Summer 2017 Course Guide

Thanks!

Many thanks to the nine students in the SAMS 2017 Pinball Lab for their great work, and many thanks to our great TA for all her support. The students developed an innovative two-player pinball game concept centered on head-to-head play with ‘Portal’ tunnels between the two boards. This choice drove the entire design, requiring steeply tilted playfields, new time-based game logic with multi-player multi-ball scoring, and the introduction of ‘sabotage’ pop bumpers and spinners directly controlled by the opponent. Not all details came together within the four-week design and build phase, but the students learned a great deal and produced an excellent prototype.

Welcome

Please note: this site is from a previous course iteration and is no longer updated.

Welcome to the SAMS 2017 electronics lab: “Engineering a Pinball Machine.” This is the starting page for the course guide, including the syllabus, assignments, and reference materials.

Contents

• 1. Summer 2017 Syllabus
  • 1.1. Course Description
  • 1.2. Project Description
  • 1.3. Course Goals
  • 1.4. Course Resources
  • 1.5. Policies
  • 1.6. Calendar
• 2. Exercises
  • 2.1. Elementary Electronics
  • 2.2. Arduino IDE and Programming
  • 2.3. Arduino with Electronics
  • 2.4. Signals and Time
• 3. Sample Arduino Sketches
  • 3.1. SoftBlink1 Arduino Sketch
  • 3.2. SoftBlink2 Arduino Sketch
  • 3.3. ReadSwitchInput Arduino Sketch
  • 3.4. SensorFade Arduino Sketch
  • 3.5. ServoSweep Arduino Sketch
  • 3.6. Blink Arduino Sketch
  • 3.7. Fade Arduino Sketch
  • 3.8. SoundDemo Arduino Sketch
  • 3.9. WheelDrive Arduino Sketch
  • 3.10. EventLoopDemo Arduino Sketch
  • 3.11. MusicSequenceDemo Arduino Sketch
  • 3.12. PinballLogic Arduino Sketch
  • 3.13. PinballGame Arduino Sketch
• 4. Topic Area Guides
  • 4.1. Basic Circuits
  • 4.2. Physical Computation with the Arduino
  • 4.3. Mechanical Behavior
  • 4.4. Computation and Behavior
• 5. Technical Resources
  • 5.1. Pinball Parts and Datasheets
  • 5.2. Arduino Libraries
  • 5.3. Pinball Arduino Shield
• 6. Reference Resources
  • 6.1. Pinball Resources Online
  • 6.2. Pinball and Marble Machine Videos
• 7. Log Book
  • 7.1. Day 1: (Jul 5) Welcome!
  • 7.2. Day 2: (Jul 6) Resistive Circuits
  • 7.3. Day 3: (Jul 7) Analog to Digital
  • 7.4. Day 4: (Jul 11) Review and Actuators
  • 7.5. Day 5: (Jul 12) Actuators and C++
  • 7.6. Day 6: (Jul 13) One Input One Output
  • 7.7. Day 7: (Jul 14) Field Trip to Kickback Cafe
  • 7.8. Day 8: (Jul 18) Laser Cutting
  • 7.9. Day 9: (Jul 19) Game Theory
  • 7.10. Day 10: (Jul 20) Specialization
  • 7.11. Day 11: (Jul 21) The Crunch Begins
  • 7.12. Day 12: (Jul 25) Working at Half-Scale
  • 7.13. Day 13: (Jul 26) Moving toward Full-Scale
  • 7.14. Day 14: (Jul 27) Full-Scale Board
  • 7.15. Day 15: (Jul 28) Posing More Questions
  • 7.16. Day 16: (Aug 1) Full Production
  • 7.17. Day 17: (Aug 2) The Reckoning
  • 7.18. Day 18: (Aug 3) Revising
  • 7.19. Day 19: (Aug 4)
  • 7.20. Day 20: (Aug 8) Negotiated Consensus, then Panic, Panic, Panic
  • 7.21. Day 21: (Aug 9)
  • 7.22. Day 22: (Aug 10) Last Minute Triage
  • 7.23. Day 23: (Aug 11) Symposium

Links

This course is affiliated with the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology (IDeATe) program at Carnegie Mellon University and makes use of the IDeATe@Hunt Collaborative Making Facility in the lower level of Hunt Library.