Pinball, Lego style

I swear you can use lego's to make anything now-a-days.  Good god man, I bet you could use them to go to the moon if you wanted to.  Oh did you hear that they just found water on the moon? ah, but that's for another post.  Anyways, this thing is pretty neat.  It's a fully functional battle stati...err, pinball machine.  It already has it's own point system worked out, and it was built for the arcade game building challenge (hosted on the lego site?).


Designed by legothom

 This machine took me a long time to build and a long time to program. It uses:
- 1 nxt intelligen brick
- 2 nxt servo motors
- 2 nxt light sensors
- 1 nxt touch sensor
- 1 ris touch sensor + convertercable
- 1 powerfunctions battery box
- 1 powerfunctions light unit
- 1 powerfunctions m motor
- 1 powerfuntions convertercable
- 1 fiber optics element
- 1 9v mini motor

The balls I use are lego soccerballs because they are not heavy enough to press a touch sensor I used a motor to help them. I used that mechanism in the hole with the rocket on it, and at the hole where the ball rolls over pneumatic hoses. The last hole with the ufo on it uses a light sensor.
There are 3 ways to earn points:
- the hole with the rocket: +150 points
- the hole with the ufo: +100 points or +80 points and one extra ball
- the hole with the hoses: +300

Because it's really hard to get the ball in the hole with the hoses it gives you 300 points. You can see your points at the nxt's display, I used nxtRICedit to make big numbers. Sorry but I can't upload the files with the big numbers. There are also some light effects, I used the powerfunctions light unit to light the nxt's screen and for the light sensor in the ufo. And the last light sensor sees it if you lose a ball. I used the fiber optics element too but you can only see it really well if you play in a dark room. If you look at the pictures than you see three nxt motors because I wanted to let the third motor launch the extra balls automaticly and it did word, did but after some time it didn't work any more and I couldn't repare it. now it gives you just one more ball and you have to shoot it. I guess I used 5000 bricks for this pinball machine and it's weight is 4.7 kg. kg.

 

shown on lego.com