Storm 23: Stern Lightning new code project

[Azatotht]

Finally got the last parts I was waiting for to start on this project yesterday.

Back in October, I contacted someone who was selling pre-built kits for Stern Lightning on Pinside. I figured that this was complex enough for my limited skills that it would be worth it to buy a completely assembled kit.

Sent him a message on October 16th but received no replies. Contacted him again on november 7th and stil haven't received a reply to this day.

A few days later I posted on Pinside asking if there was anyone else selling or at least shipping these kits to Canada.

Fast forward to January 2nd. Got a PM from another Pinside member asking if I had managed to get a kit in Canada. He couldn't get in touch with that same seller either so he decided to have the RPU board build according to the specs and built it himself.

He quickly got me motivated to do the same and offered to send me a pcb since the minimum order to have them built was 5 so he had a few leftovers. There are still good people on this planet, we didn't know each other at all and on top of that he lives in Netherland.

So he went out of his way and even sent me a list of stuff to buy and added some extras with the board. Canada Post International shipping was so late because of the strike that I only got it yesterday ! Posted January 3rd, received yesterday february 20th. I was not counting on it anymore but here it is !!

RetroPinUpgrade RPU Rev 4

Ordered some parts on my end as well:

- Arduino
- Connectors
- WAV trigger board
- MicroSD card

Arduino Mega 2560 Pro

I will post progress on this throughout the process. This should be a good practice at soldering, so many tiny pins to solder, crossing my fingers to be able to do it

Concerning the code itself, already worked on some fixes to the actual code and will be able to do more once I've got the board running. Code cannot be tested outside of the game so it's a bit of a pain. So far added missing sounds for the outlanes and changed scoring to be the same as what the pf says. The code is a solid base but there will be improvements or small bug fixes to do, should be fun, the programming part is not a problem.

To be continued...

[HPR Pinball]

Oh wow great project, i also have a Lightning

[pixote]

I had one of these on my Lightning before I sold it. I get my BSOS boards from Troxel, he didn't have an issue shipping to Canada but I guess that may have changed. Will be interesting to see what you do with it the code, and I'm intrigued by the fact you guys made your own board. I've tried the new code(s) for; Big Game, Galaxy, Meteor, Supersonic and Lightning. I think Lightning had the best light show, Supersonic rules seemed the most competent. Galaxy and Meteor were both good as well but after a couple months I went back to the original code on those two. I know the guy who's been doing the coding on these was working on Sharpshooter and High Speed at one point but I haven't seen or heard anything since

Have been day dreaming about turning Seawitch into a wedgehead with an LCD screen and new sounds. Can steal some of the gameplay ideas from Beatles .... maybe one day

[cait001]

oooooooooo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExsC_ON_td8

[Azatotht]

I get my BSOS boards from Troxel, he didn't have an issue shipping to Canada but I guess that may have changed.

Well as far as I could tell, Troxel didn't seem to be selling these anymore. The link to his website was dead.

Will be interesting to see what you do with it the code, and I'm intrigued by the fact you guys made your own board.

Actually, the Gerber files needed to have the boards built can be found here: https://github.com/RetroPinUpgrade/Exam ... Schematics

[Azatotht]

oooooooooo

Yeah, I contacted Dick and he told me that the Accessory Lamp Board is fully developed.

It's another PCB and it takes another Arduino MEGA PRO 2560 to run it.

He added more infos here: https://github.com/RetroPinUpgrade/Stor ... /README.md

I have this in the plans as well, we'll see once I got the main board working.

[mrmikeman]

Odd that they didn't use an RPi instead of MEGAs. Way more powerful and you wouldn't need 2. I'm seeing hardware limitations(speed) just on my little Pachinko project.

[Azatotht]

I'm seeing hardware limitations(speed) just on my little Pachinko project.

Well hopefully it isn't too bad. Can't wait to have this built and tested for the first time.

[pixote]

I get my BSOS boards from Troxel, he didn't have an issue shipping to Canada but I guess that may have changed.

Well as far as I could tell, Troxel didn't seem to be selling these anymore. The link to his website was dead.

Will be interesting to see what you do with it the code, and I'm intrigued by the fact you guys made your own board.

Actually, the Gerber files needed to have the boards built can be found here: https://github.com/RetroPinUpgrade/Exam ... Schematics

Interesting, thank you! I guess if I need to get one in the future I will have to go this route if he's no longer selling them

I forgot one other game I still have with the code, Trident. It's really good and Trident can be found in Canada at decent prices still. I'm contemplating following the guide for the auto plunger so I can get multi-ball working;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APgzXbofD_s&t=542s

Good luck on this, will be following

[Azatotht]

Officially starting today !!!

Wanted to prepare the software and the sound files so my son made a sound for the outlanes because the code doesnt have any.

Renamed it to 041 which is unused, changed the code, pushed it, all ready to upload on the Arduino.

Uploaded all samples on the SDHC card, also added the new sound there.

Now that's where things got a little complicated, I connected the Arduino to my Windows 11 PC and it was not recognized.

Tried different cables (3) and also tried on my iMac to no available.

Had solid green light and a flashing red light but the board was not available in the IDE and not detected by Windows.

If, like me, you're having this issue, here's what to do: you will have to install the drivers for the USB-TTL chip that is used by your board.

In my case, CH340G. I downloaded the installer from here: https://www.wch-ic.com/downloads/ch341ser_exe.html, ran it and rebooted.

Started my IDE again, plugged the Arduino back and TADAAAM, it was there now on COM port 3.

