Quakertown, PA
I missed this originally, but am glad I found this thread. I would love LED's if they were not so harsh and "strobey". This might be just the thing!
Chris
(Topic ID: 29684)
Quoted from Baiter:How well does the board work with a mix of LED and incandescent?
Quoted from DCFAN:I believe Herg may have it set up that way in his LOTR. I am sure he will chime in either tonight or early tomorrow morning.
DCFAN is right, I do have a mix of incandescent and LED in my LOTR. The white and yellow inserts are incandescent, while the red, orange, and green inserts are LED. I think it looks great and keeps the charm of the "goldish" white incandescent bulbs. LOTR just looks too sterile with white LEDs in my opinion. The LEDs under the colored inserts gives them a bit more pop while reducing the heat and power draw of the game, and the OCD board keeps the LEDs from flickering like mad as well as allowing me to dim them to match the light output of the incandescent bulbs.
I also have one of Jay's "projected eye" Palantir mods, and since it is lit by an LED, it normally flickers. The OCD board smooths this out as well.
DCFAN has played my LOTR, so maybe he has a less biased opinion on how it looks and works.
Quoted from Aurich:The thread title is super obscure, I've read it before and still couldn't remember what it was before I clicked through again tonight.
Quoted from SilverUnicorn:I missed this originally, but am glad I found this thread. I would love LED's if they were not so harsh and "strobey". This might be just the thing!
Chris
Hmmm... I'm not really sure how to make it more obvious without feeling like I'm being pushy with it. I'll occasionally mention it in another thread if it fits the discussion, but I try to not spam the forums with it. I feel like there's a fine line between helping people who want to make their machines look better and cramming it in people's faces until they get sick of hearing about it. If you have ideas that could improve the thread topic without being preachy, I'm all ears.
Quoted from PINBELL:Will you be demonstrating these at Expo?
I don't plan to. I'd love to go, but I have an 18 month old son that would make something like that pretty difficult, especially since you really need at least one machine to be able to demo it properly. PT had one in a No Fear at Southern Pinball Festival back in November. I've also talked with a couple of other people about having one at various other shows, but it hasn't quite worked out.
Is there a limit to how many incandescents you can use with the board since they draw much more power?
Quoted from Crash:Is there a limit to how many incandescents you can use with the board since they draw much more power?
The board is designed to handle the draw of a machine full of incandescents, though you would be putting a little more stress on the connectors. It's not as big a deal with the lamp matrix as it would be with GI since the GI connectors are notoriously overloaded to begin with.
Using it without adding a good number of LEDs would be a bit silly, however.
Avatar LE is still using the lamp matrix, correct? The newer LE/Premium games with LEDs pre-installed are not compatible, but if I remember correctly, Avatar LE was prior to the change.
Quoted from herg:Avatar LE is still using the lamp matrix, correct? The newer LE/Premium games with LEDs pre-installed are not compatible, but if I remember correctly, Avatar LE was prior to the change.
Yes Avatar LE is prior to the change. No LEDs were put in by STERN. They are actual 47/555 LED bulbs I put in.
Isn't TPF a spring show? That would give us plenty of time to plan it. 
I've seen a number of non-Stern pre-orders come recently, so I'm going to go ahead with another run of those. I would estimate early September for them to be ready.
Quoted from herg:Hmmm... I'm not really sure how to make it more obvious without feeling like I'm being pushy with it. I'll occasionally mention it in another thread if it fits the discussion, but I try to not spam the forums with it. I feel like there's a fine line between helping people who want to make their machines look better and cramming it in people's faces until they get sick of hearing about it. If you have ideas that could improve the thread topic without being preachy, I'm all ears.
New thread title seems like a big improvement to me!
You know working in the shop on these games got me thinking. Once miniature incandescents are phased out I strongly believe this board will be pivotal in furthering the use of LEDs. What else are we going to do? Spend a premium on "non ghosting" "no flicker" LEDs that only work so-so? Continue to get headaches? This is hands-down the best aftermarket board since LED displays.
Quoted from herg:DCFAN has played my LOTR, so maybe he has a less biased opinion on how it looks and works.
The LEDs blended in so well with the incandescent I had to question you whether you had LEDs in the LOTR except that I noticed the pop the colored inserts that were LEDs had. It looked great. I think I only played a half game on LOTR since I have one at home, but I can say that with the LED controller there is no strobing or ghosting whatsoever whether it is all LED or a mix.
Sorry, but I don't have any plans for Stern LE machines. They use a completely different interface, so there wouldn't be much if any design reuse.
2 weeks later
Quoted from herg:I just wanted to share a video that a friend created. Thanks, akm.
