1103 replies to this topic

[mrarcade]

Good news. All 3 will light small led 5B. That is what I had wired for testing. Hopefully everything will work. I have some work ahead of me now, but unfortunately it will be slowed because I need more crimp pins for the 5v plugs on the power and chime boards.

 

I ordered extra crimp pins for every other style but somehow I missed the ones for the 5v plugs and only ordered 6. I trashed 3. I will be placing an order today for the crimp pins as well as plug housings and crimp pins so I can have all my toys attached individually with a plug so each can be removed if needed for service. I will also have plugs so the head can be removed.

 

Below is a pic of the tlc5940 adapter installed on the main board.

 

Thanks again Mike for designing that adapter board. I needed 3, and 3 shipped only cost $3.05.

 

[mjr]

Nice!  It actually looks like a comfortable fit.  I was a little afraid it would be tight since it's a little bigger than the native DIP chips.  I'm really glad you finally have a working chip after all of the bad eBay experiences.

[MikePinball]

First try I got some pretty big solder globs. two on one side and one on the other. I repeated the process, but this time I applied the paste looking through a lighted magnifier. The second one had two slight solder bridges. The third had one slight solder bridge, I cut one of the bridges, you can see how I cut way too far. Luckily I didn't cut the trace. It took some work getting the solder bridges taken care of. I used a fine tip soldering iron to pull the solder to the ends of the fingers and kept cleaning the tip. Eventually I cleared all the solder bridges.

 

These parts are small pitch and not the best to get experience with SMD soldering. I would have also placed the chip in the same direction as the pins to make it easier to solder (but harder to layout on the PCB).

 

The solder bridges are easy to remove by using plenty of paste or liquid flux and just running a small soldering iron over the pins. Flux helps move the solder around. Worst case you can use some copper solder wick. You can wash off the excess flux afterwards.

[tangerine]

Is it possible to load a config file and program it in the kl25z board with the command line tool?
ie: PinscapeCmd.exe config=fx3.psconfig or PinscapeCmd.exe config=vpx.psconfig
Or something similar would be useful so I don't have to start the appliacation every time: start PinscapeConfigTool.exe / press settings / load a config file / program KL25Z / close app
 

[mjr]

Is it possible to load a config file and program it in the kl25z board with the command line tool?

 

You must have a use case in mind where you're changing configurations very frequently.  Presumably that's not because you're re-wiring your whole system multiple times a day, so I'm guessing there's some more limited set of settings you're trying to update each time.  If you could describe the specific use case, maybe I can suggest a different approach.

[Suikazz]

I think it’s meant for batch-programming several kl25z in short period of time. Business, not hobby.

[tangerine]

 

Is it possible to load a config file and program it in the kl25z board with the command line tool?

 

You must have a use case in mind where you're changing configurations very frequently.  Presumably that's not because you're re-wiring your whole system multiple times a day, so I'm guessing there's some more limited set of settings you're trying to update each time.  If you could describe the specific use case, maybe I can suggest a different approach.

 

I play both VPX and FX3 they need different button settings. I want to load automatically its config before starting the game. Also have pinball arcade and zaccaria and some other pinball apps I have not played yet.

I think it’s meant for batch-programming several kl25z in short period of time. Business, not hobby.

I have one KL25Z (well two of them but one is still in its box  to replace the one that I am using in case it would fail) and have a controller box (DIY) not even a pin cab.
It's not meant for business.

Here are my pinball games:

 

Edited by tangerine, 13 May 2022 - 04:58 PM.

[tangerine]

And here is my controller box:

[mjr]

I play both VPX and FX3 they need different button settings. I want to load automatically its config before starting the game.

 

Okay, so it's the button settings that you really want to update.  I'm afraid there's no "batch" way to do that right now.  Are you sure you can't come up with a set of button assignments that will work across games, though?  I don't know about FX3, but VPX is pretty flexible about that sort of thing - in other words, you should be able to reprogram most (if not all) of VPX's button assignments to match FX3, and then just set up one controller configuration using that common set of button assignments.

