Homebrew Pinball #3, Part 70

Cross posted from the original Pinside thread, this is one of many posts regarding my third homebrew pinball machine, creatively nicknamed 'P3'



Finally got the lights all working, and coded a simple attract mode animation for them. Originally I was trying to use an existing server I found for controlling ws2812 leds, but it kept crashing and wasn't very suited for pinball animations, so I coded a simple server myself which just handles a light being on, flashing, or pulsing, with settings for frequency and phase. I think I will need to tweak my colors a bit though. Not sure if it's because of the specific leds I got, or the way the opaque white inserts are coloring it, but everything feels a bit 'pastel'...

The downside to doing all your leds as one giant strip, I guess, is that if you want to change them later it's more complicated. And of course, once I got everything together here, I realized I'd forgotten to install a light for the lower playfield diverter. So I guess at some point I'll need to cut a bit from my left over led strip, attach that there, then cut my existing strip somewhere, and run the data line over to the new led and back again.

I'm also thinking about maybe having a sort of 'wizard mode' accessible after you get all the main hands (at least straight, flush, full house, since technically those cover all the 'lower' hands too. maybe four of a kind, but it's hard to guarantee there's ever a deal with 4 of the same card), so it'd be nice to have a few more inserts in the barren center area between the screen+slings for that. Just when I thought I had all the lights/etc figured out!

Posted Tuesday, November 16, 2021
at 11:30 AM


Tags: Blog Post, Pinball, Project, P3,


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