It’s almost that time of year again – time for the Midwest Gaming Classic!
Aside from classic gaming they also have lots and lots of Pinball! Enjoy homebrew games from Team Heck and Spooky Pinball such as:
1) Lost – hopefully with the final playfield installed!
2) Godzilla – now with sound!
3) Bill Paxton Pinball – with an improved shooter lane and a Start button that actually adds players the right way.
Hope to see you there!
No better way to spend a Sunday afternoon! John Popaduik gave me one of his spare LED Vishay displays so I thought it would be fun to hook it up to a microcontroller (MCU)
Because it has 8 simultaneous cores and does not require interrupts, the Parallax Propeller seemed like a good bet. The code still had to be written in machine language to be fast enough.
You can download the resulting code here. Wire your DMD to your MCU by cross-referencing your machine’s pinout to the commented code (you need 6 signal wires + ground) or by looking at the Vishay docs.
A single COG is launched in SPIN and will continuously spit out data to your display. The variable array “displayX” holds your screen memory and requires 2 bits per pixel.
This gives you 4 shades of color: 0ff (00), dim (01), medium (10) and bright (11). Check the code comments for more information.
Hopefully this may be of use to anyone modding or doing homebrew pinball – have fun!
After 5 years of having the same theme, I’ve finally updated my site. I’m still putting in functionality, but here are some key new features:
And as usual, the forums are available as well. Have fun and I hope to add even more features soon!
Now you can own a piece of Ben Heck History! Own the original portable work bench as seen on older episodes of the Ben Heck Show.
You can check out the eBay auction here – no reserve, actual cost shipping.
Yes, believe it or not, we’ve done a year-end podcast! We’ve got a lot of topics, including:
Enjoy and have a happy new year!
Download Ben Heck Dot Com Podcast # 76!
Has anyone seen the BATMAN controllers? For both PS3 and 360?
Yes that’s right – it’s a PS360 controller you don’t have to ask me to build! Have fun…
McFarlane’s “Lost” action figures allowed us to increase the bikini content of this pinball machine 175% over previous models.
Team Heckendorn has been working furiously on “Lost” pinball for several months now, with the goal of having a playable game at the Chicago Expo. Through our tireless efforts and backbreaking work. this goal will be a reality, unless a meteor strikes the Midwest or something.
Not only can you play the game, but you can enjoy our seminar “Godzilla Gets Lost in the Big Juicy Melons” at 3:30 on Friday, featuring Dennis Nordman, Greg Freres, Chuck Emery and myself, speaking about homebrew pinball.
“Lost” easily surpasses “Bill Paxton Pinball” (which we may also bring) as the most complicated project I’ve ever built. It contains:
“Lost” runs off the breadboard version of the Ben Heck “Pinball Development Platform” which can run 64 matrixed switches, 64 matrixed lights, RGB cabinet lighting, 24 solenoids / magnets / shakers, 3 servos, 8+ optos or general I/O, (3) channel 16 bit stereo sound, 16 bits of LED backbox lighting elements plus NTSC, VGA or DMD display.
Hope to see you all there!