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2.6 Ton Pinball Machine
nmoog writes "Heres something you don't see everyday - The Southtyrol-game is an 11 metre, 2.6 tonne pinball "style" machine. Its intention? 'Provide an ironic and entertaining demonstration of how the advent of tourism shaped the landscape and economic habits in the small Italian province of Southtyrol.' And powered by Linux to boot. Um, as well."
But a great way to snag tourists, just think of your favorite Putt Putt Golf place; Peter Pan in Austin.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Before it gets /.'ed, I mirrored it.
http://www.schaefer.nu/southtyrolgame/
Does it run Windows .NET framework, Compact Edition?
But at "11 metres long" and with "16 user operated levers", not to mention two steps going from one side to the other, multiball is going to suck.
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
You need a major hernia operation.
Considering there's 7 megs of movies on the page, it might get /.'ed pretty quick :) so:
Southtyrol-game, powered by Linux
Clicca qui per la versione italiana di questa pagina
Merano - Italy, September, 24 2003.
Today was the official presentation of the Southtyrol-game.
The game is one of the worlds largest hand carved pinball style game machines. (Candidate for the Guinness World Records).
It weighs 2.6 tons, is 11 metres long, 2.6 metres high, has 16 user operated levers, 72 metres of pathways for ball travel, 33 moving scenes,
37 electric motors, 22 sensors and 16 audio speakers distributed over the entire game.
It took about one year to build the game.
The Southtyrol-game is located at the Touriseum, a museum dedicated to the history of tourism in the province of Southtyrol, which is located in Italy at the border with Austria.
The intent of the game is to provide an ironic and entertaining demonstration of how the advent of tourism shaped the landscape and economic habbits in the small Italian province of Southtyrol
What does a massive 2.6 ton wooden game have to do with Linux?
The audio system is powered by Linux!
There are dozens of motors and sensors that are operated by an industrial controller which is linked to the PC
with a serial cable. Click here for a simple diagram of how it works.
Everytime a ball passes sensors which are embedded in the pathways, the controller unit
animates a nearby object by turning on the related motor and simultaneously sends the sensor number
that was triggered through a serial cable.
That way the PC knows which audio samples it must trigger and route to the various speakers located on the
game board.
The requirements that make a linux based PC solution more appropriate than dedicated sound modules includes:
- low cost of multiple input and output soundcards
- flexibility in controlling customized samples, trigger times, volumes, sample lengths, playback orders, assignment to arbitrary channels, etc
- capability to play large samples at 44.1Khz and 16bit (CD quality).
With 512MB of ram and a 40GB hard disk (sw-raid1) drive the computer meets all these requirements.
The PC is just a standard Athlon box, for the audio we use the M-Audio Delta 1010 cards and for the audio API
we use ALSA.
Aditionally the PC stores on hard disk all the events (time stamped) that were triggered by the passing of balls.
That way we can evaluate usage patterns of the game, eg what sections people like most or what sections are harder
to reach.
Example movies of the game in action
(all movies in DIVX format, sorry for the bad video and audio quality, I recorded them using a digital camera with a builtin mic
that does only low quality mjpeg AVIs which were later converted to DIVX thanks to mencoder).
1) movie1.avi (1.6MB)
In this movie the ball enters into a scene where a deer and a hunter hidden in the forest. The hunter emerges from his hiding place in the ground to shoot the deer. You hear the gun shot which is followed by applause.
2) movie2.avi (1.3MB)
In this scene the ball passes near a farm where it causes the cows to move and triggers the sounds of animals like roosters, cats, etc.
3) movie3.avi (700KB)
Here, as the ball passes a busy road, you see trucks traveling along the roadway and hear the sounds of various vehicles.
4) movie4.avi (1.6MB)
In this footage the ball rolls into an Apres ski which is an igloo shaped bar located near the ski slopes. You hear people shakin booty to the disco music.
5) movie5.avi (1.5MB)
In this movie the ball travels past a flock of noisy sheep which, not by coincidence, are very much like the herds of tourists that populate the ski resorts.
Authors:
Teo Mahlknecht: Woodcarving, mechanics
Benno Senoner: Audio system powered by Linux (audio software development, hardware setup and optimization)
Otto Vinatzer: industrial controller
About other 10-12 people like electricians, carpenters etc contributed to make the game a reality.
If you have questions, need more informations just contact us.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
There's NO tilting this bitch.
Sunny Dubey
Teo: Hey benno putting those large pictures and divx movies on the site was a great idea! ...and you still put all those pictures and videos on the site?
