Pinball Modding Group
Beaming your Pinball to another dimension
Cactus Canyon Color Kit
Gaming Play Score: 9.8
DMDs are not able to generate multiple colors on the screen and they are technical restricted to only one, but with different degrees of brightness. The company ColorDMD is the one and only enterprise which broke that limitation in introducing a ColorDMD for lots of pinballs. This set consists of a display, mounting bracket, and a power cable. Eric also liked the idea of having a colored screen and he started his own Color project, where he tuned - in a very tricky way - his code and also a little bit the P-ROC framework and managed at the end to have 15 colors in his game. That was a huge and amazing success but the work did not end here. In the next step, he manually colorized each DMD picture and that took him a lot of time and was an incredible piece of work, but the result is just terrific ! Thanks to him, you can now enjoy the software in color, which is just great !
There is a big difference in the colorization of the dots between ColorDMD and Eric’s implementation : ColorDMD is colorizing the dots “on the fly” while Eric colorized each DMD image manually, which means that the dots are already colorized.
While Eric was working on the color project, we were searching for suitable TFTs and tested about 8 different screens till we found the best one. I informed Eric about what we´ve found and we created a full Plug´n´Play set and the “Cactus Canyon Color Kit” was born.
The Color Kit consists of the following components :
1x TFT monitor
1x TFT mounting set
5x screws
4x spacers
1x LCD controller board
1x long VGA or DVI cable
1x power supply
1x power adapter to be used with the internal power supply of your pinball
Installation time : 45 minutes
André Banderas
Cactus Canyon Beer Mug Mod
Gaming Play Score: 9.7
In my opinion, the original beer mug was always one of the gimmicks which just didn´t get a lot of attention into the game because there is no special effect when the ball is hitting it. So I wanted to change that, went to my team mate Domino and explained him my ideas :
1. The beer mug should have a LED inside
2. When hitting the beer mug, it should flash
So Domino took over that project and he started to develop a solution. The big problem was that you are simply not able to just drill a hole into the original mug and put a LED inside, especially because the rod is directly in the middle, so we needed to have another solution, and the only solution was to create a new beer mug which fulfills our requests. Domino created around 10 different mugs with different colors till we had the first prototype in a real beer color, which is yellow and NOT orange. He included a LED into his model and the cable went through the rod to the other end. Then we started our first test in the pinball and it was nice : the beer mug got a small impulse when you hit it...mmhh...but how could we realize the flash ? And I also wanted that the beer mug LED is always on with a low brightness and when you hit it, then the flash should follow...a hard package, so Domino started to develop a controller for it and that was a very complicated thing. After again some tests and killing some beer mugs, we finally reached our goal : lights on and the flash....but that was just a short flash...nothing big to mention, so I contacted Eric and told him about our idea. He liked that mod and started to inject some new code into his Cactus Canyon Continued software and sent us a modification. After again some tests and some code modifications we finally had our first finished beer mug mod and Eric got the first one surely for free. He mentioned it just as a side note on his homepage with the words : "Support for a lit Beer Mug toy : If you have, or make, a beer mug with an LED in it, you can wire it up to unused lamp position #85 on the switch matrix and it gets controlled by the game."...nothing about us...
This means that you are able to use our beer mug mod in the "Cactus Canyon Extended Edition" (CCEE) as well as in the "Cactus Canyon Continued" (CCC) software, but in our software, it gets some extra effects...
The Beer Mug Mod consists of the following components :
1x Beer Mug
1x Controller board
2x Laces
1x Jumper for use without P-ROC (instant-on with GI)
2x Isolation spacers
Installation time : around 20 minutes
André Banderas
Cactus Canyon Gaming Station (Standard / Deluxe)
Gaming Play Score: 9.9
When I heared about Erics great Cactus Canyon Continued project, I was fascinated about that because finally one man took care of the big problem of the pinball, running an unfinished software. So I bought a P-ROC board and tried to run the software, and that was a very tough exercise, especially under windows. The configuration took me some days but finally had all files and prerequisite software together and after lots of "asking-threads" in the pinballcontrollers forum, and dozens of new installations, I managed to run the software and was very happy. I ran the first code version with an UMPC with 768 MB RAM, which was enough for that time. After writing the great news of having a finished running system under windows in the forums, some guys asked me if I could also create a package for them and that was the starting shot of creating a complete Plug´n´Play set for all people who :
1. Do not have the time to search for the correct hardware
2. Do not have the time or knowledge to install a complete operating system and highly optimize it
3. Do not have the time to look for all the prerequiste software and install them in the correct order
4. Do not have the time to learn something about P-ROC and study how to install it
5. Do not always want to remember how to update the system
...and so on...so lots of reasons...
