Internet Connected Pinball Machine Shows Off Scores

February 25, 2023 by Al Williams 9 Comments

Before video games, there were pinball machines. Not that they don’t exist today, but a modern pinball machine will likely have microprocessors and other fancy things that traditional pinball machine designers could never dream of. [Eli] had one of these mechanical machines from 1974 as a kid and, later, encountered a more modern machine with a rudimentary microprocessor and other integrated circuits onboard. One thing this enabled is the ability to remember high scores. But you have to physically look at the machine, and you can only see the top four scores. [Eli] decided to adapt the machine to upload high score data to the Internet, and it is a fun project.

[Eli]’s design goals were to make it automatic and robust. That is, if the network is down or the machine loses power, you shouldn’t lose high score data. In addition, he didn’t want to change the appearance or damage the 40-year-old machine. You can see a video of how it all turned out below.

The Laser Cue machine is one of many built around the “Williams System 7” platform. A 6808 CPU, along with some I/O chips to manage all the lights, sensors, and bells. The game has only 1K of RAM, 12K or ROM, and 128 bytes (no prefix, just bytes) of RAM with battery backup. There was even a common “operating system” called Flipper ROM, and that’s actually documented over on GitHub.

The ESP32 version of the WiFi interface board

Since the memory for the machine is all in external chips, it was a reasonable idea to replace the CPU with a board that monitored signals on the board. The CPU would plug into this new board, and then a newer microcontroller with an Internet connection could eavesdrop on bus traffic. However, removing the old CPU and jamming pins into the ancient socket was worrisome, so instead, [Eli] elected to tap into a test connector that was already on the board but not plugged into anything.

An ESP32 is more than capable of the speeds, although connecting to 5 V logic was a bit of a problem. The CPU has 5 V tolerant pins, but some of the 25 available pins on the development board either set items on boot or may briefly be outputs and were thus unusable. To reduce the necessary pins, [Eli] decided to do some of the decoding in separate logic. Instead of using TTL chips, he elected to use a programmable logic array.

After that, it seemed it would be straightforward, but there was something preventing the ESP32 from reading each bus cycle. [Eli] never got to the bottom of it but instead switched to the Raspberry Pi Pico W. Using the chip’s special I/O processors made the job easy, and it worked perfectly. The rest of the project was just fit and finish. Be sure to read to the end to find out the lessons learned which might help you on your next similar project.

A modern DIY machine might even have an FPGA inside. Don’t have room for a big full-sized pinball machine? No problem.

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Mouse Finds New Home In Pinball Machine

October 3, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 14 Comments

Restoring pinball machines is an excellent hobby, and can even be more than that as we see businesses like bars and museums focusing on them as a main attraction. There’s all kinds of intrigue to be found, from esoteric mechanical systems to classic electronics and unique artwork. For those building new pinball machines, though, one way to bypass a lot of the hassle of finding antiquated parts is to build a digital machine with an analog feel, like this machine which repurposes a computer mouse in an interesting way.

One of the important design considerations with a more modern system like this is to preserve the mechanical components that the player interacts with, in this case the plunger. This pinball machine is really just a large screen driven by a computer, but the plunger is a spring-loaded one from an old analog machine. Attached to the end of the plunger inside the cabinet is a cloth strap which passes underneath an old optical mouse. When the plunger is pulled and released, the mouse registers the position of the plunger and sends that information to the computer controlling the pinball display.

We really appreciate a KISS-style design like this in general. Mice are a proven, reliable technology and the metal components of the plunger are unlikely to ever wear out, which means that at least this part of the new pinball machine is unlikely to need much maintenance over the lifespan of the cabinet itself. For other ways of preserving the original feel of old machines, take a look at this build which incorporates all kinds of tricks within a MAME cabinet.

Tiny Pinball Machine Also Runs X86 Code

July 21, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

As arcades become more and more rare, plenty of pinball enthusiasts are moving these intricate machines to their home collections in basements, garages, and guest rooms. But if you’re not fortunate enough to live in a home that can support a space-intensive hobby like pinball machines, there are some solutions to that problem. This one, for example, fits on the palm of your hand and also happens to run some impressive software for its size.

The machine isn’t a mechanical pinball machine like its larger cousins, though. Its essentially a 3D printed case made to look like a pinball machine with two screens attached. It does have a working plunger for launching the ball and two buttons on the sides for the approximation of authenticity, but it’s actually running Pinball Fantasies — a pinball simulator designed to run on x86 hardware from the 90s. This sports an ESP32 on the inside, which has just enough computing capability to run an x86 emulator that can load these games in DOS.

The game includes haptic feedback and zips along at 60 frames per second, which really brings the pinball experience to its maximum level given the game’s minuscule size. It’s impressive for fitting a lot into a small space, both from physical and software points-of-view. For more full-sized digital pinball builds, take a look at this one which comes exceptionally close to replicating the real thing.

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Tiny Pinball Is As Cute As Pi

March 27, 2022 by Matthew Carlson 8 Comments

Pinball machines are large, complex, and heavy boxes of joy and delight. However, when you don’t have the money or space for one, you have to make your own mini Raspberry Pi-powered one.

With access to a local makerspace and a bit of extra free time, [Chris Dalke] had plans to capture the flavor of a full-scale pinball machine in a small package. Laser-cut Baltic birch forms the enclosure, and a screen makes up the playing field rather than a physical ball. An Arduino Uno handles the three buttons, the four LED matrixes, and a solenoid for haptic feedback, communicating

with the Pi via serial. Unfortunately, even with a relatively decent

volume inside, it is still a tight squeeze.