Edited by mjr, 13 May 2022 - 06:17 PM.

[Suikazz]

That’s the way. I’d also suggest to set the keys inside the various programs to your controller settings.
For fx3 you want to test x360ce so you can also use analog nudge and plunger!!!

[tangerine]

Okay, so it's the button settings that you really want to update.  I'm afraid there's no "batch" way to do that right now.  Are you sure you can't come up with a set of button assignments that will work across games, though?  I don't know about FX3, but VPX is pretty flexible about that sort of thing - in other words, you should be able to reprogram most (if not all) of VPX's button assignments to match FX3, and then just set up one controller configuration using that common set of button assignments.

 

 Yes. It's the button settings only I want to change with pinball games. Is it possible to implement it in the next update? My FX3 setting is quite complicated but it work well at the moment. I love this pinscape app and admire your work you have put in it. Thank yoy for sharing it with us. I'm using it for more than 2 years. I mostly play FX3 but these days I started using VPX again.
I use it with x360ce. This is the 'map' of my buttons on the box, pinscape button map and x360ce config:

 

Edited by tangerine, 14 May 2022 - 10:35 AM.

[tangerine]

That’s the way. I’d also suggest to set the keys inside the various programs to your controller settings.
For fx3 you want to test x360ce so you can also use analog nudge and plunger!!!

 

I'm using x360ce with FX3. I use both analog nudge and digital (magna save buttons to death save) and 3 foot pedals (left: rewind/score boost or plunge balls(TotAN's genie battle), middle: look up on some table(CftBL) or magnasave on some original Zen's tables, right: up nudge to nudge pass ball from one flipper to another.

[Suikazz]

Ok, looks good. But now I don’t see your issue?!
If you set buttons for fx3 you could define exact the same buttons in vpx! Just go to settings and change, done. It’s like a 5 minute task and you would never have to deal with reprogramming the button inside the Pinscape firmware. Same goes for future pinball

[tangerine]

That’s the way. I’d also suggest to set the keys inside the various programs to your controller settings.
For fx3 you want to test x360ce so you can also use analog nudge and plunger!!!

 

My 'plunger' is a digital/analog hybrid.

It's a arduino nano (or micro?) + a 12bit DAC(mcp4725) + a rotary encoder (to set the plunger's pull value 0..100%) + a toggle switch to pull/release. DAC's output is connected to the analog input of the KL25Z board.

I wonder if x360ce is supported by vpx (have not tried yet).

[tangerine]

I may rethink my button settings and rewire my buttons and pedals of my box to use only one config.

Thats a pity that vpx supports 24 buttons only and not 32 as pinscape does.

[svorak]

I realised that the TLC5490NTs were going to be a challenge, but I hadn't stumbled across the last pages of this thread yet. So as expected I've had a couple of false starts with getting the DIL packages from Ali and eBay. Three cases were not even shipped and gave refunds. Finally a package arrived yesterday, with my anticipation of testing some LED output quashed when I opened the package:

 

 

Don't think I'll need to do the acetone test to see if these really are TLCs.

 

Looks like the TSSOP packages are also backorder until 2023 on mouser, digikey, element14 and rs-online as well. If I go down the TSSOP-DIL adapter route have folk had better luck in getting the PWPR variant of ali and ebay?

 

Will the Pinscape boards work without the TLCs? I assume the main board will work for inputs and knocker, but not for RGB flashers, and the chime will obviously work.  What about the power board? Will that not work at all without them, or will I still be able to run non PWM outputs, like a shaker and button lights (not RGB)

[mjr]

Will the Pinscape boards work without the TLCs? I assume the main board will work for inputs and knocker, but not for RGB flashers, and the chime will obviously work.  What about the power board? Will that not work at all without them, or will I still be able to run non PWM outputs, like a shaker and button lights (not RGB)

 

You're right about the main boards and chimes.  I'm afraid the power boards won't work at all without the chips since all of the ports on those boards run through them.

