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 Pinball unveils Pinpoint: Wi-Fi-enabled dev kit for monitoring WPC game events and triggering LED/toy mods.

Summary

Davey from Stumblor Pinball demonstrates Pinpoint, a new mod maker development kit for WPC pinball machines. The board monitors game events via the sound bus and triggers LED patterns, toys, and other effects based on those events. Configuration is handled remotely via Wi-Fi web UI, with support for custom Lua scripting for advanced event logic.

Key Claims

Pinpoint is a Wi-Fi capable board that sits on the sound bus of WPC machines and monitors sound events to trigger LED patterns and toys
high confidence · Davey demonstrates the board's installation and functionality on Pinball Arcade table
Configuration of Pinpoint is done entirely remotely over Wi-Fi through a web UI with no physical connection required to the machine
high confidence · Davey shows accessing the web UI on his Mac to configure event watchers and patterns
The board supports three onboard LED ports, 5V and 12V toy control, and i2c serial output for sound information
high confidence · Davey identifies the physical ports on the board during the demonstration
Pinpoint uses the same LED pattern system as Davey's other mods (Lollipops) with configurable curves, colors, spin algorithms, and speed
high confidence · Davey discusses the pattern configuration options in the web UI
The board supports Lua scripting for advanced event logic, including variable tracking and conditional pattern triggering
high confidence · Davey demonstrates Lua script examples showing event counting and multi-event sequences
Pinpoint will be used to make Medieval Madness remade topper compatible with existing Medieval Madness games
high confidence · Davey explicitly states this upcoming mod project during the demonstration
Events in the Pinpoint system are sound events that correspond to all major pinball game events (multiball, scoops, slings, etc.)
high confidence · Davey explains that sounds are associated with all major events and can be used to trigger varied mods

Notable Quotes

“I'm calling it a mod makers development kit so it enables mod makers of all experiences to monitor game events and then trigger specific actions based on those events”
Davey (Stumblor Pinball)@ 0:26 — Core definition of what Pinpoint is and its intended use case
“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'm using here and the board”
Davey (Stumblor Pinball)@ 2:10 — Key differentiator—wireless configuration removes complexity for end users
“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”
Davey (Stumblor Pinball)@ 6:27 — Explains the broad potential applications of the sound event architecture
“I'm going to be producing a mod with this to get the Medieval Madness topper that's made for the remake compatible with existing medieval madness The Games”
Davey (Stumblor Pinball)@ 9:28 — Concrete near-term use case for Pinpoint technology
“The possibilities are endless really and it's a really exciting development”
Davey (Stumblor Pinball)@ 9:45 — Speaker's enthusiasm about the product's potential impact

Entities

DaveypersonStumblor PinballcompanyPinpointproductPinball Arcadegame Medieval MadnessgameMedieval Madness RemakegameLollipopsproductWPCproduct

Signals

?
community_signal: Pinpoint is positioned as an accessibility tool for the modding community, lowering technical barriers for mod makers of varying experience levels
high · Davey describes it as enabling 'mod makers of all experiences' and demonstrates user-friendly web UI configuration
?
announcement: Pinpoint is being announced/demonstrated publicly for the first time as a new modding tool for WPC machines
high · Video title is 'Pinpoint - a pinball mod makers development kit - demo!' and Davey says 'brand new' and 'very exciting'
?
product_strategy: Stumblor Pinball has a near-term project to create a Medieval Madness topper compatibility mod using Pinpoint
high · Davey explicitly states: 'I'm going to be producing a mod with this to get the Medieval Madness topper that's made for the remake compatible with existing medieval madness The Games'
?
technology_signal: Pinpoint represents a new category of modding development kit using Wi-Fi-enabled event monitoring and remote configuration, lowering the barrier to entry for mod makers
high · Davey explicitly positions it as enabling 'mod makers of all experiences' and demonstrates the ease of remote Wi-Fi configuration

Topics

Aftermarket modding electronics and development toolsprimaryWi-Fi enabled pinball hardware and remote configurationprimaryLED lighting mods and pattern customizationprimaryWPC machine compatibility and sound bus integrationprimaryLua scripting for advanced event logic in pinballsecondaryToy control and accessory triggeringsecondaryMedieval Madness topper compatibility projectsecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.85)— Davey is enthusiastic and optimistic about Pinpoint's potential, showcasing working demonstrations and expressing excitement about possibilities. No criticisms or concerns raised. Tone is educational and confident.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.030

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 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 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 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 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 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 additionally we can do some more complex stuff like this and what this bit of Lua code does is records down the, it records a variable that it increments every time an event gets played and then when that variable reaches a certain index, whether it's two or four or six then different patterns get played and then it then resets that variable at the end so now if I I'll just delete these events so that they're not going to conflict now when I click on up We might help if we save that code first. Let's try again. That's one, two plays an event, three, four plays an event, five, six plays an event. I was working on this stuff today, It's all brand new. It's all very exciting. I'm going to be producing a mod with this to get the Medieval Madness topper that's made for the remake compatible with existing medieval madness games But the possibilities are endless really and it's a really exciting development and I hope Thank you.