I let the magic smoke out. I accidentally brushed 14V across the prop plug and it really didn’t like it much. Really sucks too, I was having awesome success with getting the switch matrix and led scoreboard working together.
Worse yet is parallax is sold out and there’s no ETA on when they can get more. I guess this gives me some incentive to start working on the design again 
Earlier in the week I ordered a few parts that I needed for the switch matrix of the machine. To give you a little sneak peak of what’s to come, I’ll let you know that it involves 10 CD4021BE chips and a lot of buttons. I just recieved them Saturday afternoon so it’s a bit early to say for sure how awesome they are (I’m pretty sure they will be super awesome). I’m hoping to connect at least 16 buttons/switches using 2 CD4021BE chips and 3 pins on the propeller chip.
I’ve also decided that I want to get a real machine. Not to salvage, but to get dimensions and an idea of how things are positioned on the playfield. I want to get a better understanding on how the flipper system and the ball kickers work. If you have or know where I can get a cheap machine, please let me know.
As far as the machine design I’ve made a few changes and ‘maybe’ changes. The biggest change is that I’m tossing around the idea about nixing the 7″ LCD on the head. I’m not sure of what it can add to the head that a nice back glass can’t. We’ll see what I can work out. I figured the design part was going to be the most difficult task. So far I’m proving myself right
I haven’t forgotten about open sourcing pinball. I picked out the wiki software and got it all setup. I’m struggling getting through the documention on how to customize it now. I swear there has to be a million sperate options to customize. On top of that I’m working on getting information in the system before it goes public. If you’d like to help contribute to the wiki before it goes public send me an email (me@jeremymelton.com) or leave a comment and let me know that you’re interested. I’ll give you access and help you get started.
So there you have it, quite a few things going on this past week, and a lot more to come. As long as everything goes to plan, I should have schematics and code up for the switch matrix and a few more sketches up this week. If I get lucky I’ll have another update on the open source community project.
Now this is just a crazy cool idea. I’m actually at a loss of words…
“The ////furminator is a pinball machine that puts the player in a first person perspective similar to modern “EGO Shooter” video games. Like being inside a huge VR-helmet, the player’s head is stuck into the ////furminator capsule. His nose is situated right behind the flipper fingers, only centimeters away from the ball. Sealed off from reality and with his head arrested inside a force-feedback-helmet, the sound- and lighteffects, the mechanical noises of the pinball and the absorbing perspective create a highly immersive mechatronic environment.”
You’ve waited long enough and I’ll keep this post short so you can get to the pictures! Here are some rough sketches of some ideas that I’m thinking about for my machine.
As you can see I’m planning to create a professional level machine (quality/details/features) with some fresh ideas. Not being a manufacture has some benefits. I can include things that would be virtually impossible for a manufacture, like Stern to create (Manufacturing and licensing costs).
(Click an image for fullsize)
Factoids and notes:
Every now and then I need to delete quite a few Sprocs. It’s really a pain in the arse to do this with SQL Server Management Studio as it doesn’t let you delete more than one sproc at a time. So, I found this script that works pretty good (source).
1) Click the ‘Results To Text‘ button
2) Run:
SELECT ‘Drop Procedure ‘ + SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id)+’.'+name FROM sys.procedures
3) Copy the queries you want to run.
4) Paste and run
5) ???
6) Profit.