Yes it was a pain to assemble, but nice and functional once complete.
Basically i created the same circuit on a prototype board as wiring a resistor across every lamp socket. Made an extra wiring harness as a pass through and the PCB to load each individual line (60 X!). Picked up feature lamp bus at the rectifier board and crimped it into the backbox plug.
If you like to do things like this instead of buying the alltek or wiring across lamp sockets.
Quoted from L_satan:Wow. So much better than soldering 50 resistors to sockets!
Yeah... it got tedious as hell doing all the cramped lamp sockets on my gamatron. This probably takes more time to do overall, but is easily removable to put in a different game.
Ok, so im newish to the pinball scene and certainly to doing most wiring or board work. Can you explain what this does and/or why you need it? What is different about older stern games and modern ones that u can just swap a 555 bulb for a 555 base led with no wiring changes.
Sorry for the dumb questions
Neat! I saw a post describing this mod recently - http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/led-lights-in-bally-1978-ss-game-new-board-required. It's the same fix I had to do with the Lamp Driver Board Tester I sell in order to stop occasional flickering on the leds from happening with some SCRs. I had found an RGP post from years ago that mentioned adding parallel load resistors on the lamp sockets if using LEDs on classic Bally/Stern games and tried it out -- low and behold, the flickering went away.
It looked like (according to the post I linked) user "Pac-Fan" was perf-board prototyping a board for this he was going to sell. The post is over a year old though. I just contacted him to see if he's still working on it. If not, I may look into prototyping some real PCBs later this year when I have some more design time. I don't want to step on anyone's toes if something's already under development and don't have the extra time right now anyway, but if there are no plans by anyone else to do these they'd be a fairly quick design to have made up and would compliment some of the other Bally/Stern items I sell.
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Quoted from Rickwh:Ok, so im newish to the pinball scene and certainly to doing most wiring or board work. Can you explain what this does and/or why you need it? What is different about older stern games and modern ones that u can just swap a 555 bulb for a 555 base led with no wiring changes.
Sorry for the dumb questions
The way Classic Sterns (and Ballys) from the late 70's to early 80's strobed the feature lamp matrix causes LEDs to flicker badly. Soldering a a resistor across each lamp socket causes the flickering to disappear, but is time consuming. Alltek added these resistors to their lamp driver board so you can run incandescents or LEDs. But, if you are using original boards, and want LEDs, you have to introduce the resistor. This looks like a clean plug and play solution to avoid soldering individual resistors to each socket or buying a $100 Alltek board.
Basically what is going on is the SCR that gives the path to ground to light up the bulb needs a certain amount of current running through it to stay enabled. The LED does not pull enough current, so on every interupt cycle, the bulbs flicker. Adding the resistor in parallel, 470 ohms or so, loads up the SCR enough to stay latch and you get no flickering (well 120 times a second, but your eyes cant see that). I grabbed the feature lamp bus at rectifier J1 and ran a dedicated wire, with plug, up to the resistor pcb.
Someone take this idea and make printed PCBs. The PCB would be easy..., i am sure you can use resistor networks. Wiring harness might be a pain. I watched a Reds game on TV while i built the harness.
Shoot me a schematic! I need a project like this to push me into those last couple steps repairing the wave solder. And with the 3d printer arriving next week the standoffs shouldnt be a problem either
Quoted from HHaase:Shoot me a schematic! I need a project like this to push me into those last couple steps repairing the wave solder. And with the 3d printer arriving next week the standoffs shouldnt be a problem either
Hans, you might want to check with user Pac-Fan as I was. From the post it didn't seem like he was planning on building production PCBs, just looking at building on perf board and selling? So I'm thinking the option is there for someone else to go forth with it, but good to check anyway as to not duplicate efforts. I don't personally have time for this right now, probably would in a month or two.
Seems like it should be fairly easy to design. Shouldn't be a need for a wire harness, just plug-in piggy-back style board (Molex female socket) with some resistors and header for feature lamp bus. 3x plug-in piggyback boards take care of one game. Literally would take seconds to hook up, the only extra wires would be the single connection to each board for the feature lamp bus.
