I stumbled across a new home made machine today; Alchemy. Made by a guy named TheRedOpusBXL.
This machine is definatly in a league of it’s own in the DIY world. It looks like it’s really well done. I couldn’t find any details aside from the videos.
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.
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:
Ok, so like usual, after I think I’ve seen it all I usually find something that contradicts my thoughts. Apparently people are calling their own pinball machines, Homemade pinball machines. Not homebrew or DIY like I was searching for. So I found a couple other, not so popular, machines listed below.
The “Lost” Machines:
Astro Boy – Very well done conversion.
GH2006 - Custom built machine using a similar approach to what I want to do. Few documents here and there that could be useful.
Solar Ride – From the same guy(s) that did GH2006. More of a proof of concept machine. Has a bit more detailed information.
Futurerama – Conversion…All the links to this machine are dead.
Capitol Pinball - Still working on it. Working on the playfield now.
Mars Attacks - Well done conversion from a William’s ‘Password’ machine.
Oragami Pinball – It’s not EM or SS. But damn it’s freaking cool!
Cosmic Colony - Well done conversion hooked up to a PC.
Gothic – Hasn’t been updated in a long time. A few details on how it was done.
Alchemy – Only information is in youtube videos.
Popular Machines:
Creepy Crypt
Coconut Island
If you know of any other machines I’ve missed, please let me know!
Edit:
Scott over at XTCPinball has a list of some machines that I didn’t list here. Check it out!
Feb. 04 – Added Alchemy
Feb. 15 – Added Astro Boy
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First things first. Happy freakin’ new year!
Ok, enough of that jazz. Over the past month or so the nagging voice of reason has been rearing it’s head around. Can I really pull this off? I mean pinball machines are made by dozens of people — Highly experienced people at that! I half blame this on my wandering brain and half blame it on Scott @ XTCPinball for even bringing it up ;). It seems he’s having the same kind of doubts with his machine. I’m notorious for thinking of huge ideas and becoming overwhelmed by what needs to be done. I need to keep myself from thinking of the big picture right now. It’s always nice to dream but if I don’t take this one step at a time I’ll never finish. It also helps to see that that Nuggy is still working and progressing well on Coconut Island.
One of the things I’ve noticed with with my research is that it almost feels like there is a cloak of secrecy around the inner workings of pinball machines. From dimensions to volts to how this and that work, it seems nobody, if they even know, wants to divulge their technical knowledge. Sure there are some kind people on RGP that would help out. But as with anyone asking too many questions I’m sure the flame would fly. Of course, I’m sure if you sifted through the RGP archives long enough you could probably have enough information to build a pinball machine, eventually. I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t sound like fun to me.
Oddly enough this got me thinking about open source software and how awesome it really is. Some of the better programs out there are open source and community based. If you can find the right people, your project can really take off and become something special. My next thought went along the lines of “How can this apply to homebrew/DIY/home made pinball machines? Oh look! A duck!”.
There are tons of people out there with a lot of information to share. Some of it’s directly related to pinball, some of it’s might not be. Either way you think about it, there’s a big untapped pool of information that needs to be…well…tapped. Anyone can contribute to some aspect of a pinball machine — whether they know it or not. I want to harness the open source minded crowd to help with the….wait for it; Open Source Pinball ‘movement’. Ok, so it’s not a movement…yet (high hopes anyone?) 
If you really think about it, opening up the pinball arena to hundreds, maybe thousands of people, could even help out Stern – the last of the big guys. Fresh minds bring in new ideas! Furthermore this could open the door for some new blood that could really get pinball popular again (Coconut Island and Snow Mountain for instance).
So that’s how it kind of happend. Over the course of the next few days, maybe weeks, as time permits (so probably months 
), I will be setting up a community wiki/forum/blog. The information I have collected on my own is very small in comparison to the wealth of knowledge there is out there that might not be published. I want to facilitate the information sharing. A wiki, for starters should get the ball rolling. What I’ve seen in my research is that everyone has their own idea of how to put a machine together. This is great and means that there is a bunch of information that everybody can learn from. The more information that can be put in a central location the better it will be for the start of a community. The worst that could happen is I have a online notebook for my research.
So that’s it for now. I will post again with the progress of the machine at a later date. I need to create some schematics and get some videos made — it’s pretty exciting!
* Edit – Thanks to WikiMatrix, I’ve narrowed the wiki choice down to 5 out of some 200+ choices. Here’s a “WikiMatrix” of the features each one has. If you have any suggestions for a wiki I’d really like to hear them!