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Homepin Pinball Presents: > 5....

P-Roc has many issues and problems that I won't detail here. It certainly is not the "be all and end all".

There is so much more to designing and building a pinball machine that truly, nobody could even begin to guess or understand. It's a lot about getting this to work with that and supplier A talking to parts from supplier B - there is no simple "one size fits all" way to do it.

Our board set is well made, reliable and inexpensive. It will also be in stock at our Australian and Canadian agents BEFORE the first machines arrive in those countries. It's just the way Homepin does things. We have a strong track record of supporting all of our products and plan to keep that good name as we release pinball machines.

We will never release any machine (pinball or otherwise) that relies on cheap PC motherboards - it just isn't how we think. That thinking is very short term and throw away.
 
Utter cobblers. I have used P3_ROC for at least 3 years. It is stable and reliable and has been used on everything from a Raspberry PI up. PC is cheap, reliable and easily replaced if it goes wrong or needs upgrades. All you need is a FTDI driver and you're away.
Instead you want me to invest in a boardset that is new, has no available spares if you go under and is more likely expensive to buy for the end user.
Because of your hardware choice I will not be buying your product.
 
I don't "want you to invest" in anything at all - not sure where you got that idea from?

If you don't like any Homepin product nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy it - simply don't buy it - it's no big deal.

Our boardset will be in stock at all dealers before any customer receives finished goods, it's just how Homepin operates. Our boardset will also be incredibly inexpensive.

There isn't any need to get all worked up about things.

So I guess you won't be buying a new Stern either as they use a custom boardset?

Excellent that you like P-Roc. There are quite a few reasons why a manufacturer such as ourselves would choose NOT to use it, when you start your own manufacturing venture you might find some of these out for yourself.

You like P-Roc, many others don't for many different reasons. No need to get all hissy and upset about it.

I wish you all the best with your P-Roc adventures.

EDIT: Added the following.

It wouldn't matter what our system was, there would be those that didn't like it. We could use Stern boardsets and someone would complain, a PC and there would be complaints, our own and some don't like it.

Believe me I have heard it all over the past four years and your comments are not one tiny surprise to me at all, your angry attitude isn't a surprise either.
 
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I don't "want you to invest" in anything at all - not sure where you got that idea from?

The investment comes from buying your machine.

If you don't like any Homepin product nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy it - simply don't buy it - it's no big deal.

Always wanted a Tb pin (see Issue 1, Pinball Today and the VPin recreation). Won't buy, see Alien as to why not.

Our boardset will be in stock at all dealers before any customer receives finished goods, it's just how Homepin operates. Our boardset will also be incredibly inexpensive.

And if you go out of business with 1 pin made they'll be unsupported.

There isn't any need to get all worked up about things.

Not getting worked up, Pointing out a lost sale to Pinball heaven and ultimately you because of your choice.

So I guess you won't be buying a new Stern either as they use a custom boardset?

Stern make thousands of games and there's already several machines using their board. Whilst not a fan of spike they have proven not to be a flash in the pan.

Excellent that you like P-Roc. There are quite a few reasons why a manufacturer such as ourselves would choose NOT to use it, when you start your own manufacturing venture you might find some of these out for yourself.

You like P-Roc, many others don't for many different reasons. No need to get all hissy and upset about it.

As above, your decision. Home users like me who are forking out a small cars worth on each pin, don't want to end up with a brick.
I'll consider TBL and Houdini even though they are start up companies because I know I can run them even if the comapny goes under as I can get boards (hell, I can even reprogram it if needs be).


I wish you all the best with your P-Roc adventures.

EDIT: Added the following.

It wouldn't matter what our system was, there would be those that didn't like it. We could use Stern boardsets and someone would complain, a PC and there would be complaints, our own and some don't like it.

Believe me I have heard it all over the past four years and your comments are not one tiny surprise to me at all, your angry attitude isn't a surprise either.
 
Here is our final boardset, developed over several years and many many iterations.

We have three separate, optically isolated main driver boards along the bottom. This is so a coil burning out and taking the driver FET with it cannot damage the main board.

On the right is our audio board which is 2.1 stereo.

You might note that practically all of the parts are through hole parts and the ICs are socketed. A printed schematic will be included with each machine.

Repairing any of these boards, when it is required one day, should be very straightforward - we are using all common parts. All firmware used in the various small micros in the machine will be available for download from the Homepin website.

I have attached one schematic page but these will have a lot more information added before we send them out to the printers.
 

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P-Roc has many issues and problems that I won't detail here. It certainly is not the "be all and end all".
Out of interest, could you PM some of the major points to me or post them here? I ask from the perspective of someone that wants to use one of these boards for a 'one-off' in the future, so perhaps the considerations may not apply - but if they do, every little bit of wisdom helps!

Also, to throw my oar into the debate at hand - I would prefer a good, sturdy, bespoke board set to be honest, over a PC-based machine. Why? Ask yourself if it is easier to repair a Williams or Stern SAM-era machine - or a Stern Spike. Or Heighway Pinball. Or Jersey Jack. I know which one I would rather challenge myself to repair without a schematic, and which one for which I would have a chance of developing a schematic if none existed.

PCs and their software add a whole other dimension to the complexity, as a poorly designed program for an embedded system runs crap on all systems, but poorly-designed PC software can typically run fine on singular configurations - and in this day and age with parts going end-of-line so quickly... getting new parts is no more an option for it being a PC system. I would be able to fix such a misbehaving system - going down to binary-patching code if I really had to - but that's another skill set I've had to exercise in addition to electronics repair.

