Pinball Fantasies physical virtual pinball table

These are the firmware, case designs, schematics and PCB artwork for the tiny video pinball table as described here.

Firmware

The firmware consists of a core emulator that emulates the main game logic, a music player to replace the audio subsystem, and bindings for graphics, input, and audio playback for various situations.

There are three builds for the firmware:

• Host build. For this, make sure you have the SDL2 development libraries installed and run make in the esp32/components/emu folder. You should get an emu binary using that. Use lshift, rshift, F1 and enter to control the emulator.
• ESP32 build for ESP-Wrover-Kit This needs a wrover with >=8MiB of flash (and >=2MiB of psram). Use idf.py set-target esp32 to select this and build and flash using standard esp-idf procedures. You need buttons to control these, for start, plunger, left flipper and right flipper respectively, connect buttons from GPIO 14, 13, 15 and 12 to ground. Audio signal comes out of GPIO26. Note that the game does not run at full frame rate on an ESP32 as the code is not optimized for that chip.
• ESP32S3 on custom PCB. This needs the pcbs from the pcb/ and pcb-backbox-large/ fabricated and assembled. Use idf.py set-target esp32s3 and build and flash according to standard esp-idf procedures.

Note that the ESP32 and ESP32-S3 targets also need the Pinball Fantasies data files flashed; the Unix build simply needs them to exist in the data directory. Details and helpers for obtaining these files is in the data/README.md file. There is an example script for flashing in esp32/flashdata.sh, but it may need modifying for your particular setup.

Case

There is a case design (made in OpenSCAD) in the case subdirectory. Note that the measures are mostly what works on my 3d-printer; you may need to print this, see if it fits, then print again to get a working case.

The case parts are held together by two m3 screws fitting in two 4x5mm brass screw thread inserts. I simply super-glued the inserts in place.

PCB

There are three folders with Kicad PCBs: pcb, pcb-backboard and pcb-backboard-large. pcb contains the main PCB which fits under the main playfield LCD. pcb-backboard-large contains the PCB I used for the final backboard, it interfaces with a 2.3" 320x240 LCD. pcb-backboard is a previous iteration of this; it has an 1.5" 240x240 LCD on it; it is included for reference only.

Note: You must use an ESP32-S3 module that has 2 or more megabyte of QUAD PSRAM onboard. A module with octal PSRAM (or octal flash) will not function, as it needs GPIOs that are used for other things.

Components

Most of the components are indicated on the PCBs, but some are connected using JST-PH or JST-XH connectors. Here's a short list of what goes where:

• J2: Speaker. I used a 4 ohm, 1.5W speaker from a laptop I had around.
• J3: Connected to an 10uF MLCC SMD cap used as the plunger sensor. The plunger mechanics physically hit this cap when slamming back. See article on how that works.
• J4: LiIon/LiPo battery. I used a generic 1000mAh, 3.7V cell I had around.
• J5: Horizontal and vertical linear haptic actuators. These actuators are spare parts for a Huawei Mate 30 Pro.
• J6: Flipper and start buttons. These are a 4*5.6 HD11 microswitch each. Note that if you use something else, you may need to change the case model to make them fit.