This is exactly how ALL of my projects turn out. In the beginning I say to myself “ It will be so easy, no worries”...by the end I’m ready to toss it off a cliff. Cheers for hanging in there.

Oh how you two brought back some memories for me...

The "matrix glitching" happened because the charged capacitors discharged themselves through the other rows/columns when not driven. When interacting with a matrix you need to use diodes in order to not feed back into it. On more complex systems it could even damage stuff - think 24V going into a 5V line.

Not trying to be Captain Safety here but there is some dangerously incorrect information at

This was awesome, and a great demonstration of the true obsessiveness of us pinball fanatics!

Now that you are using an Arduino, you might as well go all out and add a second Arduino. Take it all apart, put the solid state relays INSIDE of the stop lights with proper fusing, so that you are not running line voltage wires along the floor which is really dangerous. Connect the relays to Arduino #1. Then, open the pinball machine and mount the Arduino #2 inside of it, connected to the lighting matrix. Finally, run a low voltage serial cable from Arduino #1 to Arduino #2. Now the states of the lights can be detected inside of the pinball machine and transmitted to the stoplight, where the solid state relays are controlled. No more dangerous line voltage wires all over the place, no project box to hang off of the side of the machine, and you can use simple CAT5 cable to connect them together.

Lol, all that work to not see someone activate the red light.

I expected them to create a pass-through cable rather than solder on to the light board in the machine. Slightly more challenging, but leaves the machine intact.

Loving this series! Some of my favourite content on Tested :)

Great, just simple stuff but demonstrated so many things. I like how you really explain the basic stuff like relays, opto-something-thingies..

Seriously? We watched them tinker for 40 minutes, and then we only get to see two seconds of functionality?

This is the first time I've seen Jeremy really open up and get excited.

This is a great example of differing engineering professions smoothly collaborating to develop a full piece of hardware.

Seems easier to put the relays in the light and use the existing power and use an ethernet cable to get multiple pairs back to the pinball low voltage. It eliminates the box and big external high voltage lines. But what do I know. I do like the idea though. fun to watch.

Thanks so much for this! Getaway is one of my favorite games! It’s so simple but so rewarding! Great episode!

Loved your journey through that, lads. Glad you could make a clean 'getaway' eventually with a job well done!

Wonderful how this seemingly simple project turned out to be actually quite complex.

I have run into this problem with SSRs in the past. Traditional (zero crossing) SSRs can only be turned on or off when the AC frequency crosses zero. They are essentially an optoisolator with a TRIAC attached. If you feed them a switched frequency, they latch on until a zero cross; they are then turned back on before the zero cross, hence the erratic behavior. This is likely why the SSR seemed to work properly when attached to just the matrix, as the LED in the SSR indicates both the state of the optoisolator and the output of the SSR. When it latches, the LED will stay on until a zero cross sync when it can unlatch.

I really wish you guys showed more of playing the game at the end. (The stoplight switching) You only showed from green to yellow.

This all feels really improvised. They should have done recon to check how the machine works first. Also it makes more sense to put all high voltage in the light and run low voltage control wires (modular) from the pinball machine to the light. It is nice that they leave some of the mistakes in but it sucks that that is half the video =/