Mini pinball machine
By Phil King. Posted
This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
After abandoning an attempt to build an electromechanical pinball table, maker Chris Dalke set about creating a desktop one with a 7-inch HDMI touchscreen instead. “I wanted to retain the feeling of a physical arcade game with intense sound, vibration, and colours, as well as the tactile response of the inputs,” he says.
Powered by a Raspberry Pi 4, his screen-based version of pinball is coded in C++ and OpenGL, using the open-source software development library raylib. An Arduino is used for the button inputs and LED matrix scoreboard. The enclosure is laser-cut from maple wood.
If your carpentry and mechanical skills are up to it, you could have a go at building a full-size physical pinball table, like Frogger1108’s beautifully finished Arduino-controlled project.
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When not editing books and contributing to The MagPi, Phil enjoys playing the piano (badly), astronomy, and watching classic sitcoms.
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