Building Custom Pinball Machines: What you need and how it works. An experiences report

Presented at 33C3 (2016), Dec. 29, 2016, 4 p.m. (60 minutes)

How to build a pinball machine? We introduce you to all basics and explain the different options for hardware and software. As an example, we show images of our own custom pinball machine. This talk gives an overview over all the components in a pinball machine which includes software and a lot of hardware. Afterwards, we go over all the steps when designing and building a pinball machine. We start with basic design rules, physical limits and best practices. Then, we focus on the mechanical and electronic components. After that, we talk about software and display (DMD vs LCD) options. At the end, we explain how to build or manufacture certain parts for your machine. For the hardware, we talk about: - EM, WPC and modern machines - Coils and Switches - Sources for mechanical elements - Gi/Lamps - RGB LEDs - Display option (DMDs, LED-DMDs, LCDs) and how to control them Electronics: - Open Pinball Project (Open Hardware) - Multimorphic P-Roc and P3-Roc - FAST Pinball Boards - Full custom options - Fadecandy/Openpixel - I2C and ServoControllers Software options: - Mission Pinball Framework (Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors) - pypinprocgame/pypinprocgameHD Building/Manufacturing Parts: - Playfields (including printing) - Cabinet - Metal ramps - Wire ramps - Plastic ramps - Plastics/Decals - Inserts - Mechanics

Presenters:

  • jab
    Research associate at University of Hanover, Germany. Interested in Software, Hardware and Pinball. Studied Computer Science at University of Hanover. Currently doing his PhD in Computer Science. Working part time as a software developer. Building a head2head (2 player) pinball machine as a private project to learn about manufacturing hardware, game design and real time software. As part of this hobby he also contributes to the Mission Pinball Framework which is an open source project to drive pinball machines.

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