When I first started building my own pin cab, I found it hard to get a handle on all of the pieces involved. I knew I wanted real flipper buttons, but how do you connect them to the PC? I wanted a plunger, but how the heck do you make a PC take input from a plunger? I wanted feedback devices to simulate the flipper solenoids and replay knocker and so on, and I understood that I needed an LedWiz for that, but beyond that I didn't really know what it could do or how to connect anything to it. And knowing how many questions I had, I shuddered to think about the questions I didn't even know enough to ask - Mr. Rumsfeld's famous "unknown unknowns".

The diagram below will, I hope, clear up some of that fog, especially the unknown unknowns. It's is a comprehensive map of all of the electronic systems and devices that make up a virtual pinball machine. It doesn't answer the detailed questions, like exactly how you hook up the LedWiz or install software, but it offers a bird's-eye view of everything that goes into one of these machines. It shows what each component does and how everything fits together. The idea is to let you see the whole system at a glance. This diagram shows pretty much everything electronic in a pin cab, so you should be able to quickly spot any major components that weren't already on your radar, and decide if you need to add them to your plans.

http://mjrnet.org/pinscape/BuildGuideV2/BuildGuide.php?sid=architecture

BASIC PARTS LIST OF WHAT I NEED TO MAKE A MACHINE?

No, because everyone makes their own plan. However, here is a list you will likely need to complete a custom cabinet:

• Playfield monitor
• Back glass Monitor
• 3rd Monitor or DMD (if you choose)
• Wood
• Fans for ventilation
• Backglass glass
• Playfield glass
• Computer
• Higher end graphics cards
• Speakers
• Nanotech nudge unit
• Plunger
• Arcade Buttons
• Power supply for lit buttons
• Coin door
• Side rails
• Lockdown bar
• Rear glass trim
• Legs and bolts
• Backbox side hinges so you can lower your backbox
• Backbox locking hinge so you can keep your backbox up
• Coin door lock
• Backglass lock
• Power strips
• Mounting straps to hold components in place
• Screws
• Glue

Details

Real flipper buttons! Once we have the displays in a proper cabinet arrangement, we can't just plop a boring old PC keyboard on top and go on batting the ball with the Shift buttons like on the desktop. It's a real pin cab, so it needs real flipper buttons.

Yes, you can connect the real buttons to the PC. There's a special device called a key encoder that lets you do just this. They're fairly cheap and easy to set up (and the Pinscape Controller can handle this function, of course). They trick Windows into thinking you're still just pressing regular keyboard keys, so you can go on using the same pinball software.

This makes a positively huge difference in playability. If you've played any desktop pinball or tablet pinball, you probably already have a sense for how awkward the controls are; you've undoubtedly lost a good number of balls from having your fingers stray just a little off the keys at crucial moments. Even so, it'll probably still be a revelation the first time you play virtual pinball with real flipper buttons.

You don't have to (and shouldn't) stop at flipper buttons, by the way. You can hook up all of the standard buttons - the Start button, Magna Save buttons, the coin chutes, even the service buttons inside the coin door that let you access the operator menus.

A real plunger! Desktop pinball games all use a "timed" plunger that pulls back as long as you're pressing a key. Which is obviously nothing at all like reality. On a cabinet, you can install a real plunger, and connect it to a sensor that lets the PC read its position. This lets you launch a ball exactly like in a real game. The Pinscape Controller offers this capability, and several commercial options are available as well.

Real nudging! Real pinball games are physical, mechanical systems. The game is subject to the immutable laws of physics, not just the whims of a programmer. That's what makes it unique in the age of video games. Pinball's physicality means you can interact with the game in a very direct and visceral way, nudging the cabinet to influence the ball.

Desktop pinball offers an imitation of nudging that's half-hearted at best, letting you "nudge" by pressing a button. Like the timed plunger, it's nice that they at least tried to offer a substitute, but it's nothing like the real thing.

