P-ROC

The P-ROC (Pinball - Remote Operations Controller) is a circuit board that enables a computer to control a pinball machine over USB.

  • Develop your pinball ruleset in the language of your choice on the PC.  The P-ROC hardware controls the drivers and reads the switch matrix for you, providing switch events as they occur.
    • Functionality verified in all 3 major operating systems (Windows, OS X, Linux)
  • Connect it to a power/driver system to control all of your game features. 
    • The P-ROC was designed as a drop-in replacement for the CPU board in the following generations of machines:
      • WPC
      • WPC-95
      • Stern SAM
      • Stern Whitestar
    • Custom machine designers, or those looking to enhance their existing machines, can interface the P-ROC to PinballControllers.com Driver Boards or custom control circuitry.
  • Use open source software developed for use with a P-ROC to get your homebrew pinball project off the ground quickly. A P-ROC can be used with existing pinball driver boards or those of your own design.
  • Control all of the elements on your machine:
    • 208 driver I/Os (for lamps, leds, coils, motors, etc)
      • Includes direct, matrixed, and multiplexed drivers to support a variety of hardware configurations.
    • 32 direct switches
    • 16x8 switch matrix
    • Dot Matrix Display (DMD)
    • Alphanumeric displays
    • Playfield features such as mini-DMDs, lamp arrays, multi-segment LEDs, etc
  • Configure switch–driver links in hardware to enable lightning fast reaction times where needed.
    • ie: flippers, slingshots, and jet bumpers
  • Use multiple DMD frame buffers to create smooth animations. Each frame supports up to 16 levels of brightness (colors).
  • Protect your machine again software crashes.  Watchdog timer logic shuts off drivers to protect your game when the P-ROC is not in communication with the PC/microprocessor-side software.
  • Optionally use an embedded controller, such as an Arduino prototyping board, for fully self-contained applications.
  • Combine a P-ROC with a driver board and power supply to create a complete programmable pinball system architecture.

Now you can implement custom game software!

The P-ROC communicates with a host PC over USB.   Your custom game software applications will run on the PC and use the P-ROC for control of the real-time machine related functions, such as switch monitoring, output driving, and DMD driving.  Therefore, the game application can implement the high level game management functions and leave the low level timing critical functions to the P-ROC, thereby eliminating any potential problems with bus latency or software reaction time.

Availability: in stock

Buy a P-ROC.

Regular price: $325

w/ WPC or WPC-95 mounting plate: $329

w/ Stern mounting plate: $339

Resources