4. Results - Anderson-J-Grooms/Arduino-Controlled-Pinball-Machine GitHub Wiki

With the completion of this project, I have developed a fully functioning and rather entertaining pinball machine. When I started this project I came up with the 4 major components I thought were necessary to have a pinball machine: ball launch/return, flippers, scoring elements and a display for scoring. I have now built a pinball machine that fits all the criteria. It has a spring and plunger ball launcher with a ramp return. It has flippers operating at 50v that are able to launch a ball up the ramp. It has multiple scoring elements including pop bumpers and a ramp. Lastly, it has an LCD screen that displays not only the score but also instructions for the player and the current ball number. As well as this system works, however, there are several improvements I plan on making in the future. The biggest change is the method of ball return. The simple ramp design waste a lot of field space. A better alternative is to have the returned ball drop below the board and then have the ball return mechanism deliver the ball back up to the launcher. Keep the mechanism below the board helps to save lots of space. I would also like to implement a larger variety of scoring objects including multi-hit sensors and launch holes. Even without these improvements though, I consider this successful creation of an Arduino Controlled pinball machine.