Hi Pini,

I like your willingness in creating such an option, but I 'm a bit critic about the real market interest and result.
Why I'm telling you that?
Because I did the same for Zaccaria pinballs, I have produced a full set of PCBs for all Zaccaria Generations with which you can modify your original displays and you can buy them from me via Ebay or other sources.
20150904_191652_(resized).jpg

You find an example here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/new-product-zaccaria-led-displays

Where is the problem?
For a single display to modify I estimate 1h work in order to remove few resistors and create the 5v jumper and so on...
When you consider the economical investment, then you add on top that result is aesthetically not perfect, on a term of power consumption not the best, I'm not sure that this would be the best choice.
From my position I can tell you that I sold few of them but of course Zaccaria market potentials is not the same as Bally.

The PCB for the Bally 7 digits is more or less the same I made for Zaccaria because 7 digits display used the same Beckmann gas display.

Now I add something more, after producing the modification kits I produced the full led displays which are plug & play, nicely finished, with new features, brightness control, etc. etc. and there I found some important market interest, because not everyone has all that time to spend in applying modifications on 5 different boards.

Finally I exploited my experience with led displays and I built my first prototype for Bally/Stern and here you can see the Candidate Release of a new Bally LED display.

Why I'm saying all of this? Because I think you produce very nice tools and you have to keep doing that, but I'm scared you're putting a bit too many energies on this projects which comes after tons of LED displays for Bally available on the market and from all kind of prices. There are more or less 5 different producers for the same display model.

You were thinking of 100$ for a 5 displays kit, I don't know if with orange or red led displays.
You can find new led displays with orange leds from 30€/piece already assembled and ready to use.
As someone said before "Why would I do all this work to save few $$" ???
The new ones have also brightness regulation and low power consumption.
I think therefore that in order to gather market interest, the price of your kit should be much lower and justify the work needed and the missing new features.

Please take this post as my honest opinion and suggestion to you and not as a try to criticize your work.

Good luck for all your work
Gianfri

20160213_100918_(resized).jpg

Could someone explain me how to activate email notifications on new replies? I could not find the option

Let's start from the point that we did exactly the same work, you for Bally and me for Zaccaria. We both wanted to recycle the old boards and that's just nice and green attitude.
This comes certainly from Leon's Borré researches from Belgium who already 10y ago produced the first LED modification guides for all the Pinball marchines (Bally, Zaccaria, etc so on).
You find the Bally project here:
http://home.scarlet.be/~cv006274/ledbal/eled.htm

The question is correct and the answer is that if you take them in kit (non assembled) price is even lower but the main point is that on Bally market the difference between a complete display and the mod kit is smaller.

As I told you, but I will not publish any link to commercial websites unless you want it on private message, you can find new Bally Led Orange fully assembled and with brightness regulation displays as of 27,9€/piece and a full 5 displays set for 135€ (already assembled).
I cannot tell you more about unassembled kit but I'm sure you will agree that with the unassembled ones you'd get closer even if not as cheap as the modification kits.
That's why on my opinion the margins are too small but that's just an opinion and opinions have their objective limits.

Regarding Wolffpac, I must admit I don't like the final result therefore I'm not referring to this one in particular even if is one of the cheapest on the market but complex.

I'm not going to context your estimation in time, but for doing the Zaccaria ones, if you add resistors, jumpers, led to solder on PCB etc other small things you need between 45min and 1h. If you add on top of that that on Bally you also need to solder all the wirings from the PCB to the main board (I haven't understood if you also need to replace transistors) I don't think you're going for 20 mins.

Aesthetisc, yes, you're right, it's going to appear more or less the same, only the very expensive ones from rottendogs or xpin have special led digits with the funny comma on it.

For the power, when I tested it on my prototype, I had a bit less than 100mA per display, which is way more lower than 200 or 300mA. I'll test again with the new Release Canddate and let you know. Here you have a challenge
Zaccaria have 5A regulator which is really big, you can really play araound with it, Bally I don't know but it should be as you said 3A which leaves a bit less margins.

Btw, go haed, I don't want to stop you from doing this, I just want to warn you about some weak points I have learned from my direct experience.

