(Topic ID: 98807)
Linked Games
Iron Man
Stern, 2010-
TRON: Legacy (Pro)
Stern, 2011
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Black Forest, CO
Great effort . And many seem to really like the effect. But I must add that I could just keep my opinion to my self however ........
I find that bright LED's in the back box really cause bad glare on the playfield glass . It makes the Art look great but glare overall causes diminishing return. Now I did not read all the post . Can a dimmer be added to really lower the lumens of the bright LED's ??? Peace
Quoted from RobKnapp:Great effort . And many seem to really like the effect. But I must add that I could just keep my opinion to my self however ........
I find that bright LED's in the back box really cause bad glare on the playfield glass . It makes the Art look great but glare overall causes diminishing return. Now I did not read all the post . Can a dimmer be added to really lower the lumens of the bright LED's ??? Peace
Well, my LED lightbox for the translite was a test. I did 5 rows of 300 Daylight LED's per meter. Way too bright...that's why I wanted the dimmer. And now, it works, and there is minimal glare, because I turned it way down. If I was to do it again, I'd use no more than 150 LED's per meter and probably 4 rows instead of 5.
Quoted from rippleman:Well, my LED lightbox for the translite was a test. I did 5 rows of 300 Daylight LED's per meter. Way too bright...that's why I wanted the dimmer. And now, it works, and there is minimal glare, because I turned it way down. If I was to do it again, I'd use no more than 150 LED's per meter and probably 4 rows instead of 5.
I only put 4 rows on LotR because they were so bright. . .I even covered parts of the LED strips to keep the dark areas dark. . . worked well.
2 months later
Linz
Quoted from kapsreiter:anyone installed this in a SPIKE pin ?
i want to install it in a GB pin
any infos, never seen a spike inside
Spike uses a totally different board and all the modules are run off it.
I would say it's possible,, but the location where it connects to is certainly not the same.
Quoted from cosmokramer:came up with this for my IMVE...added a bit more white after this pic was taken...
006_(resized).jpg
used these in-line to be able to dim the light, as a bonus it has some flashing and fading features as well...
009_(resized).jpg
here is the before...
015_(resized).jpg
and after...
20160328_200724_(resized).jpg
Nice work! Looks really good!
Quoted from lyonsden:Nice work! Looks really good!
Thanks...your guide made it easy... next up Spiderman...
Adding a pinduino would be neat, but may be overkill. You can also tie directly into the flasher circuits to control standard RGB LED strips: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/how-to-make-flashers-or-under-cabinet-lighting-for-15-for-modern-sterns
The pinduino would let you control addressable LEDs if you wanted to have sweeping lighting effects or other such things. If anyone is interested in how to do that, just let me know.
Also, here is an IM setup I did tied to the flashers:
And the pinout and LED layout: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/how-to-make-flashers-or-under-cabinet-lighting-for-15-for-modern-sterns#post-2934820
Just wanted to share this, I did a cheaper version of this, for those not overly technical, might help some, cost me 9 bucks total..
I ordered a 10M roll of cool white led strips off Ebay for 9 shipped, took a regular piece of cardboard, cut it to fit with lips on the sides and bottom, than extended the wire from the strip to the 12V add on connector at the bottom right corner, I think it looks fantastic, and was easy, did not remove any hardware or buy anything special. Not trying to take away from the amazing job the original poster did by any means, just figured I would share. I have dimmers coming that mount in the cabinet, 2.49 each free shipping.. so I can adjust a little better.. here are my results. I also JUST finished doing it to Last action hero, just used the existing door, kept the flashers in and ran the strip, came out awesome too... starting LW3 now, gets rid of the "hot spots" and has a nice even glow to the back box, Going to do every game, wish I had not spent all that money on LED bulbs for the backboxes, I am going to have ALOT of extra non ghosting warm bulbs after this!
Napier
Quoted from lyonsden:I wanted to give an update to how to get the backbox to turn on and off with the GI. Hopefully this will help some people until I get a full tutorial written:
Circuit diagram of using GI circuit to control the LED backbox circuit. Let me know if you find any problems with this diagram. It is the first one I've made.
Did you have have ever problems with this circuit? Burning out transistors?
Transistors do not like large currents into its base. So normally you need to add a base resistor to limit the current. The exact value depends of the load current and the beta of the transistor. I would suggest start with resistor of 47ohm or 100ohm between the capacitor and the base (B) of the transistor.
Quoted from DDDwingmaster:Did you have have ever problems with this circuit? Burning out transistors?
Transistors do not like large currents into its base. So normally you need to add a base resistor to limit the current. The exact value depends of the load current and the beta of the transistor. I would suggest start with resistor of 47ohm or 100ohm between the capacitor and the base (B) of the transistor.
Your lineup is looking bright and outstanding! I'd like to see what you come up with if you start tying in flasher lights to those!
2 weeks later
1 month later
Leeds
I have made one of these for my WPT and it looks great. However I get a very slight flicker when the flipper buttons are pressed. I have RGB LED's running through a control box and powered from J11.
Any ideas to stop the flickering ?
The flickering is probably due to a voltage drop when a flipper is engaged. You can smooth that out by adding a capacitor to the backbox LEDs.
Quoted from stoptap:In parallel across the power supply to the LEDs ?
