Bringing Internet connectivity to all pins (Article)

[Vhex]

I found this article on reddit, and thought some people here may find it interesting. It's a good read, and interesting to think of the possibilities of such a system. check it out here:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90369134/inside-the-race-to-finally-bring-pinball-into-the-internet-era

Likely wont be much of an impact for home pins. But the possibilities for pins in the wild are great, it could draw a lot of new people to the hobby. Arcades could have a big screen TV showing top scores of the day/week or pins currently being played.

Any sort of global high scores would depend a lot on the pins settings and condition, and thus taken with a large grain of salt. (at least they should be able to know if it was set to a 3 ball or 5 ball game)
I'd love to hear others thoughts on this.

 

[BMHouze]

I could see this being a bigger plus to the virtual pin market. As the variables could be standarized.
Could even be tapped to play similar to the linked NBA Fastbreak for head to head play.

 

[Vhex]

oh yeah, and along those lines you could have 'rival' barcades with some matching pins play against each other. very cool potential.

 

[eh97ac]

Pretty cool stuff and to have members of Silicone Valley and NASA involved. I had no idea that JSA on pinside was Jay adelson

 

[TrueJedi]

An interesting article. As someone who works for an IT company I've been shocked since entering this hobby how behind pins are with internet capabilities. From having to download and use a USB key for software updates to the lack of reporting back to the manufacture of error data. The whole concept mentioned in the article of operators not being aware of when a machine is down is key as well. It feels like the last 5 years pin manufacturers have been investing their time and money in trying to keep up with demand on titles and themes and less focused on technological advancement. Some of the rumours on Deeproot making less complicated mechanical parts (i.e. lack of soldering) is also key to sufficing the growing home use market who often are hesitant to even lift the playfield. I think the next 5 years ahead we are going to see a lot of improvements in pin technology both in the simplicity of mechanical design as well as leveraging a wide array of internet based opportunities. And this is needed if we want the hobby to grow and be more popular with the average home user.

 

[Chris Bardon]

The whole concept mentioned in the article of operators not being aware of when a machine is down is key as well

This makes a ton of sense. Networked scoring/multiplayer is all well and good, but ops should be able to know when a machine is down remotely. Do modern arcade/redemption games have this kind of reporting available?

 

[Fifty]

This makes a ton of sense. Networked scoring/multiplayer is all well and good, but ops should be able to know when a machine is down remotely. Do modern arcade/redemption games have this kind of reporting available?

If I was an operator I would definitely want to know when my machines were down. A broken machine isn't earning.

Stats for how many times the left/right flipper has flipped, pop bumpers popped, slings uh... shot. So that I could set a variable like 10,000 flips and alert would be sent to me prompting a flipper rebuild.

I would also want alerts when a machine has been tilted multiple times in a row, just so I could keep track of which machines are taking a beating. I'm sure every operator has one user out there that abuses specific pins and it would be nice to tighten up that tilt bob for them. Ha ha ha ha!

For new operators, I'm sure they'd want an alert every time a loonie was dropped into a new pin.