Regards
Gianfri

that's my conversion kit for Beckmann Zaccaria board:
20150903_004931_(resized).jpg

and yes, you're right, we did almost the same things

Hi pini,

first of all thanks for your nice words, I never tought you were copying my PCB and I 'm really surprised, like you, that we finally had the same idea. (Swear you didn't!!!)
Just one thing, I have produced the convertion kits in order to have them compatible with both soutions which was a challenge because you can use all of the conversion PBCs (they are 4 for the full Zaccaria family) either in the original modified boards or on the new electronic board I have developed.

The 7 digits PCB uses pins instead of wires because the original Beckmann module was soldered like that, there are no holes for the display leads on the 7 digits Zaccaria board, therefore I had to reproduce the way it was from factory.

Coming back to the Bally, sorry if I couldn't post it before but I was out all the day and now I have some more time since here in Europe it's 10PM.
Google was your friend and you found the right one, pinball.center.
I agree with you that the price is extremely competitive and it's funny how they made the comma out from the standard led display, but I like it and it's on my optinion much closer than the xpin or rottendog or pinled products
Btw, you can agree that the market is extremely saturated by those LED displays and I'm crazy enough to enter the same market with a new project for 6 and 7 digits.
But to be clear, I'm doing it for fun and hobby, not as a full business.

I will now go to my hobby desk and measure the consumption of the display in order to have a confirmation

talk to you soon.

You're finally right! As soon as you recover your investment then the rest is just fun, I agree.

They used initially the Valvo ZM1550 2 digits module in their 6 and 8 digits displays, then moved for a short period to the Beckmann 7 digits for only 5 different games and then back to 8 digits but from Philips (I think) with a new electronic board before trying the led display on their last machine before ending their activity.

Here you see my 7 digits display on both original and new electronic board:
20160305_003104_(resized).jpg
as you can see the pins are soldered like that only on the original board, the other board uses a different socket and the display has both options.

I have just tested and the new led display is between 40 and 70mA, depending if full brightness or not, with all led on and at 8 position which I think is very good.

PS
btw the most important thing is: how can I activare email notifications on new added posts?

You're quick!

One question, it looks ike you're using 0.8" 20mm width led digits, right?
Have you tried the 18.6mm width? They should better fit together and respect the 7 digits aspect. (6 digits do not have this problem because you have enough space in between)

I fully understand you and I know how much time and money I spent in testing led digits samples before finding the good compromise price/aspect wise.

I agree that your project matches more the real comma than the others on the market right now and I confirm that last year I got a proposal for a new digit mould for ONLY 1000$
They didn't specify how many I had to buy btw
For the MOQ 1000 pieces is just the starting level.

My amber digits for Zaccaria have been customized for the colour but of course I would never invest in a new mould. Doesn't make sense because nobody would pay a led display 20% more only for that!

Regarding the size I think that the original displays are more on 0,7" than 0,8, the problem is that led digit 0,7" doesn't exist. We should go into partnership and produce 0,7" led displays

Something I haven't understood, why are you looking for white?

I like the idea of the pads!

I forgot to thank for the answer and I have the next question, is white or gel led display the same?

well, you can always suggest how to do and let brave people do it themselves because if you have to sxplode the budget for details then you really risk that the interest will be killed by the reality of the final price

ok, perfect!

You're mad man!

I know a guy who knows a guy who would be interested in buying some memory testing tools... the problem is that it is not part of your own products therefore you cannot apply discount on those Pity!!!

Well, finally there are going to be several options for those pinball machines.

The green pini's attitude, recycling old display boards and transforming them into led displays.
and
The (5 displays set) full led display boards from a starting price of 150$ up to 250$ (depending on what you're looking for as finishing options)

I think it's really reasonable and you finally have the choice.

On the "machines" selling point of view, my opinion is that you shouldn't replace the displays to led on a selling price point of view but more on your personal desire, therefore you should not count on that, when you like you spend for what you like, then we all probably know that we will never really get money back from all the hours we spend to repair, restore and maintain those machines.