 

They're out to 10/2023 now?!  I was hoping the semiconductor shortages were going to start easing by now, but it sure doesn't look like it.

If you don't have any luck sourcing the chips, a stop-gap might be to just use the stand-alone KL25Z without the expansion boards, and get a bunch of the 4-channel MOSFET boards so you can run outputs from the KL25Z GPIOs (via the MOSFETs) without any external PWM chips.  That limits you to 10 PWM ports, so it's not ideal, but at least it gets you the knocker and motors and so forth.  If you can find additional KL25Z boards, you can go up to 20 PWM ports by using a second KL25Z.

[svorak]

My original plan (much as per your magnificent build doc) was to run the knocker, strobe and flashers off the main board; 8x bumper solenoids off the chime, and use the power output board for flipper contactors and shaker motor (obviously heavily under-utilised given its capacity!)

 

I was actually thinking if the TLCs continue to be so problematic, that I build another chime board, but bypass the 555s and drive the flipper contactors and shaker motor off that instead?

 

And then for the flashers, try and find the brightest WS2812s that I can, and run 5 of those as an addressable light strip. Haven't got to the stage of seeing if I can map individual addressable LEDs to the 5 flashers in DOF config.  I have a bunch of individual WS2811s from my christmas lights which I might be able to use.

 

Thoughts on this approach?

[fhjui]

all very unsatisfying for you. I am thinkig about a solution to help.

How much TLCs do you need? I have max. 4 left  from my tests with the smd2dip-Adapter, 2 are ready and the other two I have to populate and to solder using my adapter. But the postage fee for a package to Australia is tremendous, min. 35€., and I have no idea of add. customs formalities.

The trusted source I know is an ebay-seller, resides in GB and does only deliver to EU. Perhaps you contact him for delivery to Australia. I have talked with him in February and he has checked his stock for fake-ICs, they were all well functioning

https://www.ebay.de/itm/111056828725

ok, what can we do?

• perhaps you can start a request in the forum, who in your area has TLCs and can sell it to you.
• do you have the knowledge/ability to solder the TLC with this small square QFN-package ? I have left pcb-panels from my adapter tests (1 panel has 10 adpaters, 4 with TSSOP and 6 with QFN, for 2 kind of pinsockets)
  add. you need these  these special pinsockets for the adapter, have also some in spare
• a rather cheap option to get a TLC with QFN-package is to buy this TLC-breakout board and desolder the chip using a heatgun
  https://www.ebay.de/itm/294552927764
• here in the german forum "flippermarkt" is the user "badadum", who had TLCs in DIP-Package in july.
  https://www.flipperm...70/post-1999797
  perhaps you can contact him if he has some on stock.
  You can translate it using google-translator

the files and the detailed description docu for the smd2dip-adapter is linked here, because cannot be uploaded here in the forum

https://mega.nz/fold...2sFXQp2kD912yoA

 

There is a seller ,arnoz,  in france. He has developed his pinsape-compatible boards, but I think you dont want to spend additional money for that

https://shop.arnoz.c...rig-master.html

Edited by fhjui, 09 September 2022 - 06:31 PM.

[svorak]

Thanks @fhjui,

I've messaged the ebay seller you suggested to see if he's happy to ship to Australia. Otherwise might need to get him to ship to a relative in the UK and she can forward onto me in Aus.

 

I need four of them (2 for the Pinscape main board, and 2 for the power output board). I have one more set of 4 coming from a China seller, but I hold almost zero hope of them them both arriving and working!

 

I did study analog and digital electronics in university, and am no stranger to designing and building circuits (albeit not so much in the past 15 years), so I'm no stranger to soldering. Most of my SM experience is with passive components, so have not had first hand experience with a QFN package, but am willing to give it a go if I've exhausted all DIP options.