Quick search finds it, there is a thread too....

http://www.xpinpinball.com/shop/product/xp-blyff

Looks very similar to this... anyone know if it's the same/different/how?

http://www.siegecraft.us/presta/index.php?id_product=44&controller=product&id_lang=1

I bought a couple of the xpin LED boards. Installed in my xenon the other night and it works like it should. Sure beats soldering resistors on the lamp sockets.
I would still rather buy bulbs that already had the resistor built in.

Hopefully you are able to get this off the ground Art. I think Hotdoggin would look really good with LEDs.

I would also prefer to buy individual bulbs. There are some games where the resistor mod is needed but don't use the Bally Lamp boards, so you have no choice.

Game Plan games used the same SCR's as Bally and I have confirmed that they flicker in a Sharpshooter and that the resistor mod fixes the flicker.

Zaccaria Machines also use the same SCR's, I don't think it had the flicker problem in my Farfalla with LED's but there was another odditiy with the LED's that I never fixed or looked into. Can anybody else comment if this is needed for Zac games?

Also possibly some of the 6803 Bally machines have the flicker problem. I have done 6+ different titles with no Issues, but Eight Ball Champ definitely had flicker that was resolved with a resistor.

How are the $45 or $49.95 boards more cost effective? There's still the LED bulb cost.. so if you're able to offer the Classic Bally/Stern LEDs for a similar price as regular LEDS (slightly higher most likely) then it's still going to beat the pants off of plug-in board mods. Really I think LEDs with build in resistors would take over the market for the new Alltek board or the $45-50 boards. Surprised this project hasn't happened sooner. The market would still be there for the plug-in boards for people that wanted to use other manufacturer's LED products.. but there'd be a really good market I think for these Comet LEDs... people with Bally/Stern collections of 10-15 games or more would surely save a boatload of money just buying the individual LEDs.

Well, the "original" was people perf-boarding the same thing or the guy on Pinside that had originally planned to make PCBs up for this. IMO X-Pin and anyone else has every right to produce these. I'm kind of baffled how there seems to be tension surrounding who did what first in this case since the design was posted by many people.. who had also perf boarded it themselves and there's years of RGP posts on adding the resistor across the socket as well.

Obviously the cheaper version is going to win-out for a bit. I'm surprised the X-Pin one is still being priced more expensively. If the boards are assembled by machine (or at least most of the components) then should be able to get at a $40 or under price point. It's when you're hand-soldering 3x boards and components and crimping the wires and all where that'd be harder to do (from a time perspective). Especially when it comes to leaving some room for a little profit on wholesale deals to distributors.

In any case, if the Comet led bulbs ever come out.. or even if someone else gets involved with producing Bally/Stern friendly leds.. they should go over pretty well I think. Just judging from interest on these plug-in boards as of this year when the "no-solder" alligator clip versions came about.

Sorry, I type slower than I think. This was made in reference to the current board solution of an Alltek, which I think is Twice the
Price.

Sure, a Bulb is the best solution, and its slowly back at the top of the pile.

The issue was simple, send a schematic, send a sample, and have them reproduce.
The result, 3 failures.

Why? Good question, welcome to working with China.

From my side, I have a long list of wants, needs, suggestions for products on top of the regular side of the bulbs, my other jobs, family and health. Each product takes a lot of time, and money. Op-Max, is years away from being profitable. Purple Passion will never cover the time.
or see TimeBandits year of work to bring RGB as a product one can click and buy, and Install with no issues.... it takes time.

So for some silly reason, this Project has failed, and I needed to step back for an assortment of reasons, but it is being reloaded and retried.
Will I succeed or Fail? Dont know, but I dont give up.

I just know the hardest thing is to do everything, do it right, and within the time that is desired....

Ill keep trying.

Ah ok, no problems More cost effective than the Alltek, but for good reason.. much cheaper to produce when components are a fraction of what's on the Alltek boards. Still, a bit expensive if you have quite a few machines.. which is where an individual LED solution would be the best solution in terms of cost.