I think the main difference between modifying an old one or buying a new led one is on the complexity of the mods and on the final result. (moneywise as well)

We are all waiting for the show, to see what is going to be.

I have developped the same thing for Zaccaria, I know that there is some work to do as you would do anyway when assembling a new one but with Zaccaria I didn't really sell a lot of mods kits, probably also because the market is not the same, Bally has much much more machines around the world than Zaccaria.

Very good man!
the more you go the more it looks like my 7 digits project for Zaccaria

even the single pin right angle strip

Pricing looks ok and it seems you have thought about all it is needed for a good final result.

Is it possible to place the additional resistor on the LEDs PCB? even for a second release of the PCB... it's an idea...

Yes, I confirm that there are now tons of full led displays available

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/-interest-check-led-display-for-ballystern#post-3067895

ebay.com link: itm

And as I said previously the price difference is really tiny but I respect the green aspect of Wayne's project.

Just quickly say that I don't know how much you evaluate your spare time, but if I save 30min per display with a new one which uses the same mounting style than the classic ones and minimum 2 hours per set it could still justify the 20-30$ difference if you don't have all this spare time. I'm paid 45$ per working hour (and have so many pinball machines to restore yet) so it's still winning spending more to spend less time on removing and soldering transistors.
IMHO

You have all my respect for this because I fully understand you, sometimes it's just hours and hours to fix only the aspect, dimensions and little details that people do not see but which can make the final product very actractive and nice.

Every time you write I can see your motivation and your research in details.

I hope you'll finally have a success story on that more than mine on Zaccaria since I clearly see the difference between people going for the full display compared to the number of modification kits I have sold

Just to confirm what ForceFlow said, I can still like the new displays with same style but when I see such displays with that kind of innovative cheap design then I clearly say no, because you're just modifying the all head pinball structure.
PS those displays use a cheap led digit which doesn't even respect the beckmann width.

That's just enough to motivate Wayne to go on and finish this product, I can only wish Zaccaria fans would love to do the same but it looks like we do not have enough time to do everything therefore sometimes we sacrifice something.

Something is sure, I would not ask someone to bring my old pinballs to life otherwise I would loose the fun of doing it

I'm constantly amazed when I see how much you can go into details, you really passionate in what you do and I really admire you on that.

I'm also concerned about details in the different layouts I have developped but you win with no doubts.

Nice pictures and nice results for all those kits.

Must admit that I would not hesitate with blue filters for the same reasons you explained:

- less blinding when on
- either when on or off you do not see the unused segments

congratz!

Try to put some foam strip on the upper side of the led module in order to block the light coming from above.

It will be even better!

Free bump!

Can I participate?

I was reading your idea and I think is going to be a bit difficult...
I explain why I think like that.
I'm already activating the comma on my displays using the C&E segments, the problem is that the digits are multiplexed and at the moment you get the C&E segments activated on digit 5 you are not powering digit 4 therefore even trying to connect the logic output from the compination of C&E to the comma of digit 4 you'll not light it up.

The only option I see it the have a memory status which stores the C&E condition while powering digit 5 and gives it the result to the comma pin only when this memory circuit gets the power signal from digit 4... funny for a personal project but is this effort worth the result?

Let me know if I'm mistaken

Addendum:
I was thinking while brushing my tooth and an easy solution would be to have an external led for the comma which would be powered by the common anode or catode of digit 5 but would be installed between digit 3 and 4
Acceptable solution?

Very nice work Wayne, you confirm how precise and accurate you are in your work, congratz!

I maybe can answer for him, parallel gets to almost the same values as directly replacing them but saves you quite lot of time in removing them. You don't need to desolder, just solder on the bottom and you get the same result. Very clever and clean I must admit

Right, but still a good option for unexperienced people with no desoldering tools.

I don't have the pictures with me but I would show you one ZAC modified board of a customer of mine, a total desaster with missing pads everywhere, the paraller solution can be helpful to avoid this

Hey Wayne, you're amazing

I understand your point and agree on the sums you made to get to the final price.

It's funny to see how you can compress the number of components we put in the same set of displays

DB8169_new.jpg