And I say that as a desktop systems programmer by trade...
 
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We have started full production although there are still numerous little things slowing us down at the moment. We will polish things up as we go and get better.

Here are a few pics I took today and posted on the Homepin.Factory facebook page:
 

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We have started full production although there are still numerous little things slowing us down at the moment. We will polish things up as we go and get better.

Here are a few pics I took today and posted on the Homepin.Factory facebook page:

love those pics. makes me want to have a pinball production factory [emoji2]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
PS - I personally think the decision to make your own boards is the correct one. Why pay over the odds to use someone elses, it's cheaper to design and build your own in the long run.
 
I've been to a few low cost economy plants, this has been done in the right way too.

Although, when I watched the video of the storage area, a little 5S training wouldn't go a miss :p
 
Me too.

What are the drum thingys in the 2nd pic?
 
The "drum thingys" are toroidal power transformers. These are very efficient iron cored transformers mainly used in high end Hi-Fi amps etc. We use them because they are excellent quality and, here in China, the price is sensible.

Notice the 2 pin green socket bottom centre of the power supply board (P2) - this is a 12V 3A supply for "user mods" that is 100% independent of the rest of the machine.

Fitting wiring harnesses to the completed playfields today



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People have been knocking this machine, but look at how its been done, everything I see would fill me with confidence as a buyer, open and honest about why things have been done and shipping something with support.

If people were willing to throw money at HP - then I imagine the interest in this to be huge.
 
People have been knocking this machine, but look at how its been done, everything I see would fill me with confidence as a buyer, open and honest about why things have been done and shipping something with support.

If people were willing to throw money at HP - then I imagine the interest in this to be huge.

Phil at PH being a vendor is endorsement enough.

This may not be my ideal theme, and this game doesn't necessary excite me from what i have seen (obviously not played it yet), however i am very keen to see where HomePin go because i feel they have all the foundations in place to be a very successful pinball company and have been beset by multiple barriers that have all been overcome, not to mention easier access to a potentially enormous market in the far East. A difference license, some more complexity in the rules perhaps, great pricing, good audio/lights, and they're going to be the one to watch. Looking forward to game 2 and more! :thumbs:

Note: PH never sold Heighway games. Speaks volumes.
 
I think the theme is quite age specific.
As a man in his mid 30's,I'm quite nostalgic about Thunderbirds. The countdown is a great audio sample for a pinball machine.

I have just really read up on all of this as I have just gotten into Pinball in last year, but I think it is fantastic Especially since the major cost is in the start up. In theory Homepin could knock out a new pin every year or two.

Since Heighway is no more, I think the pinball community needs companies to keep Stern on their toes.


I must admit I was a little disappointed at first about the 6 objectives. I thought it would be perfect to have all the thunderbird planes as objectives and the whole board was tracey island. You would then have to launch each plane in sequence.
But I suppose this would require a huge number of toys and costs would soar.

The game does look great though

The price is definitely great compared to, say the Jetsons pin.
 
As a Man in his late 50's - I'm very nostalgic about this. I've just booked Daventry as I want to see it and play it and also meet the guy behind it. If all goes well (and of course subject to my extension planning app), I'll order one after the event.
 
Not a theme for me I always preferred terrahawks. But I look forward to playing one one day. All looks very well made. Says a lot that phil will be sticking homepin but never did Heighway
 
Now that we are in production we are discovering a few small things that we "thought" we had covered but are causing a couple of issues. One of these is the small plastic support that we made for the optos used in the machine. We made the mould for these in house and moulded a couple of hundred some time ago, again in house. Then we sent them out and had them plated black. Now that we look more closely at one of our early test machines it can be seen that the plastic coating is cracking off the base. This is purely a visual thing but I'm not happy with it.

We use a Taiwanese made plastic called POM for all our moulded parts. It has a very good resistance to wear and cracking and is recommended for use in moulding plastic gears and parts usually subject to high wear. It can be coloured any shade we like by adding an accurate measure of coloured plastic beads to the master mix. With black it's not that critical because we just want them black and the exact shade isn't an issue.

So we decided to mould another batch but this time we tinted the base plastic black so they don't need plating. This is certainly one of the benefits of doing most things in house as we discovered the problem this morning and by late this afternoon we had made a couple of hundred replacements.

Pics shown: The test machine opto showing the cracking that we didn't see until we removed the plastic ramp. Our plastic injection machine making these parts today. The new black moulded part. A heap of new parts waiting for the sprue to be cleaned off (we chip the waste material and can re-use it in small percentages). The (almost empty) bag of POM

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I loved thunderbirds as a kid, and captain scarlet even more so,

What warranty comes with the pinball ?
 
I would agree the theme personally does nothing for me, and I grew up watching blue peter with great interest as to how to make my own Tracey Island, but TB does nothing still. That isn't the point, for me it is a challenger to the Stern supremacy, with a pin that can actually make it to market, priced in the U.K at a point that would make it possible, one day, for even me to buy NIB. Or certainly have my eye on a new(er) second hand machine.

Isn't the honesty refreshing too... this is where we are, these are the problems I am having, this is how we are going to fix it.

@Homepin - thanks for the updates :)
 
I loved thunderbirds as a kid, and captain scarlet even more so,
and Joe 90 and Stingray (the new Fathom!). There, that's the first four machine themes nicely sorted, all exactly the same cab size for the OCD types to put in a line:thumbs:
 
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