For just video (or w/ separate keyboard/mouse), the Genki Shadowcast devices work really well.

- Stern Pinball (sternpinball.com) - Great, modern themes, biggest manufacturer. Recently released The Mandalorian, Godzilla, Foo Fighters, etc. Easiest by far to find to play and / or purchase via distributors.

- Jersey Jack Pinball (jerseyjackpinball.com) - Tend to be more collector quality machines. Recently released Guns n' Roses (developed with Slash), Toy Story 4, and the Godfather.

- Spooky Pinball (spookypinball.com) - Initially home brew pinball, built into much larger company. Releases include things like Rick & Morty, Halloween, Ultraman, and Scooby Doo.

- Chicago Gaming Company (chicago-gaming.com) - Involved in many things, but from a pinball standpoint, mostly have made remakes of popular 90's games with more modern hardware (Medieval Madness, Attack From Mars, Monster Bash, Cactus Canyon).

- Multimorphic (multimorphic.com) - Advanced pinball system, designed to allow changing of games in the cabinet (ie partial playfield swaps). Large screen built into playfield, ball tracking, etc. Games have been mostly original themes.

There are other smaller manufacturers as well (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pinball_manufacturer...) that have made games of various types.

Typically each manufacturer will release a given title, at typically 2-3 "trim" levels (ie, Stern calls these Pro / Premium / LE, Jersey Jack has called them Standard Edition, Limited Edition, Collectors Edition). Price and features go up with the trim level.

I loved my RX-8, but it was a pain in the rear. Switched to a WRX and got 50% better gas mileage, more power, more torque, and way more room. This of course bypassed the need to check / refill the oil every other fill up (aka, every 300-ish miles) all while trying desperately not to burn your hand.

For HDMI/DVI capture at this scale, the best option seems to be an FPGA based system. There are several boards available that have the necessary hardware but are expensive (relative to a 1-port IP-KVM), power hungry, or large (or all of the above.) The Digilent Zybo may have enough to pull it off (and has the ARM cores to boot) but is still a bit on the pricey / power hungry side. I'm hoping the new Snickerdoodle Zynq based boards will be able to do the job (with an add-on board)

Regarding using the Pi2, it might work, especially if it can be fed via the camera interface. The lack of USB-OTG (linux gadget support for KB / Mouse / Mass Storage) limits the usefulness somewhat.

I've been hopeful about the Beaglebone Black / X15 due to the USB-OTG and the tons of extra IO.

The other board of interest is the Dragonboard 410C - it can supposedly capture at 1080p60 (more than enough for the average system you'll stick a KVM on) but I'm not sure what that means explicitly (yet.) It does have USB-OTG (though it can't do USB Host / Device simultaneously.)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor...

Of course, time will tell...

Multimorphic - Offers the P3 pinball system integrating a full LCD panel with motion tracking into the playfield (as opposed to the backbox like JJ.) They also offer the P-ROC which allows replacing the CPU (a 6809/ASIC combo!) with a Spartan3 system allowing you to reprogram the rules on most 90's+ games.

Spooky Pinball - Ben Heck designed the America's Most Haunted machine, an "unlicensed" theme that is quite fun to play. I believe the first run was for 150 machines, with the next title to be announced in the near future.

Heighway Pinball - Manufacturer out of England with one title in production (Full Throttle, a motorbike theme) and are working on a licensed Alien themed pin.

There are a couple others including current and former game designers working on their own or with one of the manufacturers. This also says nothing of the pinball modding community, custom one-off games, etc.

EDIT: Completely forgot Planetary Pinball who is remaking late 90's pinball machines with modern electronics. First machine is Medieval Madness and is shipping now.

Originally the software and documentation was pretty sparse, but it has gotten drastically better over time. Biggest complaint about the printer is the cleanup of the parts, but once you have it down it's not a bad process.

Wish I had time to do more with it.

Example workflow - SQL Server, approx 1TB working set - putting it all on SSD (a RAID set of consumer level SSDs) basically doubled our operations per second. Modifying the algorithm a bit while still on the SSD gave 20x speed up.

2nd example - SQL Server, approx 10TB of RAID Prosumer SSD vs same amt of 15k SAS drives: SSD = 8x speedup.

3rd example - SSD as swap on linux operations - performance dropped by 10%. This mostly had to do with the SSD used and its role.

In other words - it's not a magic bullet but it can definitely buy you some breathing room.

Surgery part wasn't bad - felt a little ill during the process, but it was over quickly. Could read street signs on the way home which made my wife cry. The goggles were uncomfortable but not bad for the next day or so. Didn't need pills for pain - have had dryness off and on for at times since.

Again, absolutely best thing ever - have done rock climbing, martial arts, swimming, etc - things that were difficult with glasses (ie, they don't fall off your face anymore...)

Good luck - you'll love it...

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- Turn on a desklamp when I enter the room

- Remotely open my garage door without modifying the hardware

- Tell me the status of the sprinkler system

One good place to get ideas is look at a product that does something interesting, but you want it to do more. Examples from my own current project list:

- LED strips with a remote control that give the option of 16 colors. Modifying said controller to give me more colors (as the LEDs are RGB LEDs)

- Hacking a wireless power socket to not need the remote but be computer controlled.

If nothing else, pick up a copy of Make magazine and have fun...

https://www.sparkfun.com/search/results?term=xbee&what=p...

https://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=adasearch&q...