Benno: Yes, now the world can see how cool this thing is
Teo: Hmm, the server seems a little slow
Benno: Oh, it looks like we've been posted on slashdot, I expected as much, seeing as we are using linux
Teo:
Benno: Yep
Teo: *SLAP!*
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
This is one of the only jokes on slashdot that has made me laugh, and you mod it down? I know the poster is an anonymous bastard, but come on....think about the joke.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
talk about getting your quarter's worth.
"In this movie the ball travels past a flock of noisy sheep which, not by coincidence, are very much like the herds of tourists that populate the ski resorts."
Doesn't sound like the tourists are wanted, strange considering the game is "located at the Touriseum, a museum dedicated to the history of tourism in the province of Southtyrol". When I hit the ball do I hear "Tourists suck!" and "Tourists go home!"?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
can it handle a 2.6Gb slashdotting? I don't think so.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
but does it support Ogg?
Not so long ago, before the 'torists' came the population of Southtyrol were poor, probably didn't know what day of the week it was, but self sufficient.
then they came, with prommise of all the great things to come, but now the inhabitants of Southtyrol are over run by forign invaders and will never be able to return to there peacefull way of life.
Multiball activated.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Balls of Steel or Big Brass Balls
Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
"Your 2.6 tonne art installation is not complete until it has Linux doing something unexpectedly funky in it."
2.6 tonne pinball "style" machine
It's obviously based on "Longhorn"
Anybody have an idea as to what the "industrial controller" is? I'd love a device like that which I could plug into the serial port and read sensors.
This site has been very usefull to me.
http://www.aaroncake.net/circuits/index.asp
Well, I suppose the original poster should have stated that the audio was powered by Linux. ;)
Plus, if the audio were powered by Windows, then it might very well exclaim a rather loud and annoying "YOU'VE GOT MAIL" the first time somone hit the AOL partner bumper... :P
Very interesting, but how does one go about 'bumping' a 2.6 ton pinball machine? ;)
- - Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand. - -
Can a pinball "style" machine be played by sense of smell?
Tcl my Pico! There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
That's the Horta with little trees clued to it's back.
Seriously, it looks nice an all, but pinball to me always has had a basic format, board, thingies to make the ball do stuff, flippers, hole in bottom.
That thing lacks the essential qualities of a pinball machine. It's closer to Pachinko in my opinion....
Small or big, /.
Which is more important to you?
Learn something new.
Actually, a lot more is powered by Linux that that. The sensors you speak of trigger events on the Linux machine so that it plays the correct sound and can log the event. Then the Linux machine can be used to analyze playing habits, difficulties, etc. It's a very good implementation I'd say.
Linux doesn't have to do everything for it to be an impressive application of the software. He used what was best for each job and interfaced all of it together.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
The Touriseum, eh? A museum dedicated to tourism.
That's kind of like a book about people who read, or a movie portraying people watching movies.
Who would go to a tourist attraction, which is dedicated to proving how tourist attractions ruined the way of life for that place? Someone in search of the elusive "one hand clapping" sound, maybe.
...
A troll. Oh well. I'll bite:
It isn't because Italy is shaped like a boot. It's becaue it boots off of linux.
**goes for the life vest as Karma goes down the drain.**
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
'cause it's either 5730 pounds, or 5824 pounds, or 5200 pounds.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Pinball meats miniture golf!!!
"Most interesting how often you humans seem to obtain that which you do not want" -Spock
Ever since I was a young boy,
I've played the silver ball.
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all.
But I ain't seen nothing like it
In any amusement hall...
That two point six ton machine
Sure ain't no damn pin ball !
Horrible quick parody of "The Who"s song Pinball Wizard.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Logging the event is hardly a 'lot' more than just playing them.
:)
It's a nice use of Linux, but an industrial controller does the hard work.
I do approve of it and guess that if it were running windows that after a while of running all you'd here is the standard windows 'ding' over and over due to an error...
a Beowulf cluster of these?
You thought it, but only I had the courage to say it.
This phrase really grates on my nerves. Game machines, PVRs, PDAs, etc, are not powered by Linux. They're powered by electricity. They run Linux among other software.
And while we're on the subject of word misusage -- Slashdot is for nerds, not geeks. Geeks are sideshow performers that do entertain people by doing disgusting things. Technophilic misfits are nerds. It's right there on the Slashdot logo ("News for Nerds"), but people persistently refer to nerds as "geeks" in the postings.
Wow... that thing is long... and huge! And so many levers! I mean, could you imagine how nuts it would be to play this thing singleplayer if you got a multiball combo?
