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Video of my progress to make a clock out of a pinball score reel.
This is an Adafruit ESP32 Feather V2 running uLisp code to cycle four relays driving 24v to the reel solenoids.
The whole thing is wonderfully clacky and mechanical.
Next to do is wiring the zero switches on the reels back to the ESP32 so I know what number the reels are at.
@alexanderdyas nice work! Looks like a fun project
@alexanderdyas Neat! I take it the score reels don't have the overflow connected to the next reel like in the real machine?
Overflow like one reel triggering the next when it passes 9?
No, at least not mechanically. Each reel has a bunch of contacts that are made/unmade as the reel reaches various numbers. I’m guessing within the pinball machine something else was managing this.
And each reel has a 9/0 contact which is what I’ll use to keep track of where I am.
@alexanderdyas Yep, that's the overflow and good idea to use that signal for full revolution counting instead!
Yes I see that now, the flow over is managed between the reels themselves. Nice.
The problem with that is that at least in my application, clock digits don’t flow over like decimal digits. A 5 in the tens column of minutes increments to 0, ie 58,59,00,01 etc.
@alexanderdyas Yep, this is why I was wondering the technical implementation and assumed they were probably not connected to each other as they would be in a pinball machine.
Electromechanical games have surprisingly lot going on in the score reels themselves; they have the reset position at zero, overflow at 9 and some also have output for the free game match-feature, which has an output for each position. They have unique PCB depending on which position they are.
And sometimes the whole reel is fake, which is the case on games where the last number is always 0.
@apzpins Loving your content! You have a real passion for this stuff.