That's terrific. A subtle effect, until you "see" it. I have one of your Data East boards waiting patiently for my GNR rebuild - can't wait!
Quoted from Keebler:It actually seems much more subtle in the videos... in person it's a very noticeable improvement, it made my Tron look way better!
Yes, it's really something that needs to be seen in person. It's great and I'm glad I've spent the time to perform and tweak the upgrade on my machine. It was well worth it!
Montech
A slow motion camera would definitely be able to show the difference better. The output from LED OCD is running at 250 Hz, so there's no way a 30 fps (or even 60 fps) video is going to show it properly. In super slow motion, however, your persistence of vision would not be able to "connect the dots", so both with and without OCD are probably going to look flickery. At a minimum, it would be cool to see.
Unfortunately, I think the only way to truly experience it is to see it in person.
This may have been covered in this thread but I just found it and wasn't excited about reading four pages. Can this handle the light intensity differences of insert the way incandescents can. For example on Spiderman, when you start a mode you get a half lit insert for 2x scoring and if you finish the mode you get a full lit insert for 3x scoring. Can this device give the dim effect of an insert at the 2x scoring level?
Yes, I have done specific testing on a Spider-Man, and there's a video and description of the process to configure the board earlier in this thread:
Of course, as mentioned in the past few posts, video doesn't really adequately capture what it looks like in person, but it should give you the basic idea.
I think certain games, if done right, really benefit from LEDs, while others don't. For example, I think SM is supposed to look red+white+blue not the washed out red+yellow+dull blue that incadescents give it. As a result I did a full LED conversion on it and now I have a perfect red+white+blue game. The drawback was ghosting and sharp on/off's.
So I finally installed one of these boards on SM and it works as advertised, eliminating all ghosting and removes the sharp on/off edges from the LEDs. I'd argue that this board plus the cheapest LEDs you can find ($0.26) is cheaper and better looking than the most expensive LED kit on the market. YMMV
Quoted from tilt-master:Just ordered mine for my LOTR, I can't wait!
I want to know how yours turns out. Unlike SM I think LOTR looks better with slightly yellow lighting to match all the brass hardware... fortunately there are LEDs that would do the trick, but I haven't yet seen anyone put LEDs in a LOTR that does it justice by retaining all the gold twinkling organic lighting that incadescents give it.
Quoted from Baiter:I want to know how yours turns out. Unlike SM I think LOTR looks better with slightly yellow lighting to match all the brass hardware... fortunately there are LEDs that would do the trick, but I haven't yet seen anyone put LEDs in a LOTR that does it justice by retaining all the gold twinkling organic lighting that incadescents give it.
If you find white LEDs that look good in LOTR, I'd like to know as well. Mine is a bit of a hybrid; half LED and half incandescent because I didn't like the color that even warm white LEDs gave. There are certain effects in LOTR that have an odd flicker even with incandescent bulbs, especially the shooter lane progression. The OCD board was able to smooth out all of the effects and make the LED/incandescent hybrid seamless, but it's still a little dim due to the incandescents.
Hey Herg - I love the potential of your product I can't stand the strobe light look of an all LED machine (I have played a full LED JM in an darkened garage and the ball moves so fast sometimes you almost can't see it between the strobe cycles to react properly). I'm considering a purchase and figured my question is worth posing here vs a PM. It's basically .net question mac instead of pc:
My PC laptop recently died, and all I have now is my macbook pro. What's the best way to run the .net framework successfully on Mountain Lion 10.8.4 for your program in particular - I would hate to purchase and not have a reliable way of running the software. I have crossover that eliminates the requirement of full windows installation but the individual windows programs have a specific code bottle to make them compatible on mac os.
I don't want this thread to head off topic either with mac vs pc so hopefully there is a simple answer. Thanks in advance!
I highly doubt this is going to happen, but is there any lpossibility down the line for Gottlieb system 3/80 versions?
Quoted from Frankenator:What's the best way to run the .net framework successfully on Mountain Lion 10.8.4 for your program in particular
I don't own a Mac myself, and haven't done any specific testing myself. I have used the software with VMWare on a Ubuntu host, and the same should be possible on a Mac. Other users have mentioned Boot Camp, but I have no direct experience with it.
The best solution long term would be to write a native Mac (or even Java) client. Communications are provided by a FTDI FT232 USB-to-serial converter, and drivers are available. From there, it would be as simple as an application that talks to the serial port using the OCD communications protocol. I don't have the resources to do this, but I would be willing to support anyone who has the motivation.
Quoted from Gundam_Pilot_:I highly doubt this is going to happen, but is there any lpossibility down the line for Gottlieb system 3/80 versions?
