Janos Kiss, Otília Pasaréti and Romain Fontaine set up a pinball manufacturing company, called Team Pinball, in Cardiff a little over a year ago and have been quietly, and secretly, beavering away on their new machines. The game, based on a Mafia theme, features a 10.1″ LCD built into the back board:

Although most of the mechanical parts in the machine are standard and easily available (for easy replacement in case of breakdowns), the main ‘brain’ inside the machine is a Raspberry Pi 3!

Janos explains the electronics pictured above:

The platform is composed of a Raspberry Pi 3 and a single electronic board (R-board) with through-hole components. The Raspberry Pi 3 runs the game software and interfaces with the machine through the R-board. All the switches are direct switches, they are connected to the R-board and scanned a thousand times every second. The CPU will send responses to the solenoids in less than 3 milliseconds giving sharp feedback and a no-lag experience for the player. The game comes with full RGB LEDs which are also controlled by the CPU. A 12V PSU and a 48V transformer are used for the electronics and the solenoids respectively.

The software on the Pi is a custom Linux operating system called JOS, written in C++.

This next photo is just to show off the gorgeous underside of the playing area:

Machines are made to order by the Cardiff team and the suggested retail price of the units is £6,750, which isn’t bad considering the bespoke nature of the machines!

You can see the trailer for the machines below and read more over at Pinball News. The company’s website can be found here.

Thanks to Zak on Twitter for spotting this one!