I would have loved seeing this as a kid. I was obsessed with wanting to build a pinball machine when I was young. At the time my skills only stretched as far as cardboard builds with elastic band bumpers and pencils for flippers, but I got a huge kick out of making different layouts for the balls to travel around.
It would be great to see some home made efforts now with so many amazing off the shelf bits of tech and 3D printers.
The site is also a nice compliment to the Technology Connections series on old pinball machines [1].
If you're reading Hacker News comments about pinball, then that series may be among the best 3 hours you'll ever spend on YouTube. I opened the comments to make sure to share it if someone hadn't already.
It's absolutely fascinating how concepts like score are implemented purely in electromechanical circuits (that is, motors not motherboards).
I should have waited till after I dove deeper into the site before replying as I see the site links to a cool looking cardboard kit you can buy[1] (or you could if it wasn't sold out).
I saw these on display at Pinball Expo in the Chicago area last October and they were magnificent. My kids loved pressing the buttons and seeing what happened, and I had a great time walking them through what's happening. The amount of creativity and ingenuity that went into these mechanisms and assemblies is something to behold. Especially the ones within the electromechanical (EM) games, which were basically 60s / 70s, they did so much with so little when it comes to computing power.
I would have loved seeing this as a kid. I was obsessed with wanting to build a pinball machine when I was young. At the time my skills only stretched as far as cardboard builds with elastic band bumpers and pencils for flippers, but I got a huge kick out of making different layouts for the balls to travel around.
It would be great to see some home made efforts now with so many amazing off the shelf bits of tech and 3D printers.
The site is also a nice compliment to the Technology Connections series on old pinball machines [1].
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-1JoJQaEg
I came as far as implementing a very simple counting mechanism that I managed to make count up to 3 (or something like that).
Then my mother found out about me "stealing" all that cardboard and my days of pinball manufacturing where over...
Honestly one of the happiest weeks of my life!
If you're reading Hacker News comments about pinball, then that series may be among the best 3 hours you'll ever spend on YouTube. I opened the comments to make sure to share it if someone hadn't already.
It's absolutely fascinating how concepts like score are implemented purely in electromechanical circuits (that is, motors not motherboards).
I should have waited till after I dove deeper into the site before replying as I see the site links to a cool looking cardboard kit you can buy[1] (or you could if it wasn't sold out).
1. https://pinbox3000.com/
I saw these on display at Pinball Expo in the Chicago area last October and they were magnificent. My kids loved pressing the buttons and seeing what happened, and I had a great time walking them through what's happening. The amount of creativity and ingenuity that went into these mechanisms and assemblies is something to behold. Especially the ones within the electromechanical (EM) games, which were basically 60s / 70s, they did so much with so little when it comes to computing power.
So cool, this is what the web was meant to be.
This is awesome stuff. I love pinball and I could almost see myself getting into building (a simple) one someday.
It looks like you submitted a random page within the website instead of pointing to the home page.