11/14/2021 – Year End Update and Pintastic on 11/19/2021

What? A year end update in the middle of November? Well, hey, why not. OPP just released a new regression tested version of firmware (2.3.0.0) and with that, there needs to be some celebrating!

First up, I gotta thank Cobra18t because many of the additional features to OPP firmware would not have been done without him pushing me. There’s been some really great things that were always on the back burner, but with his tireless pushing of the homebrew pinball envelope, he kicked my butt enough to force support. Let’s talk about each of the added features, since, well, I haven’t actually updated the blog for six or so months.

1. Fade support added for Incandescent wings. Sorry about how long this took to support, but after all the work on fading done for NeoPixels, it became very easy to support it for incandescent boards. JWilson (PinballMakers website guru) asked me for this years ago, but I was always worried that the processor didn’t have the umph. With the switch to STM32, many things became significantly easier because of the extra horsepower in the processor. Fade support was made “generic” and this was leveraged later in the year for other new projects.
2. Added WING_SW_MATRIX_OUT_LOW wing type which allows active low switch matrices to be supported. This removes the need for MPF users to use type: NC (normally closed) and reverse logic. I think it also forced users to wire hook into the matrix “backwards”, so those dark days are now behind us.
3. Lamp matrices are now supported. I think Cobra even sells a board to do this. Always thought I was going to get around to doing this board, but fortunately Cobra beat me to it. He did all of the testing which made my life even easier. Funny part is that I have actually never seen this board, but yet the firmware is driving it without an issue. (Nice remote integration!)
4. Minor bug fixed that was causing Neopixel processing to stop after a long time. This one was absolutely nasty to find, until Cobra finally found something to reproduce this issue very quickly. As with all these things, once we new the issue, the fix was very simple. This makes Neopixel processing rock steady (and significantly more efficient than FadeCandy). Why buy a $20 board when you can grab a $3 board that does the job a little more efficiently. The main issue I had with FadeCandy was the crappy pixel server that ended up eating a whole core just to run updates. Phoey.
5. Added servo support on wing 1. Any input on wing 1 can now be configured as a PWM output to support a servo motor. Servo outputs also use the generic fade commands so that they can move between two positions without the host processor intervention. That essentially allows velocity of moves to be programmed. (No acceleration support, but should be good enough for pinball toys).
6. SPI LED support (aka SK8922 and APA102 chips). Why not? Krayon wanted brighter LEDs and said the SPI LEDs were much brighter. Boom…support was added after he twisted my arm. (It was actually relatively simple and uses 90% of the same code as the Neopixel code.)
7. PWM the initial kick pulse to reduce initial kick power. Both Jan and Cobra ask for this, but Cobra had some great justifications. He implored, that many homebrew pinball people were digging in the scrap heap (I know I’m one of them), and sometimes get parts that run at various high voltages. While reducing the initial kick pulse length works in most cases, it is actually better to reduce the voltage to the solenoid by PWMing the driving MOSFET. (Wow, that last sentence is wayyyy oversimplifying driving a coil, but I’ll ignore that fact). Well, it is hard to argue with that logic, and so support was added. While in there, the firmware was changed for the hold PWM to use a period of 1 ms instead of 16 ms. This should reduce the amount of drooping seen in machines that PWM their flippers for the hold portion of the cycle. (It also means that the hold will be slightly more powerful, so be careful of that).

Wow, that is a crap ton of new features this year…and that doesn’t even talk about the hardware side. Cobra created an all in one board that now allows people to buy a single centralized solution to drive their pinball machine. He ran a Kickstarter, and kicked some serious butt by getting supporters. He does mention OPP has been around since 2016, but the blog started in 2012, and the first boards were received on 5/30/2012. Wow. Six months from now will be the 10 year anniversary. Back to Cobra and his multiple projects. He also created a Satellite board with 8 solenoids, Neopixels, and 23 direct inputs. But he wasn’t done. Why not an Xpansion board that has an 8×8 lamp matrix, 8 solenoids, and 8 switch inputs. Then he created Neopixel based segment displays. When does this guy sleep? Read about the projects on Pinball Makers. Buy his stuff through his shop if you so desire. He isn’t beating my $60 bargain basement pinball controller, solder itself price, but for those that don’t want the hassle, it is a darn fine way to go. (See Gerry, it wasn’t me that you needed to worry about, it was actually Cobra! I’m too lazy and don’t want the hassles of selling to people). Cobra has also been great at answering questions on the MPF forums, which I rarely do.

How can I give shout outs to people without mentioning Jan. His tireless dedication to MPF and supporting all the random features that I create has made OPP much more accessible to the masses. Jan, you keep moving MPF forward, which most open source projects fizzle away because of a lack of a champion.

So what else is going on? Well, Pintastic moved from a Summer based show to, well, this coming weekend. I think it runs from Thursday to Saturday 11/18/2021 – 11/21/2021. The one event that I always attend is the homebrew forum which is at 3:30 pm on 11/19/2021. The origins of that forum has been going on since like 2015 which was some pretty early times in the homebrew pinball community. We have come a long way from there, and I think there are supposed to be something like eight homebrew machines this year. I’m going to grab a couple games on Sonic Spinball, but it is always interesting to see what else is out there and what unique ideas people have. Hilariously, I have never met anybody who reads this blog. Make my day if you see me. Mention that you have stumbled upon this blog, and maybe it will get me to post updates more than two times a year. (Unlikely, but it is always a possibility).

Maybe something big will happen next year, but maybe not. I hate to make promises that I will never complete, so this year, ha, ha, absolutely no promises for next year. Gives me a 100% guarantee that I will complete those goals.

I’m going to end with a quote by Jan, which made my day when he sent it to me. (I hope he is alright with me sharing it, but he probably doesn’t read this blog either so he will never find out that I posted it.)

Jan says, “OPP rocks! By now it left all independent vendors behind feature wise. Spike still has some additional stuff but OPP is getting close.”

I’m coming for you, Spike you over priced shift based register solution. (Cobra says it isn’t overprice, but, ehhh, let me live in my dream world. Hey Cobra, it is so overpriced if you buy it from Terry and his scalping prices.) On that bitter note, everybody keep on building homebrew pinball machines! Let’s see some of that creativity out there so it just isn’t one fan layout after another.