TL;DR at the bottom.

It is inevitable the chase lights on DE Star Trek and Hook will eventually fail. There have been some companies who have dipped their toes into making a replacement, but none have succeeded due to the labor-intensiveness of painstakingly recreating the original design. I am in search of a simpler solution while also bullet-proofing the lights using LEDs.

Here is a little background on the original design thanks to @patofnaud:

o DE uses 12VDC incandescent rope light containing 3 strands of lights and 1 common 12VDC power in both games.
o To supply power to the rope they take 12VDC off of the power supply CN6 pin 3 and feed the common line
o Then they 'ground' the other side of the bulbs through a unique 'chaser module' mounted in the head.
o The chaser is a simple bit of logic that grounds one side on the lamp chain as dictated by the CPU.
o The feed for these 3 'grounds' off the CPU are basically repurposed drive signals to the 'alpha-numeric display'.

Even though both machines are DMD, the CPU still has the logic and capability to drive an old plasma alpha-numeric display and DE took advantage of this unused logic.

All the CPU does to create the illusion of a 'chase' is to start repeating 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,etc,,,,,

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I reached out to Swainer80 who has been able to successfully replace the lights with LEDs using this method of tying each bulb back into the hot line, similar to the original design:

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TL;DR - My question is this:

Is it not possible to drop the current for the entire strand of bulbs at one time with a single resistor coming from the hot line? Since all you're doing is lighting each strand in its entirety anyway in sequence, wouldn't this eliminate a lot of troublesome soldering to the hot line and require fewer wires in general?

I have a basic understanding of electronics. Am I way off base here?

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Thank you for your fast reply! On a DE Star Trek, we're talking about 4 LEDs (5mm) on each strand.

There are 4 bulbs on each strand with 3 total strands. Each bulb is about 1.5 inches apart, so we're talking about 18 inches.

On a Star Trek there are actually 2 of these complete "ropes", but they operate independently from each other.

I don't think anything like that will work since the system is designed on 3 grounds that fire in sequence.

Isn't that how the original does it? Like 3 strands of parallel lamps? The problem there is that we're talking about making numerous precise cuts and solder jobs on 22 gauge wire. It's extremely tedious, so I'm trying to minimize the difficulty while safely achieving the same effect.

They are zip tied to either side of the main ramp from the entrance in the middle til about the flashers on the sides.

Edit: Not my picture. I'm not at home, so I borrowed this one from another thread. These are not working either.

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I found this article that says the voltage to an LED series has to be, at minimum, the combined forward voltage of all the bulbs.

https://www.ledsupply.com/blog/wiring-leds-correctly-series-parallel-circuits-explained/

I'm using these bulbs, which have a forward voltage of roughly 3V (according to the answered questions):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MYYUS2R/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00

Do I even need the resistor if 4 bulbs per strand at roughly 3V are running on 12V of hot power? Are there any heat/safety/board concerns for not limiting the voltage?

This goes way over my head. I have pretty much zero coding experience, although I understand the basics. I'm looking for an everyday-man solution.

Ahh thank you. I wasn't aware of that. I guess it won't pose any issues?

I guess I will give the series method a try without any resistors. Maybe do one strand and leave it on in test mode for about 30 minutes to make sure there aren't any issues? What are my chances of blowing the board doing that? I'm still a noob here to the electronics scene and don't want to ruin anything.

Apparently this is a bad idea. After some research, I've discovered LEDs are more sensitive to current than voltage. I can't hook LEDs up to the unregulated 12v line safely. I work at a university and reached out to one of the instructors here who might be able to help me calculate what resistor I need to convert from incandescent in parallel to an LED series, which is apparently what I'm trying to do here.

Sorry - I forgot about this thread. I was actually able to successfully recreate the lights with LEDs in parallel. It looks amazing. As others have mentioned, it's a pain the the rear but totally doable. This made the game burst into the moder era and fixed the short I was having in one of the strands. Thankfully I got this done before blowing the board.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/star-trek-25th-data-east-club/page/6#post-4955800

I posted everything I learned over in the DEST club thread. There are a couple of things I would do differently but this can be done in a weekend pretty cheaply. It's all in the post. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions.

Excellent! It's about time someone with better electronics skills than me took on this project.

Now that at least we know it's possible, the real issue becomes finding the nylon tubing for those who need a complete replacement. I have found some places online that make similar products but do not expect to find an exact match at this point. Finding something with similar transparency also seems to be a problem. Most of what I see online is either too clear or too opaque. On top of that, the tubing usually comes in long rolls that can get pretty expensive.

Yeah I was wondering about that too. It would be cool to program in some light shows for attract mode. Don't know if you have that capability but that would be awesome to see because the LEDs will be able to handle the continuous on time much better than the incandescents, which I'm guessing is why they left it off in the first place.

That looks pretty close but maybe not quite as dark. Post a picture when you get it in so we can see what it looks like. The main concern is being able to see all the insulated wiring with the LEDs. This was much less of an issue with the original tubing because the wires were thin metal that blended in fairly well.

I never thought about searching for fuel line, but this one looks a little darker.

ebay.com link: Fuel Line 10 Feet Blue Super Premium Quality 1 4 ID 3 8 OD