Sounds like exercise to me. Wait... I don't like exercise! But it's also pinball! Oh, it's just not fair!
http://mediagoblin.org/
One beer ? ... That's like 30 metric beers, eh ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Oh wait...nevermind.
"Heres something you don't see everyday - The Southtyrol-game is an 11 metre, 2.6 tonne pinball "style" machine."
Mirrored Story:
The game is one of the worlds largest hand carved pinball style game machines. (Candidate for the Guinness World Records).
It weighs 2.6 tons,
So does it weigh
2.6tonne(SI); 2,600kg (5,730lbs)? or
2.6ton(US); 5,200lbs (2,360kg)? or
2.6ton(UK); 5,820lbs (2,640kg)?
Maybe we can get this in units of stones or VW beetles?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Did you look at the pictures?
It looks like Jabba the Hutt attempting intercourse with Shelob the Spider.
Reminds me of the time in HS once upon a time when we'd go to the local "Lamp Post Pizza" where they had a pinball machine. Bring along a hard drive magnet, and play as long as you want on a quarter. The people who worked there were cool and as long as we ordered food, they thought it was a pretty cool "hack".
:-D. HD magnets are nice and strong and does the trick quite nicely.)
Anyone else knows any cool pinball tricks?
-=- Terence
(For those who can't see how this trick works: The pinball is a steel ball bearing. So, plop the magnet down at the bottom near the pit and when you loose, you just drag the ball back up and keep playing
In this movie the ball enters into a scene where a deer and a hunter hidden in the forest. The hunter emerges from his hiding place in the ground to shoot the deer. You hear the gun shot which is followed by applause.
Before you ask... yes I enjoy eating tasty animals..
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
1. Find a popular thing
2. Construct a giant-sized version of it locally
3. ???
4. Profit
One Aussie small town managed to build
their BIG fruit or vegetable spin-off
up-side-down... so they featured it as
being a "more natural" form of the thing.
"If you can't fix it, Feature it!"
G Weinberg's Secrets of Consulting
mirror
The guiness book of world record being,,,, the biggest waste of time ever?
What is slashdot?
Oh my god! I can't believe I never thought to try that. --As Tesla once said, "The answer was so simple I almost overlooked it."
You are my new hero.
Remember those super cool tables? The Star Trek TNG, Indiana Jones and Star Wars tables? I seem to recall the glass being rather far away from the game surface on those. . . Oh well. Those games were more than worth the coinage! My fave was the Indy table.
With best Sean Connery accent. . . "And this is how we say 'Goodnight' in German!" -Followed by fist against jaw noise. Ka-Pow!
Sigh. My geek side comes out to play. Nothing truly cool has happened since those days. Except perhaps the Fellowship of the Rings extended DVD, and Miyazaki's Spirited Away.
Everything else is simply pale when compared to a silver pinball going up a time-sensitive ramp.
-FL
...to imagine a beowulf cluster of these.
And no it didn't say
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
"..And powered by Linux to boot. Um, as well."
Hmmm, I guess Linux isn't on the ass end of gaming after all. Just the really weird and obscure end of it...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
the same kind of people who invented the 2 stroke kick start vibrator... RS dynamo hummmm....
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The molded interactive landscape is a beautiful quaint metaphor to use for this purpose - sort of drawing its influences from a grab bag of model train sets, folk sculpture and Advent Calendars. Most of all I'm glad they opted for something tactile rather than a 3d computer model; this will impress children in particular long after they've forgotten one more computer screen (and that's who you want historical representations to impress - the young ones - otherwise why bother?). In its sprawling size and interactivity, it reminds me of the legendary gadgets and contraptions that I used to mess around with as a kid at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry - back in the 60s, the coolest nerd playground in the midwest.
Interesting tidbit: The largest machine ever to be mass produced was Atari's Hercules. It was 83" (211 cm) tall, 41" (103 cm) wide, and 93" (236 cm) deep. Weighed a hefty 275 lbs. Not quite the monster in the article, but it was mass produced and used a ball the size of a cue ball.
Uh karma, bah! scew karma!
The industrial controller does not do that much in fact. Basically simple logic operations like
if(sensor1==ON AND sensor2==OFF) then start motor 2 for 5 secs
etc
We could have powered the game entirely by Linux by using multi I/O cards that can drive relays and sensors, but the automation control was already assigned to an other firm when I came into play and suggested a Linux box for doing the audio stuff.
The artist (a friend of mine, we live in the same town) is excited the flexibility and power of Linux and has alredy in mind to build more weird linux powered wooden sculptures, this time linux doing the automation stuff too.