Yes -- something like:
Quoted from stoptap:Cool. Any idea on what rating capacitor to use. I have a few knocking around.
For one of the early ones that I did where it is powered by the GI through a bridge rectifier (so the translite shuts off with the GI during gameplay), I have a 35v-100u that I had lying around (came with a basic Arduino started set) which works quite well to smooth the signal and shit down the LEDs pretty quickly. I think you can get away with one that small, but may want to try a larger one if you have one handy.
Quoted from stoptap:It does look good though.
Agreed -- looks quite good. Can you get a picture with the translite off?
Also, I've been using these: ebay.com link: itm
5M of cool white 5050 60 LEDs/M for $6.50 I use 4-5 strips for a backbox.
2 months later
do someone with a good DIY idea on what we can do (and most surelly NOT do) with the SPIKE system ?
a pinball without animations/flashers in the backglass is so sad...
4 months later
Someone asked about the backboard for these. This is something I've been using from home depot: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Plaskolite-18-in-x-24-in-Corrugated-Plastic-Sheet-1TW1824A/202043334 Costs $6
Quoted from stoptap:Here you go. This was when I had a dud segment of LEDs which I have since changed.
How is this accomplished? (The blues and greens)? I get the whole RGB concept, but trying to figure out what this "continuous" strip looks like. Where is the 12V feed? I assume you have the controller set to "white" and at different points you're cutting and then resoldering the strip to get the different colors? Tough to see what's going on in the foreground (and potentially background) of this picture and a quick tutorial would be useful using this white, blue and green as an example.
Quoted from wxforecaster:How is this accomplished? (The blues and greens)? I get the whole RGB concept, but trying to figure out what this "continuous" strip looks like. Where is the 12V feed? I assume you have the controller set to "white" and at different points you're cutting and then resoldering the strip to get the different colors? Tough to see what's going on in the foreground (and potentially background) of this picture and a quick tutorial would be useful using this white, blue and green as an example.
You bridge some of the connectors to get a fixed colour. I will take a photo later.
Quoted from wxforecaster:How is this accomplished? (The blues and greens)? I get the whole RGB concept, but trying to figure out what this "continuous" strip looks like. Where is the 12V feed? I assume you have the controller set to "white" and at different points you're cutting and then resoldering the strip to get the different colors? Tough to see what's going on in the foreground (and potentially background) of this picture and a quick tutorial would be useful using this white, blue and green as an example.
This is how it is done.
Regular (multicolour) connection.
Green only connection.
4 wires connected back up so that the middle segments of the bottom row are multicolour.
And finally making the last segments on the bottom row permanently green.
Quoted from stoptap:This is how it is done.
Regular (multicolour) connection.Green only connection.
4 wires connected back up so that the middle segments of the bottom row are multicolour.
And finally making the last segments on the bottom row permanently green.
Awesome photos! Thanks for taking the time to post those.
I appreciate this. Going to experiment.
The work with the GI and flashers on Iron Man makes that one of the most awesome translites I've ever seen.
Stupid question. On the bottom row where you go from green back to white, where are the B and R wires coming from? Could you not just connect solder from the green across the B and R on the right side of that cut?
Quoted from wxforecaster:I appreciate this. Going to experiment.
The work with the GI and flashers on Iron Man makes that one of the most awesome translites I've ever seen.
Stupid question. On the bottom row where you go from green back to white, where are the B and R wires coming from? Could you not just connect solder from the green across the B and R on the right side of that cut?
No because you wouldn't have full colour range, just white. Remember the rest of the board retains the full colour changing capabilities. Only the bottom two segments are permanently green, the rest of it can be any colour I choose with the remote control. It can even fade between colours.
The B & R wires (3rd photo) are extensions from the two de-soldered wires in the second photo.
3 weeks later
I was inspired by this thread and so, I'm sharing my Star Trek Premium back box mod. It turned out awesome. Star Trek has interactive
LED's mounted in the back box. No fear, we have you covered. I was able to cut out the areas where the flashers are located and saved
the Enterprise! So I hope you will enjoy my video of the mod. In addition some photos of the cut outs to assist.
You tube Video:
Photos of the cut outs are attached.
Quoted from Barakawins1:I was inspired by this thread and so, I'm sharing my Star Trek Premium back box mod. It turned out awesome. Star Trek has interactive
LED's mounted in the back box. No fear, we have you covered. I was able to cut out the areas where the flashers are located and saved
the Enterprise! So I hope you will enjoy my video of the mod. In addition some photos of the cut outs to assist.
You tube Video:
» YouTube video
Photos of the cut outs are attached.
Looks fantastic! Nice work.
3 months later
Thank you for your guides lyonsden. I followed all three of yours and now have an LED panel with flashers that switches on and off with the game lights. I just finished it tonight and still have to work out a few bugs, but so far I am loving it. The one slight modification I made was putting the GI circuit switch in line between the cabinet power and a power splitter. That way all my light mods are switched with the games GI.
Anyone have any suggestions for which colors to tie together in which areas for POTC? Right now the entire panel is RGB, but the only color that looks good is white. The rest of the colors wash out all the art. I may solder all three colors together to get white, that way the undercab could still fade between colors as I play. The three flasher colors are red for the chest, green for the ship/explosion, and yellow for the pirates logo.
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