Maybe you need to try a different led manufacturer or one in the US? I looked into doing some led digits years ago and from a US company they had wanted I think $4000 one-time tooling setup fee and then $1000 for the first 1000x digits. I mean, those costs to me didn't seem *too bad* for a US company and as long as you stood to sell a decent amount of the product. And those were 7-seg LED digits and not individual LEDs which I'd imagine would be much *far* cheaper.. maybe not for a custom tooling setup by a US company, but for the actual product. I'd be half-tempted to look into this myself but you were already well underway with getting prototypes and a design worked out.. and I'd have a long road ahead of learning the ropes, not to mention limited funds. I just think this needs to be done by someone because it's the best solution for the problem. I do get though that.. if you offer different colors, brightness, etc.. those could/would all be additional tooling charges or viewed as completely separate products by the led manufacturer.. thus why it's much cheaper to have them design and manufacturer in China. Seems you somehow need to find someone to translate exactly what you want/need.. which is relatively simple, but they're somehow not getting it..

That's a very good point lol.

Of course, yes, I have sent samples. Twice, and now a third time.
Everything is simply busy.
And yes, I have sent to several factories the schematic, but the minimum they want, and the cost, is prohibitive.
Without going into to much detail, the numbers are 10,000 units to start. Now of course, people will want colors, and perhaps brightness levels....So even if I bust chops, its at least 50,000 units plus to start.
Lets just ignore any time and setup fees, and just say 50,000 units at $.40 each, Thats $20,000 in cost to have ready to sell.
With my apologies, while I have capitalized my business by means of a second mortgage, I have so many things in my life happening,
that an immediate outlay of $20K on this got pushed back in favor of products with greater demand.
So at first, Id simply like to succeed in white.

But I will share with you this, If I fail to have a product in say 6-8 months, and I appreciate that respect....Please do go for it.
Pinheads want it, and someone needs to do it.

Of course, it is open, and someone could release tomorrow. Its not that hard.

But the first ones, done exactly as detailed, and done 2 different ways, failed in some applications, The third try documented by VID was a clusterf*k.

So, I hear you, but am doing the best I can, with the time and funds I have.
My apologies for not meeting expectations.

Also, lets look at immediate cost effectiveness.

Say the bulb is done at $.79 retail and solves the issue. The same Bulb, because of the quantities made is $.59.
The $.20 per bulb cost times an average of 100-125 bulbs at this time That means $79 to $99 to do a game.
A $50 board, and $60- $70 for a wide assortment of bulb choices that exist, means $110-$120, or at most a $30-$40
savings. For many, this will certainly drives sales.....we all like to save.
But in the grand game of pinball, its not too much to spend.
Say, one did there whole game in 2-LED clear. The original Bulb used in AC/DC. They look great in these older games, and are $.49 by the
100. One would spend that $110 with xpin vs $100 with LEDs with resistors.

It is one reason I was sharing the options, because when it comes to which LEDs to use in a game, there are so many different Opinions.
IMO, I mix all different brightness of bulbs in Inserts, Playfield, and backbox. I realize this is not common...All kits etc, stress the same bulb everywhere. Regardless of which method, you are correct that people will want different brightness.

With that in mind, Id likely still recommend an Xpin, with the LEDs off your choice.

3 different bulbs in all colors stocked with resistors adds up awfully quick!

Perhaps a 3rd alternative. Without violating the product and respect of these 2 boards, is there another way to do an add-on?
If so, maybe I can just offer that for $30, and the need is solved.

Art

I don't tend to mix LED and SMD, but I do use a few different SMD brightnesses and lenses. Some areas on the game need more light than others. However, I don't go exceptionally bright, since I don't want to feel like I need sunglasses while playing the game.

I drive across town to save 5 cents per gallon on gas. Saving $50 on a game is well worth it to me, considering I barely break even just for the cost of parts when I go to sell it anyway. I can easily put that $50 to use elsewhere.

Not that I can think of. Each bulb need resistance somehow. The pass-through board was the most elegant and quickest way to address the problem without breaking the bank. But if there is a an option that would be $40-$50 cheaper that was just as elegant, I would go with that in a heartbeat for the next game that gets shopped.