A virtual cab lets you take this to a whole new level. A virtual cab already has the same heft and feel of a real cab, so you'll find yourself unconsciously nudging it like the real thing, your brain expecting it to influence the ball. But what if it really could influence the ball? Good news: it can! There's a device known as an accelerometer that can measure exactly the sort of motion you impart to the cabinet by nudging. Accelerometers were exotic devices not too long ago, but now that there's one in every cell phone, they're cheap and utterly commonplace, and they're also quite good at their job. The Pinscape Controller has an accelerometer built in and knows how to send the acceleration signals to the pinball player. It lets real physical nudges influence the simulated ball the same way they'd affect a real ball. The commercial plunger kits offer the same capability.

Mechanical feedback! Blinking lights! Once the early cabinet builders mastered all of the above, they started coming up with ways to make the experience even more realistic by adding mechanical feedback - devices that actually move inside the cab to simulate flippers, slingshots, and bumpers.

Real pinball is a very tactile experience. The solenoids that whack the ball around are really powerful, and you can feel them shake the cabinet every time they fire. Digitized sound effects just aren't the same. For a more realistic virtual experience, you can put solenoids and other physical devices inside your cab that produce similar tactile effects in the virtual game. The pinball software can trigger these feedback devices in sync with the game play. So when a bumper fires in the simulation, you can actually feel a solenoid fire in your cab. You can likewise add bright LEDs and strobes that flash in sync with game events. This makes for a dramatic light show, much more interesting than just images on a TV.

The current generation of pinball software makes it fairly straightforward to attach an array of mechanical devices and external lights. You need another I/O controller for this capability, known in this case as an "output controller". The Pinscape Controller can handle this task, and there are several commercial options as well. As for the devices themselves, there's a fairly standard complement of devices in typical cabs, but the basic mechanisms involved are general-purpose and let you hook up almost anything you can think of.

WOW, THIS LOOKS LIKE A LOT OF WORK, CAN'T I JUST BUY A PRE BUILT MACHINE?

You can purchase a used Ultrapin for around $3,000. Look on craigslist, check the newsgroup rec.games.pinball, or look through Mr. Pinball's classifieds for a chance to own one. They are pretty rare. For $6,000 Nanotech sells its equally nice Multipin cabinet with 16 pre-installed tables. As of right now, you can purchase the Multipin through the following link, but its current availability is uknown - you may want to contact Nanotech first. http://www.nanotechent.com/multipin.php

If you're new to the virtual cabinet world and you weren't already acquainted with all of these bells (literally) and whistles, you might be feeling a little intimidated by all of this. You might have been picturing just the basics of the Windows PC in the fancy wooden box, and you might have been thinking in terms of what you could build out of ordinary PC equipment. But a lot of the stuff I just mentioned obviously can't be built out of ordinary PC parts.

The good news is that everything described above is not only possible, but well understood. It's been reduced to recipes that you can follow. Lots of people have built cabs with these features. The software infrastructure that supports all of this is mature, and it's specifically designed with all of these features in mind. There's no need to "hack" anything to trick the software into doing these things; the software already knows all about backbox displays, DMDs, nudging, plungers, and feedback devices. You just need to tell it what you have installed, and it'll take advantage of it to create a great playing experience.

Most importantly, the whole setup can be built by a committed DIYer. That's where this guide comes in. We'll explain how to implement all of the things that go into a virtual pin cab, covering the best DIY solutions as well as the commercial product options.

By the way, "DIY" doesn't mean "poor man's", which is the way a lot of people think of it. In fact, it's really quite the opposite these days, thanks to technologies like ubiquitous computing, 3D printing, and the relentless march of progress in electronics. DIY means you can build exactly what you want. It means you don't have to settle for what some marketing department thought was good enough for the least common denominator. Yes, you do still see forum discussions about "hacks" and cheap solutions. That's not what this guide is about. The approaches we'll cover in this guide are modern, no-compromises solutions. Some of them have capabilities that you simply can't find in the commercial alternatives.