Rather than use an off-the-shelf pinball game, [Chris] wrote his own in C using raylib and raygui, two handy libraries that can be included in the project quickly. SQLLite3 writes high scores out to disk. All in all, an inspiring project that has a very high level of polish.

If you’re looking for a tiny pinball machine but want more of the classic pinball feel, why not look at this scale pinball machine?

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Get A Grip On Troubleshooting Your Vintage Pinball Machine

January 10, 2022 by Chris Wilkinson 1 Comment

Restoring vintage technology can be a tricky business, especially without the appropriate schematics and documentation. To this end [Mark] has spent the past twelve months building a comprehensive schematic editor and circuit simulator library for electromechanical pinball machines.

Rather than explore each and every table in excruciating detail, the emSim software aims to examine how specific circuits work, and how they are used as part of the gaming experience. The aim of the project is to aid in the diagnosis and repair of vintage electromechanical pinball machines, the types that rely on a dizzying array of switches, gears, motors and coils in their operation, operating like clockwork underneath the play field. While these older pinball machines typically use alternating current, the game logic (for the most part) is still binary, and can be effectively described with Boolean operators.

Like any machine with moving parts, these systems will eventually wear down and require servicing, a task which may not be in the wheelhouse for your casual pinball enthusiast. [Mark]’s hope is that his circuit simulations will allow just about anyone to repair these classic tables, and keep them around for future generations to explore and enjoy.

If tinkering with pinball innards isn’t for you, then make sure to check out our coverage of this awesome virtual pinball table.

A 1981 Centaur pinball table rebuilt into a coffee table.

Clear Off The Coffee Table, It’s Pinball Time

December 28, 2021 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

Like many of us, [BuildXYZ] has always wanted to own a pinball machine, but doesn’t have the space to justify buying such a big and heavy toy. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. [BuildXYZ] figured that if they could build a pinball machine into a coffee table form factor, they’d be at least halfway to justification.

[BuildXYZ] didn’t choose just any pin. After doing a bunch of research, they settled on 1981’s Bally Centaur because it’s an early solid-state machine, and it’s one of the best. It has no secondary playfield levels to deal with, making it much easier to do this project.

Where do we even start to describe this beautiful labor of love? There are too many details to list, but know that it seems to be equal amounts of restoration work and custom work that brought this table together. The build video after the break is definitely worth your time, and you’ll gain a much better appreciation of the amount of time that went into this, from the custom score decoder chip built on an FPGA to the 3D printed replacement drop targets and new acrylic bits to replace the yellowing ones from the playfield.

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Hackaday Links: July 25, 2021

July 25, 2021 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

Everyone makes mistakes in their job, but very few of us get the chance to make a one-character mistake with the potential to brick millions of devices. But that’s what happened to a hapless Google developer, who made an understandable typo in the ChromeOS code that ended up making it all the way to production. The error, which was in the OS encryption keys vault, was supposed to include the “&&” operator for a logical AND. The developer instead used a single ampersand, which broke the who conditional statement. This meant the OS evaluated even correct passwords as invalid, leaving users locked out of their Chromebooks. To be fair to the developer there should be a lot of QA steps between that typo and production, but it still has to sting.

Speaking of whoopsies, sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be right on the internet. It started when a player of the popular tank battle simulator “War Thunder” took issue with the in-game 3D model of the British Challenger 2 main battle tank. The player argued that the model was inaccurate to the point of affecting gameplay, and thought the model should be changed to make things more realistic. There seemed to be some basis for this, as the player claimed to have been a Challenger 2 commander and gunnery instructor. What’s more, like any good Netizen, the player cited sources to back up the claims, including excerpts from the official Challenger 2 instruction manual. Players on the War Thunder forum flagged this as likely classified material, but the player insisted that it wasn’t — right up to the point where the UK Ministry of Defence said, “Not so fast.” It turns out that the manual hasn’t been declassified, and that releasing the material potentially runs afoul of the Official Secrets Act, which carries with it up to 14 years detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

For fans of pinball, the announcement that the Museum of Pinball in Banning, California is closing its doors for good is probably a mix of good news and bad. It’s obviously bad news for any museum to close, especially one that curates collections from popular culture. And there’s no denying that pinball has been a big part of that culture, and that the machines themselves are often works of electromechanical art. But it appears that the museum just couldn’t make a go of it, and now its cavernous space will be sold off to a cannabis grower. But the sad news is tempered by the potential for private collectors and other pinball aficionados to score one of the estimated 1,100 pins the museum now needs to find a home for. We’ve never been to the museum, so it’s hard to say what kinds of machines they have and how collectible they are, but regardless, the market is about to be flooded. If you’re nearby, you might want to take a chance to see and play some of these machines one last time, before they get shipped off to private game rooms around the world.

And finally, exciting news from Hackaday superfriend Fran Blanche, who will soon tick an item off her bucket list with a zero-G ride on “G-Force 1”. Not to be confused with its military cousin the “Vomit Comet”, the weightlessness-simulating aircraft will afford Fran a total of about five minutes of free-fall when she takes the ride in a couple of months. There will also be periods of the flight that will simulate the gravity on both the Moon and Mars, so Fran has promised some Matt Damon mythbusting and Buzz Aldrin moonbouncing. And always one to share, Fran will bring along a professional video crew, so she can concentrate on the experience rather than filming it. We’ve actually scheduled Fran for a Hack Chat in August, to talk about the flight and some of her other cool goings-on, so watch out for that.