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Quoted from vid1900:Piggyback would be great, rather than soldering the resistor networks on the back of the driver board
Yep. Only thing I'd question is the SIP networks depending on what resistor value being used. I'd think if you can get away with 1k+ ohms to eliminate flicker then you'd be fine with 1/8 watt.. but would be good to calculate power draw just to be sure. Most SIP resistor networks are 1/8 watt.. maybe a few DIP-style that are 1/4 watt. That's why there's all the individual resistors on the Lamp Driver Board Tester I sell. I wanted more load on the SCRs to eliminate flicker first and foremost, but also had the benefit of testing the SCR with more load. I'm using 1-watt resistors, so plenty of head room. Kept the resistor value low enough that it would provide the load for weeding out some bad SCRs, but not such that the resistors got hot enough to fry an egg if the tester was left in the machine for a long while. 80 ohms = fry an egg VERY QUICK even with 1-watt resistors. Takes longer to build, but it was better to go that route than to have SIP networks burn up by cutting it close with wattage specs.
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Individual resistors are no problem. I have an axial trimmer / former and also a wave solder machine.... which is 95% ready to go into production. I could also go with DIP resistors as well, just for ease of assembly. Much easier to insert one IC than 8 resistors.... and I have have a few pairs of IC insertion pliers too.
-Hans
Someone with a alltek lamp driver board, get the resistance value off of it. Looks like they use SMT resistor networks. Probably 1/8w. I used some 470ohm 1/2w and 390ohm 1/4w, just because they where the first ones i found near the right value i had huge stocks of.
Quoted from HHaase:Individual resistors are no problem. I have an axial trimmer / former and also a wave solder machine.... which is 95% ready to go into production.
Yeah I was able to pick up an axial trimmer / lead formers fairly cheap -- looked like new in fact. It's very useful in some cases and not so much in others. I can see where it would be golden when wave soldering since you'd get the leads the right length, but personally I've found some resistors/diodes just as difficult to insert with their leads trimmed than without if not more so. So sometimes it seems to save time and other times not so much. Expensive piece of equipment brand new though, that's for sure.
Just placing the components in the board if using individual resistors would take a good amount of time. Something a wave soldering machine can't help out with there. Hopefully that isn't necessary with this board though. Still a wave soldering machine would be something very few people have in-house, so great office water cooler talk 
Well and great if you're doing volumes and volumes of boards to be able to sell wholesale to distributors.
Sounds like you're planning on moving forward with PCBs for this? I might play around with it some if I get some time over the next month or so but will contact you if I haven't heard/seen anything on it. Still waiting for a response from Pac-Fan.
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Should have the time to do the layouts over the weekend and get the board order in monday.
If SIP packs can work out, i would prefer that, would make it cleaner in appearance and easier to assemble.
On further reading of the thread I linked, it looks like Pac-Fan WAS looking into having PCBs fabricated and was shooting for sets of 3x PCBs for all the headers for under $30. If I was going to jump into this design I'd want to verify he wasn't planning on proceeding with the project.
Really it's the multi-board design to get rid of extra wire harnesses that's going to make it tough to offer a set of 3x boards for under $30. Those LDB headers have a lot of pins. If you do a single board you have the wire harness mess.. but save on PCB costs. If you do the piggyback boards each PCB has to be as long as the headers & then as wide as needed to fit the SIPs / piggyback header / female header and stand-offs -- all that starts adding up.
To play devils advocate, at $40-50 for a set of 3x assembled boards you start making the purchase of a new Alltek Lamp Driver Board seem attractive. Someone could buy an Alltek, sell the old board and be at almost the same place only with a brand new board in their machine. I think a DIY kit or bare board would make sense for this design.
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That's in the price range I was thinking as well, fully assembled and with wiring. To be honest I do think that the individual boards without the harness would by far be the money saver. Three individual PCB's will probably be the same amount of surface area as a single central board, and the price on the bare boards may even come out in favor of splitting it into three boards. Then when you factor in all the additional wire, connector housings, and pins... it adds up really fast. You also have to figure in physical mounting of the board.
I've got a pretty slick concept in my head already for it, to make the mounting quite easy and clean. But the family is begging for popcorn right now, and to watch a movie, so I'll have to work on it later.
-Hans
Ahhh, I know what I'll do.... I'll let the market decide, and do a kickstarted campaign for it.
Will need to do the layout and pricing study first, but that will still be done by the end of the weekend hopefully.
Anyway, back to that movie with the family.
I did something similar in my Gamatron. I mounted the resistor board under the PF and than ran a wire to each lamp socket i wanted to load up. Doing that i wasnt trying to solder a resistor to the lamp barrel and could use the physical connection of a wire the threading through the hole on the solder lug.
