Stumblor Pinpoint - a pinball mod makers development kit - demo!

Stumblor Pinball·video·10m 1s·analyzed·Jan 10, 2022

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.017

TL;DR

Stumblor releases Pinpoint, a sound-bus mod kit enabling creators to trigger LEDs and toys on WPC machines via events.

Summary

Davey from Stumblor Pinball demonstrates Pinpoint, a new Wi-Fi-capable development kit board for pinball mod makers that monitors game events via the sound bus and triggers LED patterns, toy actions, and custom behaviors. The board sits on WPC machines' sound bus, offers web-based configuration, supports Lua scripting for advanced logic, and enables non-technical mod makers to create sophisticated lighting and mechanical mods tied to specific in-game events.

Key Claims

Pinpoint is a Wi-Fi-capable board that monitors game events on WPC machines via the sound bus and triggers LED patterns, toys, and actions based on those events
high confidence · Davey (Stumblor Pinball) — direct product demonstration and explanation
The board uses a web UI accessed remotely over Wi-Fi for configuration, with no direct physical connection between computer and board required
high confidence · Davey demonstrating the web interface during the demo
Pinpoint supports Lua scripting for advanced event logic, allowing mod makers to track event history and trigger patterns based on sequences of events
high confidence · Davey explaining Lua capabilities and demonstrating example scripts
Davey is working on making the Medieval Madness topper (from the remake) compatible with existing Medieval Madness games using Pinpoint
high confidence · Davey stating future project goal near end of video
The board has three onboard LED ports, supports 5V and 12V toy control, and features an i2c serial port for additional connectivity
high confidence · Davey's technical description of board hardware during initial overview

Notable Quotes

“I'm calling it a mod makers development kit so it enables mod makers of all experiences to monitor game events and to then trigger specific actions based on those events”
Dave Link@ 0:26 — Defines the core purpose and accessibility goal of Pinpoint — democratizing mod creation across skill levels
“Because sounds are associated with all major events in a pinball machine, whether it be a multiball or hitting a scoop shot or hitting slings or any of the events that occur during a game, we can associate different patterns and different events”
Dave Link@ 6:27 — Explains the breadth of customization possible via event-driven architecture — all major gameplay events can be modded
“all of my boards including this one are all Wi-Fi capable which means all the configuration is done remotely over Wi-Fi so there's no actual connection between the Mac that I using here and the board”
Dave Link@ 2:10 — Highlights user experience improvement — wireless configuration removes barrier to setup and experimentation
“The possibilities are endless really and it's a really exciting development”
Dave Link@ 9:45 — Captures Davey's enthusiasm for the mod ecosystem potential this board enables

Entities

Dave LinkpersonStumblor PinballcompanyPinpointproductCreature from the Black Lagoongame Medieval MadnessgameMedieval Madness remakegameWPCorganizationLuaproduct

Signals

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product_launch: Stumblor Pinball is releasing Pinpoint, a new sound-bus monitoring development kit for WPC pinball mod makers
high · Davey's full demonstration of a functional Pinpoint board with web UI, LED control, and scripting capabilities
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technology_signal: Pinpoint represents a significant innovation in aftermarket pinball electronics — sound-bus event detection with Wi-Fi configuration and Lua scripting support, lowering the barrier to custom mods
high · Davey emphasizes accessibility for 'mod makers of all experiences' and demonstrates seamless event-to-action mapping via web UI
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design_philosophy: Pinpoint's design philosophy prioritizes accessibility and ease-of-use for non-expert mod makers, with remote Wi-Fi configuration and visual event monitoring reducing technical friction
high · Davey's repeated emphasis on enabling 'mod makers of all experiences' and the decision to use web-based UI over direct connections
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community_signal: Pinpoint's release signals growing sophistication and accessibility of the pinball mod ecosystem, enabling more creators to produce complex lighting and mechanical mods
high · Davey's statement that 'the possibilities are endless' and his showcasing of multiple complexity tiers (simple LED patterns to Lua event sequences)
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product_strategy: Stumblor Pinball is expanding its aftermarket electronics platform beyond existing mods (lollipops, etc.) with Pinpoint as a general-purpose mod development kit
high · Davey mentions that pattern types are 'the same types that are available in some of my other mods like lollipops' and Pinpoint uses shared pattern infrastructure

