Lolly V3: Sound Sensing on a WPC pinball machine

Stumblor Pinball·video·7m 28s·analyzed·Aug 10, 2025

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.015

TL;DR

Stumbler Mods Lolly V3 adds WPC sound sensing for synchronized mod triggers

Summary

Davey from Stumbler Mods demonstrates the Lolly V3 control board's new WPC sound sensing capability, which allows mods to tap into Bally Williams-era pinball sound data via ribbon cables and trigger custom LED lighting, servo motors, and other accessories in real-time. The demo shows practical applications including dynamic LED screen animations and mechanical toy responses synchronized to in-game sound events.

Key Claims

Lolly V3 is used by Stumbler Mods and many other mod makers in the pinball community
high confidence · Davey explicitly states 'this is the board that powers all of our mods and not just our mods, but lots of other mod makers, too'
WPC games communicate via ribbon cables in the backbox between circuit boards
high confidence · Davey explains 'all of the circuit boards are in the backbox and they communicate by these ribbon cables in between all of the boards'
Lolly V3 can now sense WPC sound data and trigger responses in real-time
high confidence · Core demonstration showing sound events appearing in the Stumbler mod editor app and triggering LED and servo outputs
The Stumbler mod editor app can identify named sounds from specific WPC games when game data is selected
high confidence · Davey demonstrates selecting Funhouse in the game data dropdown and sounds appearing with text names like 'I see you now' and Rudy calls

Notable Quotes

“this is the board that powers all of our mods and not just our mods, but lots of other mod makers, too”
Davey @ ~0:15 — Establishes Lolly V3 as a widely-adopted platform in the mod community, not just proprietary to Stumbler
“WPC games, pinball games were made by Bally Williams in the 80s and 90s and have classics like Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, Funhouse”
Davey @ ~0:50 — Educational framing of WPC platform and its significant legacy games
“all of the sounds that will be happening in the machine will now appear here”
Davey @ ~3:30 — Key feature explanation: Lolly V3 now captures all sound events, enabling flexible triggering
“We can not only control LED screens, we can control anything using these same triggers”
Davey @ ~5:45 — Demonstrates broad capability scope: sound sensing can drive any connected accessory type

Entities

DaveypersonStumbler ModscompanyLolly V3productBally WilliamscompanyWPC platformproductStumbler mod editor appproductFunhousegame Medieval Madnessgame Attack from Mars

Signals

?
community_signal: Stumbler Mods demonstrates commitment to mod maker ecosystem by providing open platform adopted by multiple mod creators
high · 'this is the board that powers all of our mods and not just our mods, but lots of other mod makers, too'
?
product_strategy: Lolly V3 adds RJ45 connector and sensing daughter board infrastructure to enable ribbon cable data interception on WPC machines
high · Davey shows physical board modifications: 'The usual sensing daughter board that sits here has been replaced by this RJ45 connector' and describes backbox sensing board installation
?
technology_signal: Lolly V3 introduces WPC sound sensing capability, expanding modding possibilities beyond LED/servo control to event-driven synchronization
high · Entire demonstration shows new sound sensing feature; Davey frames it as 'new ways that this board can uh tap into that game information'

Topics

Aftermarket mod technology and capabilitiesprimaryWPC platform technical architectureprimarySound sensing and event triggering systemsprimaryLED lighting and accessory control integrationsecondaryPinball history and classic gamessecondaryMod customization ecosystemsecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.85)— Davey presents the technology with enthusiasm and demonstrates practical, working implementations. Tone is educational and celebratory about expanding Lolly V3 capabilities. No criticism or controversy present.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

