Configuring lights in Mission Pinball Framework is a bit of effort. You need a config block for each light, and there are lots and lots of them. Rather than type it all in, I wanted to take some existing config files and add a bunch of single lines to them, and then have a magical script turn that gibberish into…
Better is the Enemy of Done Words to live by. I've always hated napkin designs and quick sketches. They are ugly and confusing. There is no denying though, that they get the job done quick. The ugly schematic lead to a bit of ugly construction... So we have 240V switched with a circuit breaker, coil power switch, amp and volt…
This is why everything takes so long. If you read the exciting 5V to 3V3 post above, you will be aware that I'm using a CNC board designed to work with an old Arduino Uno, but with a nice modern ESP32 chippie. Seriously, the various inputs and outputs on the CNC card get repurposed, so the Abort feature (used to…
Infrared detectors traditionally suffer from interference - false triggering, and failing to trigger. This has been a common problem in pinball machines - "bloody optos" being a catchphrase I've heard many times. To overcome the interference problem, I'm using an infrared receiver that only "listens" to infrared (IR) that has a carrier frequency of 38 kHz. In simple terms, if…
The lanes at the top of Wrath of Anubis are called Serpent Lanes. This is because they will have a snake (Big Hissa) on top of them. Normally, lanes like these have slots routed in the playfield, and microswitches with a springy wire coming through that the ball presses down to indicate its passage. I don't like routing slots. I…
The control systems use by people building commercial machines has changed. Haggis(RIP) moved away from MPF according to Aron (Pinside), using Unity for their last machine before entering liquidation. Homepin have released an open source approach using RetroPinUpgrade. Mission Pinball Framework has moved to Godot
Through my long and perilous journey to get MPF into a fit state to run a pinball machine, I learnt a few things. Many of them specific to the time and versions I used, but in general the types of things to look out for are same. And please note, you can just as easily be lucky and have everything work first time – that’s what the developers aim for, and it does happen.