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.030

0:00

Hi this is Davey from Stumble or Pinball here demonstrating a new board that I've been working on. It's called Pinpoint. My camera is reversed but you get the idea. So what is it? Well I'm calling it a mod makers development kit so it enables mod makers of all experiences to monitor game events and to then trigger specific actions based on those events so what is an event in the case of this board an event is a sound so the board itself sits on the sound bus on a WPC machine using these ribbon cable connectors here and when a particular sound occurs it can trigger one of these three onboard LED ports or it can turn on a toy at the bottom here 5 volt or 12 volt toy to turn one on or off and additionally will also send the sound information out this serial port here which is an i2c serial port so So let's jump straight in, I'll give you a demonstration of what it can do. I'm just going to install it on my, first of all I've got this LED strip, I'm going to plug that into one of the LED strip ports, and then install it on my creature from the Black Lagoon. I've already got these ribbon cables automatically set up there. I'm powering the board using a 12 volt connector which I've also already set up. I'll just turn it on. As you can see the board itself fires up but nothing yet coming out of that LED strip and that's because we haven't set up any of the configurations to monitor any game events yet. all of my boards including this one are all Wi-Fi capable which means all the configuration is done remotely over Wi-Fi so there's no actual connection between the Mac that I using here and the board Just wait for the wait for the pinpoint access point to be created which is there and then go to a specific URL for your IP address where the board is and up comes the web UI there is there so there's various sections here we can go into one that manages the events and the watches of those events the patterns that can get played. The patterns are the same types that are available in some of my other mods like lollipops and each pattern can be configured to control various aspects of that LED pattern whether it be the curve of the LEDs or the colors and the mix of colors and how quickly they spin and what kind of algorithms are used to control that spin and there's you know we can set a bunch of those patterns up but the key area of Pinpoint is this event section here to the left there's a column which shows the live events that are originating from the pinball machine and on the right we can set up watches for those events so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into the service menu of Creech and of course I need to delete some stuff. Let's just clear that. So now if I click on the up arrow and the down arrow you can see that sound events are getting triggered, 81 and 80. 81 is the up arrow, 80 is the down arrow. To the right of each sound you can see that there's a little label that shows how many events were triggered based on that sound and there's zero events being triggered at the moment so let's set one up for the up arrow, what was the up arrow again? 81. So we'll set one up for the up arrow we'll say port LED 1 which is where I plugged in the strip should play pattern one for three seconds in these colors. Now if I click on the up arrow, you can see that pattern now gets played of that strip. You can see the strip goes back to being blank after that sound is triggered. So let's set up an additional watcher for sound event zero which is just the sound event when nothing happening And as you can see the strip has started pulsing with the at rest pattern of that pattern by selecting the different colors here in orange, yellow, or neon green or whatever we choose. Also, you can see that when we set up a watcher for a particular sound event, that label shows how many events were triggered. So if there was multiple events associated with a particular sound that did different things out the different ports, it would show you how many had been triggered there which gives you just a good bit of feedback as to whether your watches are triggering or not. Additionally the tab at the top here will turn red showing you which of your watches are being triggered at what particular time. So let's set up another one for the down arrow, so that's 80 and again we'll set it up for LED 1, we'll trigger a different pattern in a different set of colours. Three seconds and then now when I press the down arrow a different pattern gets played. Obviously setting it up for service menu buttons isn't what we're actually going to be wanting to be doing as a mod maker. This is just a demonstration. But because sounds are associated with all major events in a pinball machine, whether it be a multi ball or hitting a scoop shot or hitting slings or any of the events that occur during a game, we can associate different patterns and different events and different for all of those events in the game and set up some real varied mods and effects for all the different things that are occurring in a pinball game. Additionally there's some extended options that are available including this thing called Lua. Lua is a scripting language that interacts really nicely with C++ and that allows us have sort of a more granular control over things that are occurring when an event plays, such as we can record that event down in some variables so that we can get some kind of history as to what events have been played so that we can check those So we can say you know if the sling was hit and then the scoop was hit afterwards then do a certain action based on that. So I'll give you an example of some Lewis scripts which I've recorded down here. This is a very simple one just to do some debugging to the screen. So the print function will print some debugging to the screen. into the screen it's going to print that text and then show us the sound event that has just occurred so i'll save that go back into the events section here and now when i click on the event you can see that that debugging has come through there um this is not a very usable example but