Layout went pretty fast for the 28 pin at J1 and J3, and the 23 pin for J2 will only take a few minutes tomorrow to knock out. As is usual, connectors are going to be the bigger driving factor in the price, but still came within estimates.MSRP would be $45 for the full set of 3 boards assembled. That would include molex headers, pins, wire to run between the boards. Bare boards I just need to figure out how to do the panelization for them to incorporate two different layouts in a single pallet. Once I have figured out I can figure out bare board pricing per set. With the new shopping cart on the website, I have been selling bare boards for a while.
MSRP would be $45 for the full set of 3 boards assembled. That would include molex headers, pins, wire to run between the boards. If this works for you guys, I could have these ready to sell by end of July without a problem.
-Hans
PCB's should be here in a week. Test sample or two heading out as soon as I can.
Pricing looks to be steady at where I placed it, bare boards I haven't figured out an MSRP on yet but will be pretty darned reasonable.
-Hans
Quoted from HHaase:PCB's should be here in a week. Test sample or two heading out as soon as I can.
Pricing looks to be steady at where I placed it, bare boards I haven't figured out an MSRP on yet but will be pretty darned reasonable.
-Hans
I might still make some of these up later this year -- or possibly even work something out with you on the bare boards? I did finally get a response from Pac-Fan and he seemed okay with other people making them since he wasn't able to find a cheap PCB fab, so that was good to see. If I think of something else I'd want to do with the design I'd be more inclined to make my own, but it wouldn't be until later this year anyway. So I'll see what yours look like and if it's no different than what I had in mind I'll be in contact
Direct fit, can use either bottom entry, right angle, or vertical connector to link with the driver board.
MSRP prices will be....
$45 for the assembled set of three.
$15 for the bare board set of three.
Wholesale pricing will be available as well
Sample boards shipping today from the board house. should be here Monday.
Quoted from HHaase:Direct fit, can use either bottom entry, right angle, or vertical connector to link with the driver board.
MSRP prices will be....
$45 for the assembled set of three.
$15 for the bare board set of three.
Wholesale pricing will be available as well
Sample boards shipping today from the board house. should be here Monday.
You may find you have to adjust board size of the 28-pin boards going to J1 & J3 -- spacing is pretty tight between those two headers.
You'd need to grab the feature lamp bus on the power supply board (rectifier) or on the backbox feature lamps. Driver board doesn't get that feature lamp bus AFAIK. If tagging onto backbox feature lamps, Alltek has you wrapping a pre-stripped wire around a braided wire on the backbox. Probably best to recommend soldering that wire instead of having it there loose, but just my opinion.
Hey all. Yeah, it was me that posted the thoughts on doing something as an inline-adapter in the other thread along with my prototype. I tried to find some reasonable prices for getting some fabbed, but nothing got me to my target price of $30 shipped, ready to install. (Meaning, I couldn't get the cost of goods down to less than $20 per set of boards not factoring in my time to solder everything in, take orders, ship product, payment fees to even make a tiny profit off them). If the rest of you who do this for a living can do so, more power to you, as I definitely don't have the time to spare to make the net $5 per set for the hour I would invest in each on average soldering, testing, accepting orders, packing, labelling, shipping.
The other problem was finding a "foolproof" way to have the buyer connect to the ground lead for the lamps without picking the wrong connection and blowing things up. That involved another board to interconnect through a AUX Driver board that was readily available on the back of the lamp board in the backbox of some games, but definitely not all. In which case I didn't have the time to research all of the possible permutations and along with selling my Bally game, and seeing others take this effort up, I quit exploring it.
However, oddly enough, I now have 4 OTHER early Stern/Bally pins that friends have got that are asking for the very same ability -- to put LEDs in without investing in the $100 board. So, looks like I have to hand build a few more of my prototypes or teach them how to do it and just inspect their work Or if they wait long enough, purchase it from you guys.
As I posted in the other thread, here was my prototype which worked great in a Bally Vector, and a circuit layout I started with but never completely finished. Good luck with your project!
Optimized (smallest fiberglass size) and with AuxExpander .156 passthru adaptor to get ground wire:
OptimizedAndAuxExpanderAdaptor.png
Rough design with prototype pics:
PCBLayouts.png
Installed.jpg
216331-i.jpg
216330-i.jpg
216329-i.jpg
216332-i.jpg
216334-i.jpg
216333-i.jpg
I already have a plan of attack if that spacing prooves a problem. The way the lauout is done, it would take me about 10 seconds per board to trim them down if needed. I just dont have a driver on-hand to verify that measurement. So i left a few options available just in case. That is one reason I only ordered 100 pcb sets this time.... Calculated risk.