No problem Art, I didn't mean to come across as anxious or annoyed these weren't out yet. Just was curious where things were at and a bit surprised it's taken a while, but as you said.. other priorities, busy schedule, family, etc. And I certainly don't know how demand would compare with the newer games, but just know the people with deeper pockets buying the newer games are more likely to buy led kits for them, so it makes more sense to focus funds for designs that can sell to a wider audience. Anyway, glad to have people like you creating this stuff and taking some risks to get neat products out there that don't exist yet. Hopefully these make it out sometime.

Hey here's an idea... can they manufacture some kind of piggyback bulb socket you can stick a regular led bulb into? Sort of a double socket, with the "dummy" socket having the parallel resistor in it. Then you could use anyone's led bulbs as well as your existing bulb line-up. Just couldn't have the piggyback throw off the total length of the socket & bulb too much. You wouldn't even need to do these as #47 compatible then, could have say 555 bulbs plug into the piggyback #47 compatible dummy socket. Maybe that's a way to save some space too (resistor off to the side of where the 555 plugs into). Not sure what the factories are capable of.. but if there's a way to make that happen.. it'd save *a ton* on tooling costs since you wouldn't be manufacturing all the different brightness, colors, etc for a completely different line-up. It'd just be a single adapter design to plug into the socket.

There are only 63 controlled lamps on most Bally pins (maybe another 24 more IIRC on games with the aux lamp driver). The GI bulbs don't need these modded LED's and to put those in the GI would just put extra load and heat back into the game. This comes out to an added cost of only $12.60 if the resistor mod lamp was $.20 more than an equivalent lamp.

So $13 versus the cost of the add on boards of $45-$100 for the 63 lamp games. So the savings is $33-88 per game.
But the cost climbs to $105-$160 versus $17 for games with the $60 aux lamp driver board used EBD, FG, Kiss, etc. So the savings is $88-$143

This savings can be even more as not every led will flicker when installing standard LED's. The eight ball champ I just did only had about 14 lamps flickering that I had to add resistors too. The last Kiss I did only had around a dozen or so flickering lamps within the grid in the center before I added the aftermarket lamp board.

With the current state of things, if I was someone with soldering experience but didn't have the ability to make boards.. and had a massive Classic Bally/Stern collection.. I'd just solder the SIP resistors to the back of the board and be done with it (ie. http://img-f.pinside.com/201407/1754133/255254.jpg ). I'm not a "purist" kind of guy.. I mean I like seeing really nice looking older boards and would probably take those out and save them.. and modify a cruddier looking board, but there's no way I'd spend $50 extra per game if I had 10-20x games just to essentially add $1 in SIP resistors & wire per header ($3 per game). That said.. it's nice there's plug-and-play solutions for people that don't want to modify their boards to keep them original... or don't have soldering experience. I'm just saying what I'd do, with soldering experience and *that* problem to solve in the current state of things. If there was an LED solution that worked with Classic Bally/Stern games however.. I'd buy that. Or if the piggyback socket I mention above was something that could be done... should probably pursue that myself

That said, the plug-in boards are a solution between hacking your current board & buying a $100 Alltek right now. There's probably another solution out there.. it's just a matter of finding it

If it helped with introducing the design I could see offering these in only 4 colors and 2 sizes to start, White, Red, Green and Blue in only 44 and 555 2 LED frosted domes. This would allow them to work under inserts, through the playfield or sideways under an insert and fit most applications.

thanks for the correction.

I personally have not done any games from this period, please excuse my error.

Having dealt with China on several projects... I feel Art's Pain.
Good luck.

That SIP resistor solution looks like such a pain in the ass to solder. I wish there were a easier solution that was still that cheap.

No tension on my end, all part of doing business. If you've got competition it just means you're in-tune with the market.
I still happily recommend X-pin products to people that ask.

-Hans

Hey Hans, didn't mean to imply it was on your end at all. More from some of the other posts that the announcement on Pinside & other forums received in regards to X-Pin selling a similar product. Nice view on competition & good of you to support X-Pin!

There is a fairly easy solution, but you have to be willing to cut up some stripboards, and solder some SIPs (or resistors) and headers on them. A whole game could be done for around $5 in parts.

