I am very fortunate in that the system I'm running not only allows the positive voltage to be daisychained, but the negative side is tapped into a daughter board mounted to the playfield (firing each solenoid is done by pulling it to ground using a thin wire). Still, with that said, I would like to keep the wiring down to a single harness running up the playfield. To help with management, I've ordered some cable tie mounts and re-usable cable ties to keep things nice and tight to the playfield
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008OC2EE6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AUB81DC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This will still allow me to pop wires out as needed. I know if I keep stapling things, I'll eventually turn the bottom of my playfield into swiss cheese as I'm developing it.
My 48v power supply showed as shipped early this morning, but I haven't seen any movement. I don't know if this means the seller created a label and hasn't actually dropped it off, or if USPS really does suck this bad at tracking (I had a 2-day priority package take 5 days during christmas, and showed up as on-time). Now that I have flippers wired at 12v, I'm excited to see them at 48v.
I made this sketch at work today, which will likely make sense to nobody.
I'm also thinking about rethinking the boat. I don't know that I want a solenoid mounted to a moving boat, nor do I want it flipping the entire time. I may make the boat slowly rock forward and back automatically, and have separate buttons tilt the boat side to side, and simply make it a (keep the ball from draining) last ditch bonus game with a couple holes in the center of the boat. It would be more akin to a labyrinth table.
It would also fit the lyrics a little better:
I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Into the ocean, end it all
I'll make a guess on the sketch. Top left is of course trying to figure out your wiring for the flipper buttons/48V voltage. The bottom ones are more difficult. I'm going to go with trying to come up with a way to get the boat to rock. I think that is the boat on the left while the right is a sketch of the mechanism to make it go up and down.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what your current plans are for the boat, but you could have a pachinko style pins or posts where you try and get the ball to drop into a hole towards the tip of the boat. The edges of the boat are drains. That would be less of a full playfield than a minigame sort of a playfield.