[homebrew-pinball] best 24v driver board to use for a custom machine?

[Hunty]

I was going to ask this over on RGP, but then I thought it would be
best to ask here, first.

I'm turning an ALI "Circa 1933" into a PC-controlled custom machine.
However, ALI used a single board for both the MPU and the driver
board, so I'll have to replace the whole thing. I started building my
own driver board, but then I realized that I was probably re-inventing
the wheel and could probably just use a pre-existing driver board made
by somebody with a better idea of what they were doing than I have.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what would be the best driver
board to use for this? I'm fairly confident that I could interface
with pretty much any driver board by using an arduino and maybe some
other custom hardware as an intermediary. The coils will be running at
24v, and right now I'm leaning toward Gottlieb Sys80, but I would
prefer something with molex pins rather than those edge connectors
Sys80 used. I want to keep this fairly cheap and simple, and I've
primarily been looking at "re-engineered" boards from rottendog or ni-
wumpf, but if someone here has designed their own driver board that
they'd like to share with others I'd be happy to check that out, too.

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[Eli Curtz]

I designed and posted a board a while ago.

http://nuprometheus.com/pinball/driver_testing.jpg
http://nuprometheus.com/pinball/Driver8_Schematic.pdf

It requires an external power supply, it's basically just a set of
mosfets for switching.

If you want one I can send you a board and components (solder
yourself) for my cost, which was $25, but you wouldn't really be
saving any money over something like the Rottendog 8-driver board http://rottendog.us/wdb008.htm
which is basically the same thing. It was mostly done as an
educational exercise on my part.

- Eli

[Hunty]

thanks, Eli! I'll look into the rottendog one and also take a look at
your schematic.

On May 4, 8:40 am, Eli Curtz <e...@nuprometheus.com> wrote:
> I designed and posted a board a while ago.
>

> http://nuprometheus.com/pinball/driver_testing.jpghttp://nuprometheus.com/pinball/Driver8_Schematic.pdf

>
> It requires an external power supply, it's basically just a set of  
> mosfets for switching.
>
> If you want one I can send you a board and components (solder  
> yourself) for my cost, which was $25, but you wouldn't really be  

> saving any money over something like the Rottendog 8-driver boardhttp://rottendog.us/wdb008.htm

[William Brower]

Hunty,

I'm using this for the output from the pc:
http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=4757839&keywords=usb+relay+controller#
It only has 8 module though.

And this for inputs: http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

Here another one: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega (looke
like it can doo inputs and outputs)

I posted this info on rgp after your post, I'm new to these newsgroups
and not sure how to use them as of yet.

On May 4, 7:06 pm, Hunty <luvcr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks, Eli! I'll look into the rottendog one and also take a look at
> your schematic.
>
> On May 4, 8:40 am, Eli Curtz <e...@nuprometheus.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > I designed and posted a board a while ago.
>

> >http://nuprometheus.com/pinball/driver_testing.jpghttp://nuprometheus...

[Hunty]

ah, I have an Arduino Duemilanove, and although I was happy with how
easy it is to work with, I was having trouble figuring out a way to
handle lots of inputs with its small number of input pins. I didn't
know about the Mega, and it looks like it would be perfect for the
sorts of things I'm trying to do! Maybe I will make that Allied
Leisure parasite board after all! :) thanks!

On May 25, 8:29 am, William Brower <jerkymanbrow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hunty,
>

> I'm using this for the output from the pc:http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=4757839&keywords=usb+relay+con...

[William Brower]

Hunty,

Thanks for telling about this site, not much traffic though.

Arduino (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega) is a great product for outputs from the pc, though, It can do inputs also.

Look into the I-Pac (http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html) This is a great product for inputs.

This company has come along strong with their keyboard encoders.

We will be using both of the above products in our future build. These are very reasonably priced too. 

Thanks for your time,

Bill 

[Eli Curtz]

The same guy who made the I-Pac has a new board which you can
configure to do both input and output.

I haven't used it - but the I-Pac is pretty standard in the MAME
cabinet world, so I suspect it should be high quality.

http://www.u-hid.com/home/index.php

- Eli

[Adam Preble]

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:24 PM, William Brower <jerkyma...@gmail.com> wrote:

Arduino (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega) is a great product for outputs from the pc, though, It can do inputs also.

Look into the I-Pac (http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html) This is a great product for inputs.

This company has come along strong with their keyboard encoders.

We will be using both of the above products in our future build. These are very reasonably priced too. 

I really like the Arduino platform.  The Mega looks very nice.  So many I/Os...

My personal opinion is that switch-to-keyboard emulation products (such as the I-Pac boards) are not well-suited to a pinball platform.  At the time I was playing with it you had to use an application to configure the board and there was no documentation available for configuring it yourself in software.  Additionally, I don't know about you but I don't like the notion that my pinball machine might lose its switch "matrix" if the keyboard focus is ever on the wrong window.  If those things don't concern you then it might work great for your application.

What I find much more appealing is writing a bit of code to run a switch matrix from an Arduino, and then outputting switch state changes to the serial port.  You really can't get much more foolproof than that, without going to a setup like P-ROC (which I heartily recommend, by the way).

While I'm thinking of it, I have an I-PAC 4 that I'll let go for $20 plus shipping.  When I last used it it was 100% working.  

I also have a pinmame-hw board that's barely been used, which I'll sell for $100 (was $200 new).  If you're not familiar with it it has a parallel port that controls and then a great many driver outputs.  One section for high power (coils and such), one (with many more drivers) for low.  You can connect it to a parallel port if you have one, or you can manually control it using anything with digital outputs, such as an Arduino.  It's basically a power driver board with a simple digital interface.

Here's a picture of both, together, along with my Arduino: http://www.flickr.com/photos/preble/463537611/

Adam

[Hunty]

oh, cool, I didn't realize that someone did a run of pinmame-hw
boards; I've seen the schematics for it, and made something similar
and super-modular using shift/store registers.

Now that I know that the Arduino Mega has 54 i/o lines, I definitely
think it would be a better solution for pinball than an I-Pac.

On Jun 2, 6:12 pm, Adam Preble <pre...@gmail.com> wrote:

[kendall...@gmail.com]

I've been using the Ipac for my inputs and it is perfect for this
application. I have a Uhid controlling my solenoids. I got bogged
down working on the lamp control, but I really need to bone up and
actually get to work on this. For all of my prototyping I'm rewiring
a rollergames playfield to ensure I can get it all going. Once I'm
done I'll move to a blank playfield and start my own design.

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