It would be a nice, easy starter project for anyone wanting to practice some basic soldering, and you wouldn't risk damaging your game board:

Stripboards -- $1.29 (say x3 is $4 -- if you cut them right, you'd probably only need one though)
(http://www.taydaelectronics.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=stripboard)
NOTE: the smaller, 66 cent stripboard won't cover all the 28 pins on the JX connectors, so if you use those, you'd have to cobble them together somehow.

the SIPS or discrete resistors --
(don't have exact amount, but 63 resistors X .01 is less than $1--SIPs may be more)

male / female headers -- $0.15/$0.24 each 40 pins (x4/x4 is about $1.60)
(http://www.taydaelectronics.com/connectors-sockets/pin-headers.html)

DISCLAIMER:I haven't made these, so the information above may not be 100% accurate--but it should get you in the ballpark. If you decide to try this, please research it so you know exactly what to buy, and how to put it together, and thoroughly test it before connecting it to your game...

I have had just a handful of LEDs installed in a Bally; they were all flickering, and one key socket wouldn't light an LED, so I finally bit the bullet and installed the siegecraft LED board set... everything looks great now! I was finally able to finish installing the handful more LEDs to get the correct coloring back in the inserts.

If I wanted to put LEDs in a Bally 6803, is the Siegecraft the way to go?

Unfortunately, the adapters don't support 6803 systems. Only -17. -35, M-100, and M-200 systems.

Here's an old thread on 6803 systems: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/any-problems-with-leds-in-bally-6803

Most 6803 games don't need the resistors. I've only needed them on an eight ball champ.

Well, I have a Gameplan and an Allied Leisure Coctail I would like to add LEDs to but they don't make an adapter for. I am not sure if the resistors would work on an Allied Leisure or not. It seems like they should. I can solder no problem but man, I have better use of my time. I would love a drop in LED fix.

I'm not sure if you need to do any modifications. I've seen LEDed GamePlan games, so that system is probably fine. Not sure about Allied Lesiure, but you might be good there as well.

Do you have any spare LED bulbs to test with?

Yes, gamplan games work with adding the resistor, you can add them at the socket or at the lamp boards.

The allied leisure games use darlington transistor array chips to drive the lamps (75492). not sure that they need the resistors to install LED's.

Thanks on the Gameplan info. The controlled lamps on my Eros1 definitely strobed like crazy.

Any news on this in general?? Could have been dropped during transition....

Also- I thought I had read that the way allied leisure controlled lamps was by opening to ground- so there should not be a SCR type path and I would think they should work- I just picked up a AI cocktail game and threw and LED into the game over socket which I think is a controlled Lamp that flashes and the LED seemed fine...so bump for general update here and bump for allied leisure info so I dont assume something wrong and order up a bunch of LEDS that wont work for me.

Ill jump back to share.

I created several different bulbs, with thanks to vid.

Some worked some didnt. Some that did not work, that worked in others may have been a failing SCR.

With Seigecraft bringing a cost effective solution, along with Alltek, the bulb only solution, would offer, on average at most a $20-$25 savings in cost in total between all bulbs, or any bulbs + board.

In Addition, when we tested 1 LED and 1 SMD, and based on common opinions, we would have needed at least one bulb, say 8 colors, at around a cost of $8000 for 1 base in colors...close to the $10K minimum order.

So at the least, $8-10K initial out of pocket, and a bit less than $20k for a second brightness.

At that point, and adding I did not want to start with the emails of "it doesnt work" when its a 35 year old SCR, and how to troubleshoot, or "Oh, if I knew it needed a $100 board, I wouldnt have spent the $50 for bulbs, Can I return, etc....

So with a 3-5 year break even, a choice of more pins or another bulb, more emails, I made a choice to say...Buy Seigecraft, Alltek, or other, and pick any bulb that makes you happy.

As most people buy $26/100 bulbs for this period, it simply made no business sense to me.

Now it doesnt mean the new owners, wont, or someone else wont, but I think the balance of the right bulbs, and the right board is a better solution now with the lower costs.