Benno Senoner
Had you read the page then you would have discovered that the game is an ironic and joking way to describe tourism in the province. The truth is that during winter the slopes and lifts are really such overcrowded that it seems like being in the middle of a herd of sheeps. This is not to speak negatively about turists. ;-)
I think a bit of humourism in life does not hurt, otherwise we will just all degrade boring droids with no soul.
Benno Senoner
Where Tom Hanks became really TALL and rented a SPACIOUS apartment with HEAVY pinball games.
Being a developer and enthusiast of linux audio, I admit it it is not something exceptional. Just a multi channel sample player driven by the serial port. But it is quite demanding in terms of resources.
;-) .... good luck in finding drivers for 24 bit multi I/O audio cards)
we must be able to access about 300MByte of CD quality samples with low latency ( 10msec) and be able to play 16 simultaneous audio clips with virtually no delay.
The "audio server" software I wrote fires up about 4 threads, 2 for controlling the audio cards, 1 for monitoring the serial input and one thread that can comunicate with an external GUI where the operator can add/remove samples, edit parameters and asssign them to the various actions.
The box runs X-Window when the operator needs the GUI, but normally linux boots in text mode to save RAM resources.
The event logging on hard disk is done using lower priority threads so that it does not interfere with audio playback.
So tell me how to do all this stuff with a 386 with DOS, kinda hopeless eh ?
(plus
Could we have implemented it by using a Windows Box ?
Yes but why spend additional $$ for Windows licenses, bitch about instabilities, need to run the GUI all the time, binary sound card drivers issues, need to buy development tools like compilers etc. (no sorry, I do not want to use cygwin on Windows).
Benno Senoner
South Tyrol is only a mere geographical expression.
They are only good for their Wafer Candies and because they host an Oktoberfest even if they are in Italy.
+ + + +
Ok, ok, I love South Tyrol (even if I am not a Tyrolean).
"I am slashbot, hear me roar!"
It sounds like a good idea. but I wasn't terribly impressed with the site. I was hoping more for an 80s style pinball, perhaps with a 80lb steel ball bearing for the pinball. You know, something that could smash fingers and crack timbers.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Congratulations to the builders.
There is a great European tradition of mechanical devices like this, and it's good it is being kept up so creatively. Not to knock Disney, but some of these creations have a wonderful, slightly kitsch, homegrown quality that is lightyears from Hollywood production values. For people who like them, a great place to visit used to be St. Croix in the Swiss Jura. I haven't been there recently and don't know if the factory tours are still going, but the music boxes and the automata are geek paradise. Just the tiny machine tools that made the tiny screws were awesome. And if you wonder whether modern kids like this kind of stuff, their jaws drop. The only sounds to be heard during the automata demonstration were the demonstrator explaining in French, and a kind French visitor simultanously translating into English for the non-French speakers. Nearby is a museum of automata, which shows what some people got up to before home computing.
Other amazing things in the same tradition are the Christmas cribs on Malta and Gozo, some of which may also be running on Linux by now. The only problem in gaining a proper appreciation is fighting your way past German tourists with video cameras.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Of course, this flipper has been inspired by a 15 year old machine called the Tourismus Flipper, to be seen on permanent exhibition in the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne. Only half a ton, but still Guiness-worthy in its time :-) Here are some pictures.
They have to send a mountain rescue team into the game..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Pinball
in GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUSegmentation fault
Actually, in Italy, some tourists nare NOT wanted. Italy has a problem with ignorant, littering, loud, obnoxious tourists. The kind who sit on church steps in shorts and tshirts dropping mcdonalds litter beside them.
there is much press on the matter.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/955768/posts
http://www.american.edu/TED/VENICE.HTM
I'll do this all on a 386 running DOS. For far more time and effort than you spent on it. If linux can use the sound cards, then I can find the specs. A ISA-PCI bridge can be build by any electrical engineer bored enough to do it. Programing it isn't a big deal.
Time however is a big deal. This entire project was done in one year. Working full time I estimate I could impliment the computer programing parts on a 386 in 2 years. I wouldn't have to impliment many things that linux does, but I would end up re-implimenting a lot of linux in some form. My schedualer would be a lot easier to write, interupts sends an event in the sound queue, and the io queue. Process sound queue, then IO queue, and if any time is left, check for keyboard input. (Note, writting a nice GUI adds 2 years)
The 386 would be io bound more than anything, but given enough memory there should be enough power there.
2.6 ton pinball machine... damn... I wonder what size tokens it takes?
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
... then you might want to read Philip K Dick's "Return Match." Then stop and think whether you want to play an alien pinball machine :-)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Subtle humour is wasted on these pages, Benno.