The FAST Pinball Cabinet I/O Board is now available

We are excited to announce that our Cabinet I/O board is now available for purchase! This is a special purpose I/O board designed for placement in the pinball cabinet itself (typically mounted on the left side near the front of the machine). This board handles I/O for all cabinet switches (flipper buttons, start button, tilt, etc.), as well as the coin door interface, a bill validator or ticket reader, low current drivers for LEDs (for the coin door and lighted buttons), a single high-current driver (typically for a knocker). It receives power via a dedicated header on the Playfield Interchange Board and also features a dedicated high-current 12V power output header for powering a shaker motor or other 12V devices in the cabinet.

Here's what this board looks like. It's the same size as the 3208 and 1616 I/O boards, but with a pretty different mix of connectors:

There are dedicated 13-pin headers for the "left", "right", and "coin door" switch banks, as well as a 13-pin header for the bill/card/ticket interface. Each of these headers has the necessary mix of switch inputs, low current drivers, digital outputs, and 12V and 5V power outputs.

There's also a standard high current driver (typically for a knocker, but could be whatever you want) and 6 low current drivers for LEDs for lighted buttons, coin reject LEDs, etc. There are also 2 digital outputs (both active low and active high) for controlling the enable signals for bill validators and card readers. (Note that some digital outputs and low current drivers are shared, there are 7 total available between the two types.)

Compatibility

The FAST Pinball Cabinet I/O board requires a Neuron Controller running firmware v2.13 or newer. It's not compatible with Nano controllers.

Note that with Neuron-controlled machines, there are no limitations to which switches control which drivers. You can have your flipper buttons connected to this Cabinet I/O Board while the flipper coils and EOS switches are connected to a different I/O Board under the playfield, and still get "quick response" hardware-controlled flippers.

Do you need to use this board?

The Cabinet I/O board is not required for a FAST Pinball modern machine. You can use a standard 3208, 1616, or 0804 I/O board for your cabinet switches and drivers. The Cabinet I/O board is essentially like a "2408" for your cabinet, with convenience features that make it a little easier to wire up your cabinet.

For example, here's the diagram (from the Cabinet I/O wiring guide) which shows how you'd use the combined "left" header for your cabinet's left side switches and buttons:

And here's a diagram from that same guide showing how you'd wire up the coin door:

And a bill validator:

We designed this board to be easy to wire, yet flexible enough for a variety of use cases. Happy pinballing!

Links

• Cabinet I/O Product Page
• Cabinet I/O Wiring Guide

Documentation Feedback? Requests? Confused?

Hi! I'm Brian, and I'm responsible for the documentation at FAST Pinball. If you have any feedback, requests, corrections, ideas, or any other thoughts about the docs, please let me know!

You can email me at brian@fastpinball.com. I maintain this site in my spare time, so there might be a week or so delay if you email me.

If you have a more pressing need, reach out to us via Slack, or email Aaron Davis.

Thanks!

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