The Modern Firepower Pinball Project - Lighting Demo

The lights are fully wired up and tested, and I thought it was time to show them off.

Switches, Lamps and Solenoids are all wired up.  The playfield is almost ready to go into the cabinet.

In the picture above, not only are the lights wired up, but so are the solenoids.  The playfield is almost complete, ready for installation into the cabinet.  I've simply fallen behind on updating the blog.

The only wiring left to complete is the switch and solenoid wiring for the very top eject hole.  I won't be able to install the eject hole assembly and switch until the playfield is removed from the rotisserie, so for the moment wiring is complete.

Click on through to see the pictures and video...

The Modern FIrepower Pinball Project - Shocking Discoveries

Though overall progress has been slower these past few weeks, wiring is coming along nicely.  48 lamps have been wired up, and I have about 30 more lamps to wire.

Lighting wiring:  Red wire is shared 5v power, green wires are ground control lines that run back to the LED-Wiz.

In the pictures, the red wires are providing shared 5v power to the bulbs, and I used all green wires for the individual grounds that run back to the LED-Wiz.  I have no idea which lamp connects to which port, and I don't need to know since my software will map the lights.

Yes, pinball bulbs are typically powered by 6.3 volts, but I already had a 5 volt 2 amp power source handy, and I found that the brightness was just fine using only 5 volts.  I will cover the power supplies in a later post.

For now, read on to discover the shocking oversight I made in my electrical design...

The Modern Firepower Pinball Project - The New Solenoid Power Driver

In the previous update on the Solenoid Power Driver I explained that I had submitted the new PCB design to manufacturing, and also ordered new transistors.

The PCB's came in and they look marvelous!  These prototype PCB's were proudly manufactured in the USA, though I'm not sure where ExpressPCB conducts their full-scale production runs.  This was my first time using ExpressPCB, and I am very pleased with the results.

All the various components fit perfectly onto the ExpressPCB manufactured prototype PCB.

The new design is revision 3.0 of my Pinball Solenoid Power Driver, and is optimal for use with the LED-Wiz as the controller.  Compared to my original design, the new circuit board is not only smaller, it upgrades all outputs to High Power circuitry, and adds fuses for each output as well as the main power source.

My original prototype (brown) had 4 High Power and 12 Low Power circuits, and no fuses.  My new design is much smaller, yet it provides 16 High Power outputs. Every output is fused, along with a separate fuse for the power supply.

The new transistor came in as well, and it... was promptly fried.  Faster than corn in hot oil, these transistors popped as soon as a solenoid load was introduced.  Lowering the voltage to 25V from the normal 50V, these transistors worked just fine, but the solenoids fired weakly.

So now I had a new challenge, to find an even better transistor, but in the same package with the same pinout, and electrically compatible with my freshly milled PCB boards.  The task seemed impossible.

I'm happy to announce that I was successful in my search.  Instead of trying yet another BJT transistor, I went with a Power MOSFET transistor.

Power MOSFETs are different from BJT transistors in that MOSFET's use a small voltage to control a large current, whereas BJT transistors use a small current to control a large current.  Lucky for me, they are available in the same TO-220 package, and the pinout is fully compatible with my existing circuit design.

Testing the new Power MOSFET transistor.  Worked perfectly each and every time.

In preliminary testing the Power MOSFET transistor has performed perfectly.  From a technical standpoint, this transistor even appears to be superior to the MOSFET that Stern Pinball uses, or at least used at one time.  I haven't bothered to research if Stern has chosen different MOSFETs for their more recent games.  Not only is my chosen MOSFET capable of handling more power than Stern's counterpart, it also has quicker response times - roughly twice as fast.

Now the the PCB is assembled, it's time to do some testing.

I've soldered up the first PCB, and it will soon undergo performance and endurance testing in the Modern Firepower pinball machine. 

The new Pinball Solenoid Power Driver v3.0 is small enough to fit snugly on the Modern Firepower playfield.

Wiring for lighting, and now solenoids, continues.  More updates soon...

The Modern Firepower Pinball Project - Switch Wiring

During the week I completed most of the switch wiring.  It was rewarding to hook the switches up to the PC and monitor the inputs, and every switch tested perfectly!

Switch wiring is 80% complete and tested!

Click on through to check out the details...

The Modern Firepower Pinball Project - Prep for Wiring

In prep for wiring the playfield, I'm test fitting all of the various circuit boards and components onto the underside of the playfield.  I have to find a place for three LED-Wiz output driver boards, one U-HID switch input board, one Pinball Solenoid Power Driver board (of my own design), and a USB hub to tie them all together.

From the original design concept, I intended to install the circuit boards directly to the playfield.

It is not a requirement that I install any of these components to the playfield.  Alternatively I could have installed the circuit boards in the backbox, like a normal pinball machine.  To install the boards in the backbox would require me to fashion up several wiring harness connectors, as there would be around 150 wires connecting to the playfield.

But since my circuit boards are so small and fit on the playfield, I will only have 3 wires connecting to the playfield:  The 50v power supply, the 5v/12v power supply, and a single USB cable.

Now that's the definition of Modern.

The Modern Firepower Pinball Project - Cabinet Assembled

I finished painting the cabinet, and with Troy's help we got it mostly assembled.  For now I'm going to leave off any artwork, I find the all black cabinet to be classy and different.  The paint is a semi-gloss, so those are soft reflections you see on the side of the cabinet.

The cabinet looks classy its black and chrome motif.

I haven't painted the backbox.  The front wood panel that covers the monitor and holds the speakers needs to be designed, routed and installed before I paint it.  The speakers that are dangling from the monitor are the original speakers that came on the 32" TV.  Since they are not very good, I will replace them with either 6 1/2" or 6" x 9" car audio speakers, which I haven't yet picked out.

The Modern Firepower Pinball Project - Lights Installed

All of the lights have been installed on the playfield.  At this time, the underside hardware installation is 99% complete.  There is a mechanical beauty to an un-wired playfield.  If only it could stay looking this nice.

Take note of the open areas that remain on the playfield.  My selection of modern components have freed up additional room around the slingshots and eject holes.  This will allow me to do something pretty special - I will be mounting the circuit boards to the playfield itself.

I installed the lights in a tidy fashion to minimize wasting of open space.

More pics after the jump...