Quoted from parsonsaj:Thanks for the detailed response. I have found that the only way I can get the hinges to light up is to crank the potentiometer all the way down (or up, depending on how you want to say it). My testing has been with a bright LED flashlight shining directly on the optical sensor, so there's no room for doubt about the light being bright enough. If I back off on the potentiometer even a tiny bit, the green light on the board goes off and the hinge won't light up no matter how bright the light is shining on it.
We find it works better with light in a area them a spot light, such as an LED. Not sure why. We recommend putting the sensor in the back box, it has the most consistent on and off lighting there. We have these installed in many games here and when we were in New England, we installed a few for other vendors at the show. The most interesting was Tron. I (Dan) have done most installs of this product, but Chuck installed a set in a Tron for pinnovators.com. When Chuck installed it, he put the sensor next to the light on the coin door. When the game was on, the hinges turned on, when the game was turned off, that hinges turned off, done.
As the show went on, the coin door was open, the sensor dropped and worked differently. When the game was in normal play, the hinges were on, but during game play, the play field can go mainly dark. When that happened the hinges turned off. He asked us what was going on, and we showed him the pedometer and placed the sensor in a different location. Guess what? Different results. On Tron, the game has a lot of inserts that blink on and off, as those inserts blinked on and off, his hinges blinked on and off. I told him I could move the sensor and fix it. He told me no, he liked it like that, and that is how he left it.
Point being is we designed the relay to work off of light, which gives a lot of options. We suggest putting the sensor in the back box, but you can get many different results buy placing the sensor in different places. If you want more specific results like we got on Tron, play with it, and you may be able to get it, we will advertise just the main on and off.
The inverter works off of 12 volts, which also gives options. We designed the hinges to work off of a service outlet with a light sensor, because that is a universal fit for all games that has a service outlet and does not impact any game warranty. Because the hinges work off of 12 volt you do have custom install options. The mod takes less then 1 amp at 12 volt, and we will list more specific power consumption on our website.
I am not sure if it is posted, but we can do other color on hinge then what we list. Metallica is a good example, it looks good in a lot of different lights colors. We can custom do a hinge in your color for an additional $10, just send us a PM.