Arduino Mega COM port

Compiled and uploaded code (right blue arrow) and all went well. Now ready for the soldering part, wish me luck, will report back.

[Azatotht]

Started to assemble the boards.

First installed a 6 pins male connectors on the WAV trigger board and jumpered the 5v pins with solder in order to get power from the RPU.

That was the easy part.

Installed a female 34 pins connector on the back of the RPU next, this is what connects into J5 on the MPU board.

34 female connector under the RPU

34 female connector from top of the RPU

Then went on to the Arduino. I did as suggested and dry fitted female connectors on the board first and connected the Arduino male pins into them. Inserted the Arduino on these pins and THEN started to solder them. Makes it much easier to fit the Arduino because if you solder the connectors on the board first, well good uck fitting it afterward.

Arduino soldered from the top first

Finished up by soldering the female connectors to the back of the board.

Arduino connectors from the back of the RPU

Finally added the male pins for the SB-300 ribbon at J5, the connector for the WAV trigger, the switch jumper and the 3 resistors and a dual pins for diagnostics (I have no idea what this is for).

Connectors for SB-300, WAV trigger and switch

*DISCLAIMER: I'm bad at soldering, you can do better.

[Azatotht]

Mounted everything into the game, connected the RPU at J5, Wav Trigger to external speakers.

Please don't mind the connectors I hacked for the WAV trigger female connector, I didn't have another in hands so I use a 'something' else

RPU installed in the game

RPU installed in the game

RPU installed in the game

[Azatotht]

Booted the game and... nothing ! Got the Gi at least

Arduino had it's green light on (ok power is there), WAV trigger had a led lit too if I remember well.

MPU had a solid green light on. Game did sweet nothing, not even a sound.

Wasn't sure where to start, figured I would at least make sure that the WAV board was working. Started to read a bit, doc said to push test button which should make a noise.

Pushed it.. you guessed it, nothing ! Then my son asked if the 'switch' was set to the run position, I didn't even know there was a switch... so yeah, it was set to 'LOAD' so I switched it to 'RUN', pushed the button and boom, test noise was there. So power and ground to the trigger board was working as well.

It didn't fix the issue, game was still not booting,with or without J5 ribbon cable connected.

Took the board out, tried to figure if there was cold solder joints somewhere, didn't find any.

Uploaded the flasher test code into the Arduino and it worked so Arduino fine.

Tested the resistors and there was a weird result at the second 10K (the middle one), thought it was that so I switched it for another good working one.

Realized I had uploaded my modified code instead of the unmodified one so I reprogrammed once again with the standard code.

And then:

[Azatotht]

Game boots the new code by default but it does boot the normal code if you hold the credit button while booting.

That's about it, I saw quite a few things that needs fixing from the few games I've played. I should be better with the code than I was with soldering.

Pretty happy to have it working now, let the fun begins !

[Rutger]

Nice work! Nice that you described everything so well, others will also find it useful.

[semicolin]

I did this to my meteor and it was easily worth every headache.

[Azatotht]

You may have a bug where the slingshots sound does not play.

I know of another person who had exactly the same, even thou the sound (013_Sling.wav) is present in the sound package offered on Github, the sound does not play at all:



I tried all kinds of magic in the code to make it work without success. So don't be like me, that sound file is corrupted somehow, replace it.

Fix: find another working wav file, rename it to 013_Sling.wav and replace it on the sd card, no need to change anything in the code at all, that file is broken

[pixote]

I don't know if you saw, but yesterday on Youtube Dick posted video of his Accessory Lamp Board (ALB), along with the plans and code (various projects). This is what he used to make the Lightning Topper, but it looks like the same board can be used to control the GI lights on Stern machines *AND* can create backglass light shows on SAM games. He did one for POTC. Anyhow, congrats on the quick build. I noticed on Pinside you were updating code, pretty cool. Nice one

Here's a link to the code and plans for the ALB;

https://www.pinballrefresh.com/accessory-lamp-board-alb

[Azatotht]

Thanks, already built my RPU with the ALB code version but didn't know he had updated his blog

** The new code have more rules for target frenzy, gives more points, balances the the score a bit better. I don’t have the ALB board yet but you can turn the code off before compiling.

[tartagliag]

Great job, Azatotht! Well done!

I should probably do the same on mine as well....I really like it!

tartagliag

[cait001]

I played semicolin's upgraded Meteor on the weekend and yeah these updates are so worth it.

[Azatotht]

I thought the light show was running way too fast so I slowed it down a bit.

Looks better now in my opinion:

[Azatotht]

There is a bug in the original code where if you lose your ball while the combo points animation is still running then you will lose these points (points are added to the score when the animation ends but in this case you lose them since the animation does not finish).

I have fixed it this way, if anyone is interested. Might not be the best way to do it but it works (added the blue selected lines):

I have also changed a few other things:

- Slowed down attract mode light show.
- Changed how the music was fading out while a speech was playing, I thought it was too much, fading just a little bit now.
- Added outlane sound

Changed the whole music package, makes it much cooler:

Ball one background music: Run to the Hills - Iron Maiden
Ball two background music: Lightning Strike - Judas Priest
Ball three background music: Ride the lightning - Metallica
Multiball ready background music: Hangar 18 - Megadeth
Multiball background music: Painkiller - Judas Priest
Multiball aftermath background music: Rock you like a hurricane - Scorpion

If you want the modified code just pm me with your Github username and I will give you access. Music is not included on Github.

[HPR Pinball]

Very nice, je vais sûrement t'en parler rendu a ma restoration de ma Lightning !

[Azatotht]

A little bit of gameplay.

Spinner multiball started.