Hi Pinside – wanted to call you attention to the just-released 2016 Edition Daughterboards. The boards have new monitoring capabilities and improved regulators.

The most exciting change is in the Pro’s monitoring capabilities. The 2016 Edition Pro Daughterboard simultaneously monitors both the 12 volt and the 5 volt PDB power supplies. Here’s how: (note, for ease of reading I took out LED and instead used all caps for the color of the LED)

- GREEN means both supplies are stable.
- RED still means the PDB 5 volt dropped low (i.e., would have caused a reset without the daughterboard) at some point since game power-on. GREEN turns off when the RED turns on.
- BLUE means the PDB 12 volt digital dropped low (below 9 volts). This is an indication of weakness or instability in the PDB 12 volt derivation. GREEN turns off when BLUE turns on.
- BLUE and RED together means both supplies have exhibited their respective trigger conditions.

Both the red and blue LEDs latch when triggered meaning once lit they will remain illuminated until machine power-down.

Additionally, when powering on your machine you will see a short BLUE blink because the new Pro also monitors the 12 volt power supply startup. The 2016 Edition starts with the BLUE burning until the 12 volt line rises above 10 volt at startup. GREEN will not illuminate until the 12 volt startup condition is met. A long BLUE illumination at startup is an indication of weakness in the PDB 12 volt circuitry.

The new 2016 Edition Pro is a great new way to monitor the relative health of the two power supplies and I hope you find it helpful in monitoring for issues and diagnosing problems.

All of the 2016 Edition Daughterboards have an improved regulator onboard (yes, it is still an ezSBC design – the best in the business), so they can work where the previous version occasionally wouldn’t. Both the Classic and the Pro have the redesigned regulator.

One final note – the prices did not change - $29 for the Classic and $39 for the Pro.... so maybe the most exciting part is what did NOT change!

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for Williams system 3-7 sound board potentiometer solutions

Hey all - the 2016 Editions are proving very popular... Here are 60 I'm building out to get ready for the Pintastic show. Hope to see you there!

image_(resized).jpeg

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for Williams system 3-7 sound board potentiometer solutions

Today I'm excited to announce I've enhanced the monitoring indications in the Pro Daughterboard. New for 2017 all Pro Daughterboards provide indication for:

1. Startup conditions: The 12 volt digital supply must surpass 10 volt and 5 volt supply must surpass 4.7 volt before the steady-state green light illuminates.

2. Steady state: Just as before, Green is good.

3. Monitoring Indications: Just as before, all indications latch so you don't have to watch the daughterboard while it works. There are now 8 different indication patterns informing you of multiple combinations of (a) high voltage peaks and low voltage sags on the the 5 volt line and of (b) low voltage on the 12 volt digital supply. This graphic details the indications:

2017Pro (resized).jpg

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for my Pinball 2000 H+V video sync adapter kit

Short answer... Yes.

Longer answer... Essentially what you would end up with is similar to the test rig I use for each daughterboard I build - a 12 volt supply on the male end of the daughterboard and an MPU on the female end. My test rig closely resembles the simple 12v regulated supply on the PDB - a transformer drives a bridge rectifier, a capacitor to smooth out the output of the bridge and then an LM7812 to deliver regulated 12 volt power... oh, and a fuse in there as well. But the next consideration is whether it's a good idea to do this in your WCS in the current state. If you've got something like a cut wire causing 5v to not be delivered to J210 there should be no issue. If you don't have any 5v on your PDB the circuitry that interfaces it to the MPUs data lines isn't going to work properly. And, if you don't have 5v going to J210 now, the Pro version of the daughterboard isn't necessary - it won't have anything to monitor!

If you need to discuss further feel free to reach out here, via PM, or via email ([email protected])

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for my Pinball 2000 H+V video sync combiner kit

Hey all,

Just a quick update - in early August I quietly started shipping boards with a 2017 identification on them. The Pro versions had been shipping with the 2017 software since January and now the board version again aligns to the software version. The changes from the 2016 board to the 2017 board include squeezing out just a little more efficiency and some minor tweaks to improve the build process. 2016 boards will continue to be supported until at least January 2018 but there really haven't been any problematic trends in that platform - literally thousands are out there preventing resets by rebalancing the machine's loads across the available supplies.

Upcoming events:

1. I will be at the York show again this year. Should be fantastic show this year because it is in a larger hall with additional space for free-play machines. Anyone who brings a WPC era machine (Funhouse through Cactus Canyon) and stops by my booth will get a complimentary gift as a thanks for helping fill the free play area with great games.

2. I am flying out to attend John Dayhuff's pinball party in Battle Creek, MI. If you missed the thread, he's invited everybody to his house again this year for a 12 hour pinball party (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dayhuffs-15th-wow-annual-pinball-party-inviteplease-rsvp). I will have a few daughterboards with me if anyone needs one. I don't plan on bringing a lot, so please PM me if you need more than a couple.

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC Pinball resets or for my Pinball 2000 H+V video sync combiner kit