Pac... The secret is high volume. Figure how many you can afford to make, double your budget, go into debt, and live on the cutting edge of going bankrupt. Its an exciting place to live in. But in all seriousness with things like this its hard to turn a profit unless you plan on 50-100 sets as your break even point. Parts standardization is critical to hit the magical quantities that makes it possible at all, but there is of course risk in that you need to hit those sales projections pretty regularly. Have a few bad sellers in a row, and it's game over. Lots of great ideas out there, but not always enough demand to make them possible.
Very cool to see this idea getting created.
I enjoy building stuff like seen in my original post, but the time involved soldering and crimping all those parts is time consuming. For what HHaase is charging, it is well worth it. Plus everyone loves LEDs... RIGHT! =D Just keep them out of the GI and Bally Chimers and we all good here.
Quoted from HHaase:Hey, i always say, cointaker frosted domes for inserts. Great match for incandescents. Its when people go too bright, and in GI on the playfield, that things can get unpleasant.
Ain't that the truth. Got some deep blue arrow inserts on my Quicksilver that are barely visible with incandescents. Then I put LEDs in them and they looked like little spotlights -- lit one tip of the inserts and that was it. So then I put a pair of flex LEDs in each arrow and shoved them way up inside and.........whoa! Yule blazers!
PCB's are here, parts arriving tomorrow. Samples going out for testing by the end of the week.
-Hans
First assembled set, almost. Got a part number wrong and have to re-order one of the resistor arrays for it. Also ends up I do have to trim the PCB's for clearance between the 28 pin headers. I'll trim as needed for this batch, next batch I'll just eliminate the extra headers.
Otherwise here's what they look like.
IMGP4474.JPGQuoted from HHaase:Also ends up I do have to trim the PCB's for clearance between the 28 pin headers. I'll trim as needed for this batch, next batch I'll just eliminate the extra headers.
So will the trimming cut one of the dual headers for the feature lamp bus off or will trimming the top of one board and bottom of the other board do it?
I had been thinking of changing the parallel resistors on the Bally/Stern Lamp Driver Board Tester I sell over to higher ohm SIPs a while back. Really I have those parallel resistors there to eliminate flicker on the tester's led bar graph display. The low ohm resistors have the benefit of adding some additional test-load to the SCRs, theoretically weeding out some bad SCRs that fail under load. Not sure how much the "closer-to-real-world" load on the SCRs really benefit things though. SIPs would make assembly go much faster & I could offer those at a better price then. I might go SIP and with the saved board space add the extra header & try a module led adapter / tester board later this year. I'd kind of want all of the boards the same size though to eliminate having to panelize or having a different design at J2. As long as the same size board fits at J1 & J3, a longer board at J2 should be okay.
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On the current batch, I'll have to trim one of the dual headers off of one board. The spacing basically puts the hole centers on top of each other. Next run I'll be able to make some shape changes and such so they can all be retained even if I don't populate them. For 95% of the people out there it won't be an issue at all, just a bit more wire... but I'll be including that anyway.
-Hans
Getting some great feedback already. A couple areas I need to substitute different parts for one reason or another, but so far the boards themselves are looking to be good to go. So I'll probably be opening the bare boards up for sale on Friday, once I have time to get the website updated.
-Hans
Quoted from barakandl:Adding the resistor in parallel, 470 ohms or so, loads up the SCR enough to stay latch and you get no flickering (well 120 times a second, but your eyes cant see that).
On The Mirror Universe; I still saw flickering with a 470ohm resistor on a handful of lamps. Just saying that some SCRs are more picky than others.
Quoted from Zitt:On The Mirror Universe; I still saw flickering with a 470ohm resistor on a handful of lamps. Just saying that some SCRs are more picky than others.
This is true! I have a few SCRs that latch at varies hold currents. Even more so between Bally and Stern, they used many different types of SCRs which probably have minor differences in what it takes to keep it latched. I guess you could call it a bad SCR. Most data sheets say the hold at 5 milliamp
I have swapped a few lamp drivers into my Nine Ball with my homemade board, and a few lamps still flicker every now and again which varies on based on lamp driver pcb.
Quoted from HHaase:Getting some great feedback already. A couple areas I need to substitute different parts for one reason or another, but so far the boards themselves are looking to be good to go. So I'll probably be opening the bare boards up for sale on Friday, once I have time to get the website updated.
-Hans
Can't wait. I will be ordering multiple boards for sure!
First run is sold out of bare boards. I have about 6 assembled sets each for Bally and stern, and one unassembled kit for bally. I won't be ordering more until the current run is sold out.
I completely forgot about this thread after Vid did his review thread and everybody seemed to gravitate to that one.
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