easiest flipper system to maintain. Electronic flipper systems are good but they added about 50 more parts that can fail to do exactly the same job except it saved on the price of tungsten on the EOS tips.;)

 

Once a upon a time if the flipper failed it was the coil, EOS, a diode or a fuse.

 

Now compare that to a flipper failing on a FlipTronic flipper setup and all the possible causes.

 

Sometimes simple was best especially when the problem happens on site. I much preferred swapping an EOS than a Tip 36 on site plus I think you loose the feel when transistors are doing the switching rather than bare contacts and going to optical cabinet switches just made it all worse still.

 

It certainly added to the spare parts you needed to carry in your tool box and quite frankly I thought because of all the extra parts, made the flippers less reliable and added a lot of cost to the price of a machine.

 

Less reliable and added cost sort of defeats the purpose of them changing to electronic flippers doesn't it.

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Generic Tech Device Section For HomeBrew Pinball.

 

Yeah.

Simple is best and also feels better.

 

Ordered more EOS to get the top 2 flippers working. Just had to swap out the NO switches and replace.

Will add the caps later.

 

I’ve even gone down the route of sys 11 pf hinge setup.

 

Spent the day wiring and making it tidy.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I doubt you would have got any base plate design flipper assembly in there. Look how close the playfield hinge is.

 

Pleasing to see multiple flippers. Personally, the more the better I think because pinball is all about flipper control and a machine with only two flippers means your not doing a real whole heap of flipper control in a game aye.

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I doubt you would have got any base plate design flipper assembly in there. Look how close the playfield hinge is.

 

Pleasing to see multiple flippers. Personally, the more the better I think because pinball is all about flipper control and a machine with only two flippers means your not doing a real whole heap of flipper control in a game aye.

 

Yeah I know.

Moved the hinging around slightly and works. But would most likely change it later on. Would do basic Stern pull out setup but with no headbox to rest on, this is perfect.

 

2 lower flippers

2 upper right flippers

 

Right Flipper button operates lower and midway upper right

 

Left Flipper button operates lower and right uppermost 2” flipper.

 

 

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2 lower flippers

2 upper right flippers

 

Right Flipper button operates lower and midway upper right

 

Left Flipper button operates lower and right uppermost 2” flipper.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Cool, like I said I like multiple flippers.

 

I'm trying to work it on my HomeBrew that only the flippers needed at the time are the ones that are powered to get rid of the age old problem of multiple flippers, weak or slow responding flippers.

 

I would have liked to have got hold of something like a Gottlieb Genie and put swing gates between the upper flippers and the upper exit track from the small right playfield so if the ball enters, going into the small upper right playfield, only then do these flippers work and at the same time disable the main playfield flippers.

 

When the ball comes back onto the main playfield working the swing gate, the flipper power swaps back over to the main playfield flippers only.

 

Can't always be done like on a Paragon because all the flippers are all on the one playfield but machines like Genie, Black Hole or Haunted House, very doable

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  • 1 year later...

 

 

So this is version 2

 

It has 6 light recievers , the idea being the pop would sound different depending on where on the skirt the Ball hits.

V2 would all be fed to analogue inputs whereas the V1 would be analogue or digital in.

 

 

 

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I like your idea for a number of reasons but I think slight changes may make it even better. I personally have come to hate bumpers simply because they have so little to do with the game of pinball these days. From a once dominant feature scoring and game wise to a "well we need 3 bumpers or it isn't a pinball and just shove them in here so we can tick the box", with very little thought given to placement and overall effect of the game and as for scoring, hit the bumper a million times and you'll get a game.

Such a waist of a coil driven device when coils are a premium are my real thoughts.

Now a bumper that can detect which direct it is hit from, you can work with that.

 

A bumper that has multiple detectable directions, (segments), could replace a drop target bank where each segment of detection becomes a target so making the bumper a 360 degree drop target bank instead of a one sided drop target bank or wired in parallel with an existing bank and each segment scores a target on a drop target bank so a shot on either is what is required.

 

A bumper that's score increases every time all the segments are completed indicated by the bumper cap lighting colour divided into the same amount of segments. Each segment scored lights that segment on the bumper cap and when all segments are hit, the bumper cap changes colour to indicate the now higher score any shot on the bumper is worth and this continues making a bumper a crutial part of the game's play especially at 10,000 points a hit or higher from multiple segment completions.

 

Now the way you have it detecting, I hate opto anything on any amusement machine. It is just far to dusty an enviroment and one speck of dust on the exact center of either the detector or transmitter in the opto pair often results in bad reads. Opto reading was once used on driving games as a method to detect steering wheel movements and this was aways needing work to keep it going reliably. They changed from opto to magnetic or hall effect and the problems stopped immediately. Wasn't long after and pinballs started using optos. I was so disappointed that day I can assure you.

 

In your design you have the optos near the coil. The coil works like a small negative iron generator every time it fires attracting positive dust particals to it. That is the reason pinballs get dusty inside the cabinet. Take out all the coils and have no CRT picture tube inside an arcade cabinet and suddenly the cabinet doesn't get dust inside it.

 

May I suggest magnetic detection as your method of sensing to make this outstanding innovation extremely reliable. It reads prefectly even when completely covered in dust as I have seen on many driving games over the years.

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...
On 08/10/2022 at 9:53 AM, BIG Trev said:

Is it possible to use a keyboard encoder circuit hooked up to a switch matrix for pinball switches. I'm thinking it could be attached to an Arduino or directly to mpf via usb? 

Your thoughts?

Oddly I built my first industrial keyboard this way, back when they were rs232. I was looking this week and aliexpress and others sell boards that are designed for this purpose "usb keyboard encoder" found them for me. They are available as headers or fully socketed.

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