Hello pinball friends. I'm Davey from Stumblore Pinball and this is our flagship mod making PCB, the Lolly version 3. Uh, this is the board that powers all of our mods and not just our mods, but lots of other mod makers, too. Can do LED lighting. Uh, it can run servos and motors and LED screens, all while picking up game information like switches and lamps and reacting accordingly. We've just introduced a lot of other new ways that this board can uh tap into that game information. And today I'm going to show you how to do it. Welcome back. So, what kind of sensing are we going to be doing today? Well, we're specifically going to be looking at WPC sound sensing. Now, WPC games, pinball games were made by Bali Williams in the 80s and 90s and have classics like Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, Funhouse, and games like that in their roster. Um, the way these games work is all of the circuit boards are in the backbox and they communicate by these ribbon cables in between all of the boards. So, what we're going to do is tap into these ribbon cables, work out when certain sounds are playing, and then get the Lolly to react to those sounds. So, I've got the Lolly version 3 on the bench here. Um, the usual sensing daughter board that sits here has been replaced by this RJ45 connector that will enable us to receive the data. Um, we've also got a testing board here that will be emulating the sounds coming from the WPC motherboard and sending them out. Um, and we've got this small sensing board here that will ordinarily be sat in the backbox of your machine to pick up those sound signals. So, I'm going to connect all this up. You can see that that board is now powered. That's blue blinky light is blinking. And I'll connect the ribbon cable as though it was sitting in the machine. Okay, that's all connected up now. I've got my Lolly app over here. This is the Stumbalore mod editor app. Um, and I've gone into this new section which is called events, which will show all of the event information coming in. That's all of the sensing information. So, it could be switches or lamps or coils or anything. Today, we're just going to be using it to look at the sounds coming in. So, using my testing board over here, I'll select a sound. So, that's sound 4. And then click test. And you can see that sound 4 has now appeared in the stumble mod editor app. These um sounds you can see here have names associated with them. I see you now. For those people, they might recognize what that sound is. That's from Funhouse. Um and we can select which game is being looked at using this game data dropdown in the settings menu. So, I've currently got Funhouse selected, which is why these um sounds coming through with their text names. Come back here. Another Rudy call from Funhouse. Um so, all of the sounds that will be happening in the machine will now appear here. If I want to um monitor one of those sounds and do something on the lolly board, I can select the sound and add it as a trigger to one of the outputs. Um I've added I'll just get rid of this one first. I've added it um as an event to the left sling. The left sling is this output here. Let's plug something into it. I've got this um LED screen that I'm going to be plugging in. At the moment, that will be just playing a pulsing pattern. But let's change that to a GIF that I uploaded earlier, which is a fire. Don't know whether you can see it. Let me turn down the brightness. I might be able to see it a bit better. There we go. Fire pattern on that LED screen. Right. So, the event that came through earlier was this one. Come back here. Um, and when this event happens, I want to play the same uh play the same graphic but in a different color. So, let's make it green. Turn the brightness right down so you can see it. Let's test it using this method. So, now that I'm monitoring that, testing on this board up here. There we go. We'll turn it green. Now we can monitor other events. Let's so play again. No, let's have a look. It's getting late. That's another classic Rudy call. Now if I test that, nothing's happening on the screen until I monitor it. Add it to left sling. Let's change this to purple this time. And if I test it again now, that goes purple. So, five turns it green, seven turns it purple, and that essentially is sound sensing on a WPC game. We can not only control LED screens, we can control anything using these same triggers. Um, let's have a bit of fun with our good friend Jabakitty, who got destroyed a couple of weeks ago, and I've just repaired him. All ready to go for testing. Um, he's connected to Arsling at the moment. Now, you can see if I move his arm from 0 degrees to 180 degrees, it goes down. But let's have some fun with him and again monitor some of these sounds. So, number five, let's go into events. Um, where was five? So, five, let's add it to right sling. So when game event sound come back here do this move him to 180 for one second then rest and likewise with sound seven right sling we'll add that to we'll just do 90° for that for one second and rest. So that means when this sound comes through goes to 180 when sound seven comes through moves to 90. Let's see that in conjunction with the LED screen. Jaba Kitty and the LED screen. Let's move him down so you can see that properly. Okay. Sound five, green 180. Sound seven, purple 90. Hey, presto. WPC sound sensing and the lolly together at last. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks.