1103 replies to this topic

[roar]

I've been following this thread...  and recently got the suggested motor for the shaker.... thank for all the info

so i'm wonder what gear motor / wiper motor is the DIY community using now?? 

 

 

mjr quoted the VW wiper motor people like to use above... but there are cheaper chinese options out there I have read about and he has alluded to. I haven't tracked one down myself yet that I like the look of but if I do I'll include a link here. I'm also still trying to get a motor but the seller on ebay has been really slow responding to my shipping to Canada requests. Frustrating as I'm afraid it'll sell out again.

Edited by roar, 03 June 2016 - 07:42 PM.

[hauntfreaks]

 

mjr quoted the VW wiper motor people like to use above... but there are cheaper chinese options out there I have read about and he has alluded to. I haven't tracked one down myself yet that I like the look of but if I do I'll include a link here. I'm also still trying to get a motor but the seller on ebay has been really slow responding to my shipping to Canada requests. Frustrating as I'm afraid it'll sell out again.

 

Thank you... if anyone has a link for a good cheap wiper motor please post...

also on the sharker, how many Ounces/Grams  of counter weight is added to each axle??

[roar]

So I'm thinking about getting the tv power on functionality working. I am not going to fully decase my tvs but I have had to remove the power on buttons for both of the TV's as they were in the way for mounting. As this has exposed the PCB's I figured I might as well wire these up. I never did solder the diode onto the pinscape main board as I believe there were a couple of different options there...

But can you offer some more advice on how to get this part working mjr? Would it be helpful to attach pictures of the PCB's?

Edited by roar, 05 June 2016 - 05:39 PM.

[mjr]

So I'm thinking about getting the tv power on functionality working. I am not going to fully decase my tvs but I have had to remove the power on buttons for both of the TV's as they were in the way for mounting. As this has exposed the PCB's I figured I might as well wire these up. I never did solder the diode onto the pinscape main board as I believe there were a couple of different options there...

But can you offer some more advice on how to get this part working mjr? Would it be helpful to attach pictures of the PCB's?

 

A picture might help - I could scribble some arrows on it to show where I'd propose attaching the wires.

 

You should install the diode on the Pinscape board if you're going to use this feature.  It's just there to protect the logic circuits from the current surge from the relay coil when it switches off.  You'll also need to install the relay, of course.  You can use just about any small signal diode for this.  My go-to diode is the 1N4007, since it's cheap and easy to find and has good electrical specs for this sort of use.

 

The principle of operation for the switch part is simple.  The Pinscape software monitors the overall system power status, and when it detects that power has been turned on to the whole system, it waits 7 seconds (or whatever delay you program) then toggles the relay briefly ON and then back OFF.  The point of this is to simulate pressing (and then releasing) the power toggle button on the TV.  So to do that, you just need to wire the switch terminals on the TV's power button to the switch terminals on the relay.  The relay switch terminals are exposed on header JP4.  There are two switches on this relay, so you can hook up two TVs, one on each switch.  One switch is on JP4 pins 1 and 2, the other is on pins 3 and 4.  So for your first TV, just connect the wires from the TV's on button to pins 1 and 2.

 

You should be able to tell if the delay timer is working without hooking up the TV, by the way, because the relay makes a little *click* when it fires.  You should hear the click about 7 seconds after you apply power to the "PSU 2" secondary power supply terminals on the board.  It's not very loud, so you might have to get close to the relay to hear it.

 

By the way, before you go to the trouble of adding the wiring, you might want to double-check to see if your TV can turn itself on automatically.  Some TVs can be set to remember their status so that they come back on by themselves when plugged in if they were previously on when the plug was pulled.  Some TVs just always do that, and it sounds like some have menu settings to enable that.  If your TV has that capability, you can handle this more easily by just switching the TV's plug power with a smart power strip or a contactor circuit controlled by the PC power supply.

[roar]

Thanks... I'll snap some pictures... Not sure if I have any extra diodes and not quite sure where it goes but I'll have a look. If I can use this functionally and save on having to buy smart power strip I'll do that.

[mjr]

Thanks... I'll snap some pictures... Not sure if I have any extra diodes and not quite sure where it goes but I'll have a look. If I can use this functionally and save on having to buy smart power strip I'll do that.

 

You'll probably want to have a smart power strip too, actually, since the TV ON feature only turns the TV on, not off.  Usually the way you want to set it up is with a smart strip to control the actual power, and then some kind of delay timer (like the TV ON feature) to turn on TVs that don't come back to life after being power cycled.

 

But now that you mention it, I think the Pinscape software has enough information from the power detection circuit that it *could* turn the TV off as well.  That would probably be simple to add to the software.  I'll make a note to look into it.  It would require that the button you're adding the wires to works as a ON/OFF toggle, but that's almost always the case.

[roar]

 

mjr quoted the VW wiper motor people like to use above... but there are cheaper chinese options out there I have read about and he has alluded to. I haven't tracked one down myself yet that I like the look of but if I do I'll include a link here. I'm also still trying to get a motor but the seller on ebay has been really slow responding to my shipping to Canada requests. Frustrating as I'm afraid it'll sell out again.

 
Thank you... if anyone has a link for a good cheap wiper motor please post...

also on the sharker, how many Ounces/Grams  of counter weight is added to each axle??

I think I may give this one a go.

http://www.ebay.ca/i...=item4ab78b27c8

[roar]

Back glass TV

This one looks straight forward I hope. There are some nice large solder pads on the backside of the PCB that correspond nicely with the Power Button on the front.

 

Playfield TV

This one worries me. I'm not seeing anything on the back that I could solder to.

[mjr]

I think you have the right idea with the backglass TV.

 

The main playfield TV PCB looks exactly like one of mine did.  It should still be doable.  The trick is to solder to the FRONT of the PCB, on the switch side - those little surface-mount leads coming out from the sides of the switches are fairly easy to attach to.

 

 

Just be sure to route the wire so that the stripped end is safely out of the way of other exposed contacts, and also securely attach the wire to the board in several places with bands of electrical tape, to take all of the mechanical load off of the solder joint if the wire gets jostled.

 

Here's a photo of mine with the leads soldered in place:

 

 

 

One other thing to be pay attention to.  Note that each switch has FOUR leads coming out of it.  On all the ones I've seen, it's really just two pairs of equivalent wires - i.e., if the wires are A, B, C, and D, then you'll probably find that A and B are always shorted together and C and D are always together.   But you have to figure out which wire is which.  If you have a multimeter, you should should be able to do a quick continuity test and determine which pairs are shorted together.  When you identify two wires that AREN'T always connected together, do another test and make sure they do get connected when you hold down the button.  On my TV the switching pair was across the "vertical" axis, as you can see in the photo.  Yours might be rotated 90 degrees.  The only way to know is to test it.

 

[roar]

Awesome mjr! Thanks a lot. I think I can handle all of that.

I re-read the documentation and your previous notes and it sounds like I don't actually need to put a diode in place on 27R as that is only if I am using the IR LED, which I'm not, I'm wiring directly to the TV... do I have that assumption correct? Or should I still put one in place?

 

I also like the idea of the software sending a "turn me off " signal when it shuts down, that sounds neat.

[mjr]

Awesome mjr! Thanks a lot. I think I can handle all of that.

I re-read the documentation and your previous notes and it sounds like I don't actually need to put a diode in place on 27R as that is only if I am using the IR LED, which I'm not, I'm wiring directly to the TV... do I have that assumption correct? Or should I still put one in place?

 

Oh, sorry!  You're quite right, the IR LED is only needed for the (still to be added!) remote control feature.  I was just talking about the little plain diode (non-LED) labeled D1.

 

 

I also like the idea of the software sending a "turn me off " signal when it shuts down, that sounds neat.

 

I just realized that might not be doable after all.  The snag is that the relay is powered by the secondary power supply, so there's a catch-22.  The triggering event for an OFF signal - turning off power to the secondary PSU - also cuts power to the relay, making it impossible to send the signal after the event.  The "TV ON" signal works because it's in the opposite order:  the triggering event restores power to the relay, so the relay has power by the time we want to send the ON signal.  I can't think off-hand of a way to solve this without a little rework of that part of the PCB.

 

One thing I could easily do is add a way to trigger the relay from software on the PC.  That would let you turn off the TVs from a Windows command file.  That's not an ideal solution as it would require some fairly techie Windows configuration editing (in particular, you need the Pro edition of Windows if you want to access the Group Policy Editor, which is how you'd set this up).  

[roar]

What about connecting another push button to shut off the TV's? Like the Zeb Button Smash? You could use it like a toggle? If you wanted to let windows go to sleep, you could add a button that shuts your displays down and wakes them up?

[mjr]

What about connecting another push button to shut off the TV's? Like the Zeb Button Smash? You could use it like a toggle? If you wanted to let windows go to sleep, you could add a button that shuts your displays down and wakes them up?

 

On my own cab, I actually have something like that.  For each TV, I have a manual pushbutton mounted "secretly" on the bottom of the cab, wired in parallel with the delay timer relay switch.  So if I need to turn a TV on or off manually, I just push that button.  The motivation was that I didn't know if I could trust the timer switch; I was thinking that sometimes the TV wouldn't respond to the timed ON signal because it was too slow to come to life or something like that.  As it turns out I was being overly conservative, because the timer has been literally 100% reliable; I've never had to use the manual switches, not even once.  But anyway, you could certainly use that same approach to manually turn off the TV.  If I were you I'd still want to find an automatic solution instead.