So I did this whole job and created the "Cactus Canyon Gaming Station ~ Standard Edition", a complete Plug´n´Play system, which includes everything what you need to run the software, but not only that : I also programmed under Windows the Control Center software - that´s my code and has nothing to do with Erics code - which will take control of the whole GamingStation and its main responsability is :
1. Checking for new code updates on the USB stick
2. Updates the system with a new code version
3. Gives the user feedback via the sound notification system (SNS) about actual actions in the system like "Update successfull"
4. Checks for new config files for python, sound files or new updates on the USB stick and applies them
5. Restarting the software, putting the system into hibernate or completely shuts down the system
6. Traps errors and restarts the system
7. Changes the difficulty of the pinball
8. Tells you which code version and which difficulty you are running
9. Controls the volume of your station
...and so on...In the package are also lots of additional stuff like :
1x Shuttle PC
1x Power adapter to use the internal power supply of the pinball
1x P-ROC Board
1x USB Stick
1x USB Remote Control
1x CC Collectors Card
1x CC Recovery CD
1x CC Compendium ring bind
1x Cactus Canyon Extended Edition software (CCEE)
I reference the first created gaming stations as Wave 1, so Wave 1 means that these are the first stations I created and it also means that the CC Control Center I programmed is also the first version. There was one very nice guy in wave 1, who asked me if I could create a "special" version for him with a high budget, and that was the development start of the "Cactus Canyon ~ Deluxe Edition". This version includes additional stuff like :
1x CC Gaming Station Deluxe using the ZOTAC ZBOX hardware (smaller, more power) and will be connected INSIDE the pinball. The presentation video is an old one so NO cables will leave your pinball !
1x P-ROC Board
1x Power adapter to use the internal power supply of the pinball
1x CC GUN Stick
1x CC Recovery Stick
1x USB Remote Control
1x CC Collectors Card
1x Photo Frame with Bad Guy
1x Cactus Canyon Treasure Map
1x Different compendium in color instead of b/w with more pictures and more detailed information about the system, mod section ect...
1x 2 different recovery options (Quick and FULL recovery)
1x Cactus Canyon Extended Edition (CCEE) software
Eric is also offering a system but with the following DISADVANTAGES :
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Running on Ubuntu
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No P-ROC board
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includes only the system, nothing else
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not plug´n´play since no P-ROC board is included
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no support for any mods except OUR beer mug mod
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It uses just the basic CCC code instead of our enhanced and bug-free CCEE code
You can contact him via his homepage.
I posted a lot of videos about the Gaming station project on YouTube and the 2 videos above are just 2 of a big collection, so please have a look at my YouTube channel if you would like to have even more information about the project.
Installation Time : 30 minutes
André Banderas
Cactus Canyon Fountain Topper
Gaming Play Score: 9.5
To get more ideas for the development of a toper for the Cactus Canyon, I visited with my family a western city in the area of Munich. We had a very nice day there and we had lots of fun. Arrived back home, I again looked a long time at my pinball and went through all the pictures I made from this trip and started to do a research on the internet after all things I got in my mind. Finally I found all the necessary components and bought them. A couple of days later, a big package arrived and I examined all the items. They just looked so nice and I knew that I found all the components I need for the first CC topper.
So I went to another team mate named Ronny and explained him my idea. He took all the figures and he nicely put all the items in a very nice way together ! Because I like playing around with LEDs, I bought at the beginning a stripe of warm-white LEDs, which I positioned in front of that topper to better see the figures...mhhh....but you always see in the movies that the cowboys ride at the end "into the sun" and I also wanted to have that effect, so I bought another stripe of fire-burning red LEDs and placed them at the back of the toper so that you now have a nice fire effect in the background...the topper is finished !! That was the topper I always had in my mind and it all begun with a study...:-)
That topper is also surely a plug´n´play topper, which means that you will get everything what you need to easily run it and consists of the following parts :
1x Cowboy figure
1x Indian Figure
1x Fountain with rotating wheel
1x RED LED stripe
1x Warm-white LED stripe
1x power plug to directly connect it into the power driver board
Sizes :
Length : ca. 54 cm
Width : ca. 26,5 cm
Height : ca. 27,5 cm
Installation Time : 5 minutes / Installation video
André Banderas
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