Quoted from epthegeek:I don’t get this at all. You already had a massive set of LEDs to throw light with, why didn’t you just make a new control module that would hook flashers into the regular pinstadiums? Why do you need even more LEDs
Quoted from russdx:(i have no idea if you can achieve the same effect using same leds but from a business point of view you stand to make more money just separating them)
Excellent questions!! That was something I originally thought of too, as far as trying to make the existing Pin Stadiums do both. As you will see I quickly answered my own question too
The Pin Stadium lights are specifically designed and dedicated to provide GI illumination to the playfield. If you attempt to use them as flashers then you cause the playfield illumination to go off and to have to start the flashers. Which effectively negates the main benefit to what they provide. As a result the playfield illumination turns off and you lose track of the ball while get blasted with flashers! Not a sacrifice I was willing to accept. Believe me I tried and it was an absolute nightmare.
That loss of illumination is intense once you see a game with Pin Stadiums Off and then On. It literally looks like you turned the GI “Off” on the game completely in most instances. Anyone that owns them can attest to this and also losing track of the ball is the biggest thing you don’t want to do.
I also tried another flasher method where I kept just the white lights on while pulsing the colored LEDs only. The result was that you sacrifice the colors settings you have dialed in on the app which ruins the point of even having the app to customize the playfield illumination/colors.
Then in addition to that I tried dimming the white lights because when I was flashing the Red, Greens, and Blues in the previous scenario they were hardly making any impact relative to the illumination even just the white Pin Stadium GI lights alone were providing. You literally couldn’t see this light flash if at all (I had to bend down and look directly at the lights to see if they were coming on) and it did nothing noticeable (explained in detail further down as to why).
So dimming the white made them a “little” more pronounced (and I mean very little) but again you lose playfield illumination and ball tracking, mess with your app settings etc. So no go there either for sure. I would never want to sacrifice gameplay and ball tracking for a light show whenever possible.
Also RGB lights are 1/3 the size of a full blown SMD chip as they are mini clustered diodes on one chip versus being dedicated to that color like a White would be. Even if you separate them into larger chips the same size of the white you have an unmerged mess of lights on the playfield, less LEDs overall too. Plus to make i worse you literally see the Red, Green, and Blue shining on the playfield like a Christmas tree. Yikes!!! How do I know? Because it happened to me during the prototyping and design process. It was a nightmare and eye sore needless to say.
In these scenarios mentioned above I was also effectively taking out the very most important color spectrum (White) for visibility of the grouping of the Pin Stadium lights.
It is important to note that White is THE “very” most important part of what allows you to have the full spectrum color ability for the Orion’s Belts flashers and gives the highly impressive effects/features of the product by far. With white you can now use the color wheel in the Pin Stadium app to dial in those flashers to ANY color that you would like.
Without “White” you go from just 3 flasher colors (Red, Green, and Blue) to 16 million colors flasher options by adding that alone. It’s HUGE and gives you unlimited possibilities! Then add the fact the the custom Flasher Module allows individual brightness control of each one!!!
So this is why the Orion’s Belt is a separate standalone complimenting product and mounts under the Pin Stadiums with very stealth mount and form factor while having built in Invisi-Shields!! The LED PCB and the chips on Orion’s are completely custom and massively upgraded that overcome all of these issues to handle more power, delivery high quality driven results with true colors, and to perfectly compliment the Pin Stadiums GI lighting by expanding that product even further past where it already is.
Additionally I am giving customers the option to use Orion’s Belt as a standalone product if they want instead of buying both. Which is always nice to options!
However the combination of the two together is outstanding results!!
I hope this better answers these questions and explains a small portion of what I did over the last year in designing these. I trust that when a customer installs these that the results will speak more than words can ever say.
There’s a lot more to this that I could elaborate on and am happy to as questions come up. I love talking about these things and getting chance to explain better. But I will spare you all for now.
—
Scott
Pin Stadium
www.pinstadium.com