Since they're not using a lamp matrix (as far as I know), the current design will not work. It would nearly be a ground up redesign, and I don't really have any plans to do so. I won't say never, though.
Quoted from dkpinball:Loving the Pinball Soul interview!
http://pinballsoul.com/pinball-soul-podcast-14/
Thanks, Mike. 
The ocd software works fine with parallels on a Mac.
Herg; I'm short on time lately and want to get a couple of my boards running, do you have any sys 11 or wpc wiring harnesses ?
Quoted from Kneissl:do you have any sys 11 or wpc wiring harnesses ?
I'm currently building a bunch, but they're planned for the batch of boards I have coming in. Once I get closer to having them built, I can give you a better idea of what parts I have left over. If I have parts, I could put a few together. If you don't mind, send me an email as a reminder and to let me know how many of each you would want.
Just listened to Herg on the Pinball Soul podcast and it got me off the fence. Just bought one for my SM, I'll be bugging you Herg for some setup advice to control the spider inserts.
Great interview. Thanks to Herg and Josh Blood for taking the time to do it.
I have mine installed in CSI, but haven't had time to play with the settings. I did notice that when I created a .CSV file using Excel, bad things happened. What's bad about this is that when the CSV file is "bad", the board's operation appears to be flaky. For example, Manual mode didn't work at all. I had no such problems when I used the "-Undefined Stern" .csv file, modified using Notepad. So I blame Microsoft. I'm not complaining; this is just a heads-up to others who need to define a new data file.
One enhancement I'd like to see is the ability to quickly toggle between the current settings and a "passthrough mode", which emulates taking the LEDOCD out of the circuit (or better yet, actually takes it out of circuit). It would make it easier to do A/B comparisons.
I plan to do a video review soon.
Yeah, the data file parsing is not really flexible, and if I run out of other things to do, I'll work on improving it. You can use Excel, but certain things will cause the file to fail; special characters, single digit lamp numbers, etc. Using a text editor makes it easier to avoid these... or just ask me.
The passthrough mode is already in the Williams/Data East firmware, but is not possible with the Stern design. The OCD hardware is obviously still in the circuit, but it drives the outputs exactly like the inputs. It's not exactly like no board, but it's close. It's also a feature that's more for fun than actually being useful.
I finally just installed this in Cyclone and I have to say I now hate Herg. With LED OCD I have a brand new avenue to waste time on pinball-related activities (like I needed that.)
Seriously, this is one slick product. I hadn't considered installing LEDs in Cyclone until I heard about this. The lighting effects are part of what makes the machine. For example the way the mystery wheel lights fade in and out spinning around the mystery wheel can't be replicated with LEDs - until now. I was amazed at how good it looked with the default settings - with colored LEDs it looks even better than with the incandescents IMHO.
What really gets me is the ability to customize the profile down to each individual lamp. Having the ability to explore the dynamic range of each manufacturer's LED along with the differences in the colors is pretty impressive. This is where one can spend MANY MANY HOURS looking at the specifics of each individual lamp. I've already learned a lot about the differences between LEDs - quantifiably so. With LED OCD someone can do quite a nice review of different LED lamps.
Installation was very easy. Software install was as well (though with Windows 8 requiring signed drivers made the process hiccup.) Changes I'd like to see in the future:
Better data file parsing (I know it's been mentioned) as I have a field that truncated for a lamp and I'm not sure why. Perhaps edit directly in the app even if not connected to the board - like a "demo mode."
Right angle adapter on board or supply right angle adapter instead of 15' cable which makes mounting with the cable easier and provides more mounting options. The USB cable sticking out the side increases the footprint a fair amount.
The ability to apply a profile to a bunch of lamps simultaneously. If I have identified a bunch of lamps for a feature and know the settings for the lamps in question I'd like to select those lamps, select the profile and then apply rather than select lamp, select profile, select lamp, select profile, etc.
A database included with specific manufacturer's lamps/profiles that can be applied to the database of machines/lamps used to help take the guesswork out of having to make my own profiles. Of course this is a selfish request because I can see myself taking a lot of time looking at/testing every lamp type...
These are all minor nits. Love the LCD OCD but still hate Herg for the time I know I'm going to lose... 
viperrwk
Could you guys who are having problems with data files please send them to me? I'll try to take a look at them soon, and maybe a quick software update could really improve things.
Oh, and if you have created new data files that work well, please send those as well. Eventually, the software will include files for every game, and there will be no need to create new ones.
Quoted from herg:No, I don't currently have any Nifty Retro bulbs. I have Nifty WW Frosted and CT WW Retro, though. I wonder how those compare.
Well, I tried the CT WW Retro in LOTR today, and they're the best I've seen, but they're still way too clean looking. I went back to incandescent in the clear inserts.
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