Intercepting score signal...

[asevie]

Anyone here with electrical experience that could help me intercept the goal signal from the main board in the Chexx? Aside from becoming totally obsessed with buying a Chexx for my house, I've recently started playing around with a Raspeberry Pi computer. They're $30 and through the use of its GPIO port (General Purpose In/Out) you can build custom scripts to do just about anything. What I'm going to start with is intercepting the goal signal and having a script that runs continuously on the Pi play a horn mp3. (Pick your favorite... www.theawl.com/2011/04/the-nhls-goal-horns-in-order/5) I need to be able to intercept the 'score' signal from the wiring harness and activate some sort of switch that I can then monitor with the Pi. ( Service Manual Link - tinyurl.com/p3yvvs9 Page 20)

I've got this (link below) working but it's a physical switch, I need to replace the physical switch with a switch that is activated via the intercepted score signal...

www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/robot/buttons_and_switches/

If this works, I'll start intercepting all of the scoreboard information to make a larger, newer scoreboard that is displayed on a 4 or 5" LCD which I can mount on top of the dome. Long term plan is to mount several cameras in the dome that record a constant 5-10 second clip. When a goal is scored, I can take the previous 5 seconds or so and display it on the new scoreboard as a slow motion instant replay.

[JG]

I don't often get into all the technical aspects of the games or painting players, but I must commend all of you for some really cool insight on modifications to the games and all the really sweet paint jobs and game restorations things that have been posted here on chexxfan.com recently. Some truly amazing work and some awesome ideas on improving the game with goal modifications and neat sound effects. Love it! Keep us all updated on the stuff you all are doing, and BUBBLE ON!!!

John

[asevie]

So I've got the Raspberry Pi working, I'm using an alternate switch until I finish this and then I'll wire the Chexx goal detectors into the Pi. Basically a python script looks for the switch to trigger and then plays an mp3, in this case the NY Rangers goal horn. Sorry the sound is muffled, it's clear on my phone when I play it but for some reason when I upload it to Youtube the sound gets downsampled.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lxBfYUN1XI

[sjvogt]

Do you have this all up and running now? I am undertaking a similar project also using a Raspberry Pi. Any words of wisdom from your project?

Has anyone figured out a way to essentially replace the entire original CPU with just a Pi and some LED's? It would seem like it would be possible.