Zaccaria Stars Phoenix Opto Mods

[Homepin]

Tony from The Pinball Shed kindly donated a Zaccaria "Stars Phoenix" machine for us to use as our test bed in the development of our new Zac MPU replacement board. It was complete but needed a little tidying up with the usual lamps, rubbers etc.

Try as I might I simply couldn't get the three microswitches under three 'drop holes' at the top left of the playfield adjusted correctly. They are 'soft' type coin mech switches and the wire is bent at very peculiar angles so the ball trips the switch to register when it drops through the hole. I just couldn't make them work properly and so I gave up and decided to convert the switches into optos.

Here are the three switches in question and the second pic shows the odd bends in the trip wires (that just don't work properly).






So I designed up a couple of PC boards after breadboarding a prety simple circuit and mounted the boards in the plastic housing




I also included an orange LED that fires when the ball drops through - this serves as a quick and easy test of the opto and also (hopefully) might add a little to the effects during play. The orange LEDs are VERY bright and shine very well through the orange plastic. You can see the optos working and the orange LEDs working here:

Again a HUGE thankyou to Tony for his invaluable assistance with our Zac MPU project.

[ddstoys]

That is Awsome mike there have been a few times that an option like this would have been Awsome.  Are you planning on selling these or can you share the circuit

[Homepin]

The circuit is very simple and basic (and uses all common and cheap parts) - the main issue is the mechanical installation.

I will draw up the circuit and make it available no problem.

[goodolddays]

Nice work again there Mike 

[Homepin]

That is Awsome mike there have been a few times that an option like this would have been Awsome.  Are you planning on selling these or can you share the circuit

Here is the circuit for anyone interested. It shows a single I/R circuit and could pretty easily be adapted to suit any short range opto requirement - probably up to about 100mm span or more with some careful alignment and shrouding of the TX and RX LEDs. I have included a 5V regulator but it could just as easily be connected to the existing 5V rail (in my application I had 12V close by).

AMENDED: OK, so it was pointed out to me by an esteemed member of the Homepin team that although the circuit worked "in my application" it may not work in some others. So I have modded the output to make it universal using an optocoupler so it now 'should' work in any application. Revised schematic is below: