I'll Be Back At It Soon!!!

[kendall...@gmail.com]

Well I know there are some lurkers on this group and there hasn't been
much posting recently. I am excited to report it that I will soon be
back at it! My wife and I sold our house and we have a contract on a
new one so come November I'll back at working on this project that has
been mothballed in a a storage facility for far too long. When I get
back to work I'll start posting again!!!

[andrewhannay]

Any more details?
Andrew


On 14 Oct, 14:15, "kendallvanp...@gmail.com"

[kendall...@gmail.com]

Well it has been mothballed for a bit now, but here is where I'm at.

I'm working on a rollergames playfield to prototype getting computer
input and output. I've rewired all of the switches to an IPAC board
which generates a keystroke when a swich is rolled over. I have
created a solenoid control board using an LED controller board. It
kicks a Mosfet that controls the 50 v current through the solenoids.
So I currently have cpu controll of the solenoids and I have switch
input. I have not programmed any game play yet on the machine. My
next task is to rig up some of the switches for state checking.
Because the switches only generate a keystroke if a ball is just
sitting on a switch you need a way to check the switch when needed
from the cpu. I"m going to do a similar structure as the Soleniod
control. If I control the current to the switches I can turn them on
and off and generate the keystroke if they are closed.

After I get this all done I'm going to start programming the game and
get it to the point where it is interactive with scoring locks and
everything else.

For programming I'm using VB which interacts with Flash for the
graphics. I would love to do a dot matrix, but have no clue how to
control one of those.

I haven't done any stripping of the playfield or have not done any
artwork for a translight or anything like that. When I get moved into
my new place I plan on doing a better job documenting my work and
posting videos and other stuff.

The two videos I have up are here:

This one was after I first got the flippers working on the machine.
You can see it is very early on a prototype board that wasn't even
clearcoated or anything. I eventually got a new cabinet and a bunch
of stuff. However, this was my first flipper control. I hardwired
them so there is no cpu integration here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsmLqoVt4Qk

This is my second video and very close to where I stopped working.
You can see the new cabinet, the rollergames playfield, the gi is
wired, the pop bumpers are wired, the flippers are wired and most
importantly the CPU can control solenoids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdvy2HAgUEI

I cannot wait to get back to work on this project. It has been
killing me that it has been buried in a storage unit. We will be
taking it out of the unit on November 14th and I'll have to get it
back up and running to where it was left and then get to work. My
theme will be my college alamater. Kinda corny, but it will match the
room it will be in.

> > back to work I'll start posting again!!!- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[andrewhannay]

Nice work.
I've wanted to do this myself using the same IPAC board idea but then
sold all but one of my pinball machines when I moved.
I wrote some scoring software on a PC that basically used the keys 1-9
to total up points on a 1-4 player scoreboard.
I was going to base the game on Tron and included some graphics from
the film in my program.
I still have the code and exe around somewhere, not written in VB
though, I used C.
Andrew


On Oct 16, 6:21 pm, "kendallvanp...@gmail.com"

> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[kendall...@gmail.com]

Nice a tron machine would be pretty cool. I'm surprised that they
never made one back in the day. Right now I only have my software
having one player, but I'll expand it later on.