Nov 16, 2020
James Laumeyer
The last couple weeks a lot of progress has been made on the pinball machine and the home stretch is very near. Notably in my last report I showed the wooden box was completely built. Since that update the box has been stained black and then lacquered to give it a nice shine.
After the box finished drying the next step was to put the metal trim, and handles on it. There were a couple reasons to do this versus leaving it as it was. First the trim is used to hold in the future lid of the pinball machine so no balls go flying back out during game play, and the second reason is that the metal on the corners will help mitigate damage from the inevitable wear and tear on the corners in moving. The handles were added for a similar reason, damage mitigation, while the box is plenty movable on its own the handles help mitigate the risk of someone dropping it by giving an adequate hand hold.
In addition to all the box work I finished the code for the arduino Mega that will be controlling this machine. This project will be utilizing 43 of the 53 digital pins of the arduino, which is why it requires the mega vs the UNO as the UNO only has 13 pins. The code I wrote allows for scoring, keeping track of a high score, and what ball you are on for the continuation of the game. For anyone looking to use the code I wrote it can be found on my github at this link: https://github.com/Jeff-the-plant/Boca-Bearing-Pinball/blob/main/Pinball_machine_code_v2.ino