[r00n]

MJR,

Firstly, thanks for this pinscape option.... I appreciate the diy approach as I learn something new every day and that keeps life interesting

 

Just a couple of queries:

 

When connecting buttons to the pcb, is there a molex one circuit receptacle connector that I could use rather that soldering straight onto the boards gpio? My soldering is messy.

 

Can I use cat5 solid core to do the job to connect kl257 to the buttons?

john.

[mjr]

When connecting buttons to the pcb, is there a molex one circuit receptacle connector that I could use rather that soldering straight onto the boards gpio? My soldering is messy.

Can I use cat5 solid core to do the job to connect kl257 to the buttons?

 

I'd definitely use some kind of connectors, even if you're great with a soldering iron.  It's always good to be able to plug and unplug connectors so you can take out boards for changes or maintenance.

 

All of the boards involved (the KL25Z itself and the expansion boards) are designed for the standard 0.1" / 2.54mm pitch pin headers, which mate with crimp pin housings.  These are standardized and easy to find because Arduino people use them for everything.  Here's a pointer to the types, but you can get equivalents from lots of suppliers:

 

https://www.pololu.c...mm-male-headers

https://www.pololu.c...nector-housings

 

You do need to solder the pin headers to the PCB, of course, but that's relatively easy compared to soldering individual wires.  The crimp pin housings are solderless, but they more or less require a special tool:

 

https://www.pololu.com/product/1928

 

If you don't have the tool, they're kind of tricky.  If you do have the tool, they're really easy.

 

I think Cat5 will work.  It's certainly more than adequate electrically, but it might be too fine gauge for the crimp pins - I think they work best in the 22 to 24 AWG range.

 

One other tool-related thing I'll point out is that if you're planning to do any significant amount of electrical DIY work on this project or others, you might want to look at getting a "soldering station".  If you're accustomed to using an ordinary cheap soldering iron, you'll be amazed at the difference - it might be your equipment and not your soldering skills that are making things messy.  This is the one I use:

 

https://www.amazon.c...D/dp/B00ANZRT4M

 

They're about 5x more expensive than cheap soldering irons, but 100x better.  They have much better tips, they're way more durable, they come up to soldering temperature in about 60 seconds, they tell you when they're ready, and they have thermostats that maintain the correct working temperature.  They make soldering so much easier and make the results a whole lot better.

 

And finally, this seems ridiculous, but the solder itself makes a difference.  I like this stuff:  

 

https://www.amazon.c.../dp/B00068IJQI/

 

Again, a bit pricier than the cheapest solder you can find, but it just works better.

Edited by mjr, 15 June 2016 - 01:13 AM.

[NobodyYouKnow]

Hey Mike. I am drawing up some plans for allocating inputs and outputs to the PinScape board (and assigning color codes / wire sizes / etc). I was curious how you have yours configured. You profess to having a lot of toys connected, and I think that would be a good guide for me. Not that I want to make an exact copy, but rather that I do not want to forget anything I am already considering. Can you post a quick table of what inputs and outputs you have connected where? Thanks!

[mjr]

Hey Mike. I am drawing up some plans for allocating inputs and outputs to the PinScape board (and assigning color codes / wire sizes / etc). I was curious how you have yours configured. You profess to having a lot of toys connected, and I think that would be a good guide for me. Not that I want to make an exact copy, but rather that I do not want to forget anything I am already considering. Can you post a quick table of what inputs and outputs you have connected where? Thanks!

 

I'm afraid my current configuration won't be too helpful, since it's still on my original "v1" setup with about 2/3 of the outputs on an LedWiz and the rest on the standalone KL25Z.  I haven't migrated over the expansion boards yet in my own cab; I want to get the new documentation written first!

 

But for the port layout using the expansion board, a lot of it is fairly well determined by the boards.  The following all have dedicated ports, so the easiest thing is just to match them to those ports.  In a pinch you can repurpose the dedicated ports for devices with similar power profiles, but the thing that makes the dedicated ports dedicated is that they have power limitations suitable for specific devices and not necessarily for everything else.

 

- the 5 RGB flashers go on the main board flasher outputs

- strobe goes on the main board strobe output

- RGB button lights for flippers and magna save go on the main board "small LED" outputs

- knocker goes on the main board knocker output

 

Everything else goes on a power board output (except for chimes, if you have them and you're using a chime board).  The power board outputs are all identical so it doesn't matter which port connects to what device.

