Fun With Pinball

169 points by jackwilsdon 142 days ago | 11 comments

roskelld 141 days ago |

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

roskelld 141 days ago | |

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/

bsimpson 141 days ago | |

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).

tomstockmail 141 days ago | |

Although it was some years ago, this writeup of creating a pinball machine from scratch is a good read: https://www.benheck.com/bill-paxton-pinball-making-of/

kruffalon 141 days ago | |

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!

jconley88 141 days ago |

I love pinball, I do, but my favorite part about this isn't that it exists. It's why, or the lack of one, in a sense.

I had the opportunity to tiredly stumble upon Mark's display on my way out of a pinball expo. The quality and care that went into the displays move them beyond a learning tool and curiosity piece into a creative artistic expression. There's obviously a human who cares deeply about the exhibit. In this case, he was sitting in the back of the room near a mountain of travel crates, offering occasional encouragement and insight.

The message that I got was, "This is important to me, and I want to share it with you". It was not built out of a CEO's metrics and mandates asking me, "How many dollars are you?". It helped that there was literally a human behind the display, but maybe that same sense comes across via the website as well.

Regardless, it was refreshing. I stayed and browsed the whole display. Thank you, again, Mark!

seanosaur 142 days ago |

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.

gnutrino 142 days ago |

So cool, this is what the web was meant to be.

SubiculumCode 142 days ago |

This is awesome stuff. I love pinball and I could almost see myself getting into building (a simple) one someday.

martzoukos 141 days ago |

OH MY GOD THE SOUNDS IN THE VIDEOS . I feel like I'm pressing the buttons myself.

munchler 142 days ago |

It looks like you submitted a random page within the website instead of pointing to the home page.