Just a little progress report on the Pinscape Pico expansion boards. I built a set of the boards (big thanks to RickH for sending samples of the blanks from his production order) and I've been testing them. So far they're looking good. I found a couple of errata, which are now corrected in the plans in the source control system and described in the README cover page, but they're fairly minor. The biggest error in the initial design is that the CR2032 battery holder placement makes it far too difficult (although not impossible) to change the battery, since there's a chip in the way of where the battery slides out; the revised design uses a top-loading battery holder that eliminates that problem.
Here's my testing setup...
The power distribution board is totally optional. The big thing I'm trying to accomplish with it is just to make the wiring/cable management more "professional", so that you don't have to run a lot of ad hoc wiring for the multiple power supplies that a typical pin cab has. This board has a dedicated cable slot for a 5V, 12V, 24V, and 48V supply. The 5V/12V supply can be a separate PC ATX power supply, or a dual-voltage 5V/12V SMPS, or separate 5V and 12V SMPS's. If you use a PC, you can just plug in the 24-pin motherboard power cable to a mating port on this board. (The one in this photo is the first version design, which has a 4-pin floppy disk header instead of the 24-pin motherboard header. The final design will take the motherboard connector instead.)
The OEM SMPS units typically have screw terminals for the 120VAC input and DC outputs, which is where all of that ad hoc wiring I mentioned always comes in. This board has a cable slot for each power supply type with a Molex Micro-Fit+ header that provide connections for the 120VAC and DC connections, so the idea is that you make a nice bundled cable for each supply that terminates with a pluggable connector at the distribution board end. You still have to use bare wires or spade terminals at the OEM SMPS end, but since it terminates in a pluggable connector at the other end, you can probably just leave those screw terminals permanently connected - whenever you want to unplug the unit, you just pull the one plug out of the power distro board and you're set. When you want to plug it back in, you just plug it back in. The Micro-Fit+ connectors are polarized, so you can't plug them the wrong way.
The other thing the power distro board does is provide "smart" switching, without the need for a "smart power strip". Smart power strips have always been the easiest way to control the TV and other devices according to the main PC power, but they can be a little twitchy with some motherboards, since they depend on the PC drawing power above a certain threshold. This board uses a simpler approach: you just plug in a floppy cable from your main PC power supply, into a mating header on this board, and it uses the 5V rail from the main PC to control a relay, which in turn controls power to the 120VAC outputs to all of the SMPS cable headers. So all of your SMPS units switch on and off automatically with the main PC. The 5V line also controls the "Soft On" signal to the secondary ATX supply, if you're using that option for your 5V/12V DC source.
The board also features a bunch of giant capacitors (obvious in the photo) to provide power buffering on the 48V. This is intended to provide rapid power to pinball coils, if you're using them for your knocker or bumper/kicker/flipper feedback devices, and also reduce electrical noise feeding back into the other power supplies. In addition, the 48V supply has a safety cutoff that you can connect to your coin door position switch. The real pinball machines made after about 1990 featured a "coin door interlock" feature that cuts off 50V power to the playfield when you open the coin door, as a safety feature, to make it less likely that careless repair personnel will injure themselves by touching a live 50V line. I think this is a good idea to include in a virtual cab if you have a high-voltage supply in there.
(Note that the power distro board is still a work in progress - I've revised it quite a bit since this first physical test build.)
The next thing I'll mention is the flasher board. This is another completely optional accessory board, and you don't even have to use Pinscape Pico to use it. It's just a nice generic 5-flasher board that you could use with any controller. Like the power distro board, the point is just to clean up wiring, to make it easier to install and easier to maintain. The board has a standard 2x8 pin 0.1" header, which you can mate with an IDC ribbon cable connector. The pin layout is identical to the Pinscape KL25Z expansion boards, so it's plug-and-play if you have one of those, and it works the same way with the new Pinscape Pico boards. It uses the common 6-lead 3W RGB LEDs that are widely available on Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and other similar sites. I've tested it with samples of two versions I found on Amazon - the specific Amazon product IDs are listed in the README in the github repository.
It uses surface-mount resistors, and of course the 6-lead RGB LEDs are also surface-mount - but don't get too intimidated by that. The reason I went with the surface-mount resistors is that it keeps the board nice and flat so that you can flush-mount it against the back of a suitable face plate board. The surface-mount parts in this case are fairly easy to deal with because they're BIG. The resistors are high-wattage type that just by their nature have to be fairly large, which makes them easy to handle and easy to solder. You don't need any special tools or supplies - you can solder these parts with a regular soldering iron and regular solder.
The LEDs on the board are spaced at 4" intervals, which is perfect for a standard-width cabinet, and should work equally well in a wide-body cabinet. Just build a faceplate board out of plywood with five 1/2" diameter holes, spaced out at 4" intervals, and put one of the standard clear plastic flasher domes over each opening. Fasten the board to the back with the LEDs aligned with the holes.
Now let's look at the actual expansion boards. These are the "DIY friendly" boards, which means that they're made of all through-hole parts, making them easy to solder by hand.
This is a two-board set - a "Main" board, with 32 button inputs, plunger input, flasher output port, 12 high-power MOSFET ports, IR transmitter and receive ports; and a "Power" board, with 16 more high-power MOSFET ports and 32 mid-power (500mA) "lamp" ports.
A closer look at the two boards:
The IR transmitter and IR receiver are separate modules that plug into headers on this board. This lets you position the transmitter and receiver separately, away from the main board, where they'll be in line-of-sight of the other devices they're sending to or receiving from.
Receiver: this is a small board with the sensor.
Transmitter: this is just an IR LED, attached to a pair of wires to connect it back to the main board:
So far I've been testing the boards with LEDs, running fairly high current through the board to make sure it's happy handling high power levels. Here's a shot of it running about 10 Amps of lights through the main board. It doesn't really show in the photo, but it's pretty blindingly bright.
I plan to do some additional high-power testing with motors and solenoids, just to make sure there aren't any problems with the additional electrical noise those tend to produce.
I'm pretty happy with the way the boards turned out. They were straightforward to build - it's a lot of soldering work, but none of it is difficult. I think they're actually a bit easier to build than the original KL25Z boards were.
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