What Controllers Should I Choose?

[Craig Goodwin]

Ok, I'm in the research phase, been through tutorials and lots of YouTube content. 

I've noticed there are some big differences in controllers, with the Fast Pinball starter kit being one I had considered (out of stock at the moment) and then started looking at P3-Roc as an alternative which also seems a lot cheaper. 

Are there advantages in buying different controllers? If so what would be a good setup for first build? I'm comfortable with both software and hardware and will figure most things out eventually, just not sure of the comparisons in these controllers. 

My intention is to start chipping away at buying parts month on month whilst I start designing my game, buying things like flippers and controllers which are needed before moving on to game specific items that I might want to include later on. 

Any suggestions welcome to a newbie getting in to this amazing project.

[Craig Goodwin]

Was also meant to mention OPP as an option, I've built PCBs before and comfortable in soldering. 
I built the Tilt!Audio board for my Getaway which has been great. 

[jabdoa]

If you know how to solder OPP might be for you. Alternatively, you can buy CobraPin as advanced OPP boards (same software but more rigid hardware). P-Roc, FAST and all the other commercial options work as well. Those are a more expensive and in some parts more polished. Most of them got very modular node boards which might be an advantage (but also more parts). However, OPP came a long way and overtook all commercial hardware (except Spike) feature-wise. With CobraPin you got commercially sold hardware with open source firmware for a very decent price. At the end its a tradeoff.

Jan

[Craig Goodwin]

Thank you so much Jan for your response, it has given me the push to go OPP. 

I was a bit worried that the open source might have offered less functionality but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

I'll start looking at getting the boards sorted and some parts ordered in. 

Excited about the build of just the control board, it is going to be a slow build project for me, so I don't mind taking my time on getting things setup. 

[Scandinavian Pinball Factory]

Not all the commercial ones work well with MPF... PKone does not YET, but there are work going on even though the owner told me the support had not been that great from the community.
Hopefully it will happen in the not so long a future, since I have some of those boards in stock, and right now they are quite useless...

Jack
worldwidepinball.com

[jabdoa]

Well "support had not been great from the community" indicates an interesting understanding on how open source works to me. We (Quinn and me) invested a lot of time in adding support for PKone. However, firmware still kept changing so the initial support from Quinn broke and my setup never fully worked even after multiple rounds of firmware updates. At some point I gave up because it has been quite frustrating for me. They are welcome to finish the software support themself or pay somebody to do it. We really tried to help them and inveated a lot of time. That statement is not fair in my opinion. Open source does not mean that somebody else will do all the work for you.

OPP and Cobra are different here. They help to improve MPF platform support for their hardware which is ideal for us. We sometimes help and also maintain everything but it is a great team effort which is why I am a big fan or their soft/hardware.

Jan

[Craig Goodwin]

Thanks all for the input. 

As I'm going to be looking to do OPP I think I'll start off by ordering a range of boards to have on hand ready to populate. 

I don't know my layout or anything as yet so think just ordering enough boards will help have them on hand if needed. 

Any suggestions on quantities of each pcb needed for a typical setup? I think most PCB printers it is the same price for 10 as it is a lower quantity?

[cobra18t]

I would start with the STM32 processor board and the programmer for it. You can get that from somewhere like Amazon. There are fakes out there, so be on the lookout and consider a place with free returns. Use version 2.3.0.5 of the OPP firmware. It has all the stuffs.

https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle/wiki/STM32-Fakes

If you are in the US, MezelMods carries bare OPP boards:

https://mezelmods.com/collections/open-pinball-project

I might start with a couple solenoid wings or even a solenoid plank to get flipping. The other half of the STM32 you can just use for inputs to start. You can enable neopixel output by using the NEO_SOL wing. You might consider a power filter board, but it is often not needed for a basic starter setup. OPP is nice because you can build and add on with little cost. Start small and see where it leads.

Just in case you had not been here already:

https://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php?title=OPP