 

Then there's the separate matter of the logical port numbering in the software.  For that, my recommendation is to number the outputs such that the "common" toys are on ports 1 through 32.  Those are the ports that old non-DOF software (e.g., Future Pinball) can access through the the LedWiz protocol.  The devices I'd prioritize for the first 32 ports would be:

 

- flashers (15 ports)

- strobe (1 port)

- contactors (10 ports)

- knocker (1 port)

- Start & Launch Ball button lamps (2 ports)

- shaker (1 port)

- gear motor (1 port)

 

...which leaves 1 port which I'm not sure what to do with - probably either fan or beacons, although I doubt Future Pinball has provisions for either of those.  Maybe the Extra Ball button lamp?

 

Once you're past the first 32 ports, there's no distinction for port numbering, so you can just number them arbitrarily.

Edited by mjr, 15 June 2016 - 06:13 AM.

[roar]

I find it awfully suspicious that someone is kind enough to post a new motor that works well for shaker's and now we see the mark-up on them the next week.

 

http://www.ebay.com/...24AAOSwI-BWPQZr

 

Thankfully another seller still has them at reasonable prices:

 

http://www.ebay.com/...fgAAOSwEK9UFEAk

 

Now if I could just get one shipped to Canada for a reasonable price... I think I'm going to give this one a try instead:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111799230116

Edited by roar, 15 June 2016 - 05:43 PM.

[TerryRed]

 

Thanks for all that mjr. I've been going back and forth on the gear motor. $35 US + shipping to Canada likely is a lot for a toy that I believe is seldom used. The shaker motor is more what I'm looking for. I'll probably try a motor or two from China and see what I can come up with. On the fan side I really like randr's implementation of the fan through the coin door, but I've also seen people put fan's in the speaker cut outs... I'm thinking about that too. Not sure I want anything on top of my cabinet.

 

The gear motor actually gets a lot more use than you'd think - it seems like most tables from the alphanumeric era on have something motorized on the playfield.  But even so, I find it to be the least compelling of all of my feedback devices.  The only thing it does is make noise, and the noise it makes doesn't really demand a separate physical source - this one's really okay with digital audio, in my opinion.  All of the other feedback devices have either a light-show aspect (like the flashers and strobe) that the regular video monitor can't approach in terms of brightness, a tactile effect (contactors, shaker, fan), and/or a sound effect that digital audio doesn't do justice (knocker, contactors, bells, chimes).  The gear motor is the only one where there's no tactile effect to it at all and you don't even want the sound to be all that strident.  But as I always point out when I mention all of this, I am utterly alone in my ambivalence on gear motors - everyone else loves their gear motors.

 

But the shaker is a must.  If I had a budget for only one toy, that's the one I'd put in.  The effect is dramatic and truly adds to the game.

 

And I really like the fan even though it's such a silly novelty item.  I have a great appreciation for tactile effects - they make such a difference in raising the experience above ordinary video game play.

 

 

 

This is the kind of advice I like to hear.

 

On my racing simpit, I have a total of 12 transducers that use the telemetry data from racing games to create vibrations, thuds, and other positional tactile effects based on what is happening on the different parts of the car, etc.... This is a complete game changer and it feels like the simpit is ALIVE!

 

I guess the same can be said about pinball as well. My wife just doesn't understand how "feedback" makes all the difference in pinball.

 

I may not be using pinscape, but I LOVE what you are doing here. If I were ever to build another (pinball only) cabinet, then this would be my choice!

 

I'm also waiting for the rest of my parts to arrive from China (solenoids, connectors, beacons, wire, I have the rest)

 

Since I'm using addressable LEDS for VP (like randr, and won't have space for RGB flashers at the back of the playfield), I still have to figure out how I'm going to setup normal LEDS strips to act as flashers (mainly for FP). I'm thinking about having one strip on each side of the playfield (above the addressable strip), one in each of my speaker holes (like I have now)...just not sure where to put the fifth strip... maybe as part of my topper...any ideas? I already have under cabinet led strips.

 

 

 

​

Edited by TerryRed, 15 June 2016 - 07:23 PM.

[r00n]

Quote ....

https://www.pololu.c...mm-male-headers
https://www.pololu.c...nector-housings

You do need to solder the pin headers to the PCB, of course, but that's relatively easy compared to soldering individual wires. The crimp pin housings are solderless, but they more or less require a special tool:

https://www.pololu.com/product/1928


Would you please assist me to find equivalent parts at mouser electronics. I have a half full shooping cart there and ive been looking through their catalogue for 2 days to find something equivalent.
I have purchased a reasonably good solder station today so im ready to go.