If someone can figure out how to do these things in an EM, and figure out a workable mounting solution, so that I can flood my Crescendo with UV light...I might be willing to offer a small bounty (30 bucks?) for that information. Or just tell me I'm fscking stupid if someone's already done that in this thread for an EM.

No. They run down the middle of the game and face the side of the cabinet to accent the side blade art that goes with it.

Yep you definitely can do this with the same mounting system that Pinstadium uses with the magnets. As long as you have about and inch clearance on the side wall from the playfield to the glass channel that’s all you need. Then I’m sure there are UV only strips out there. Just find the ones that PS uses for the UV flasher side and then hook it into the power of the game or have power ran to it from outside the game.

I wouldn’t say down the “middle”. But they are mounted off other posts, and sit about 2-3 inches from the sides. Here’s mine.
322C6DBD-E8D3-4776-AE3C-D18F969ED553 (resized).jpeg

No, it ran down the sides also with L channel. He was doing something similar years before ripstadium

Well...there's no DC in the game. I'll have to figure that part out, but that's easy. I'm not really familiar with how people have been mounting these, much less pinstadiums in general...going to try to read the thread before I ask any more dumb questions...

Mounted with these. Put one strip on the led L channel, the other on the side wall of the cabinet.

Roll-N-Cut Flexible Magnetic Tape Refill - 1/16" thick x 1/2" wide x 15 feet. (1 roll) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HYDC68/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apip_wf2qtCffkTgF9

Add a bridge rectifier to convert it to DC. It makes the pin snappier too.

Velcro strips or pieces, will also work in lieu of magnet tape, and will never let the rails fall off. Some magnet tape is rated stronger lbs than others and the weaker tape has had issue falling off on mine. Pretty sure the Amazon taped worked out well for me and it was the Home Depot tape I bought once that was weaker. I was out of magnet tape once and had velcro strips handy, tried them out and kept them on that game.

No where near the middle. Have no clue why Chuckwurt keeps saying they are in the middle.

It’s either attached to the sides of the game or something in the middle portion of the game. These rails are attached to something other than the side walls.

I use 1/2" velcro. I DO NOT recommend running the entire length of the cabinet. Makes removing them a real chore. These things are stupid light so either put a 3" strip of fuzzy side on each end of the cabinet side wall or (3) 2" left right and middle strips on the side wall. Run the entire backside of the L channel with the prickly stuff to eliminate light potentially coming through the cracks.

On a side note, I really try to keep games GI lighting as factory looking as possible. For example...LOTR, the gameon power module is absolitely brilliant. Stadium lighting goes on and off with the GI. You dont lose any of the mood type feeling when doing it this way. Plus you're using 12v right off the ole service outlet ... no additonal cables run and turns on/off with the game. Not to mention the 12v lights are brighter VS the 6.3 stuff. Same principle when adding LED's. I despise the sharp on/off they give so I use Hergs OCD boards. The cool part is that you can program individual bulbs and allows you to basically buy the same bulbs for the entire machine (unless you're a fan of colored bulbs) and dial em up/down for your liking. Just makes going LED that much easier not to mention you don't have to pay extra for Ghostbusters.

I’ve seen L brackets used a lot but I don’t recall any previous ones attached to the side walls of the game. That said this kind of mounting isn’t ideal as it interferes with raising the playfield limits the mounting options to things that are easily detached.

Erik’s just dramatic. A lot of people say the ride the lightning rails obstruct the PF view. Which is total crap.

As you can see from my pic, the right side goes slightly over the shooter lane (no big deal), and the only thing partially blocked on the left is the Fuel entrance behind the stand ups (again no big deal).

It’s a much different perspective while playing the game too. They don’t obstruct anything, and they have to be where they are to get the optimal lighting effect bouncing off the blades.

Ironically, the Lightning rails are also plastic L brackets mounted on existing posts with hex extenders.

Yeah they definitely don’t obstruct your view of the playfield. A bit of an eye sore? Yeah, but we have them on a MET on location here and they don’t bother me at all from a gameplay standpoint.

Both METs I have had either had them or I put them on. What bothers me now is playing one without them.

I used that Met kit on my Tales From the Crypt, except mounted them as stadium style lights. The UV lighting worked great on those Metallica sideblades that I also installed because it fit TFTC perfectly. Plus the TFTC playfield has UV reactive green that really pops with those UV strips.

That was 5 years ago. Maybe I was one of the first to come up with a stadium style light mounted along the cabinet? Just out of necessity because the Met strip mounting spots of course didn't align with anything on TFTC.

If I make it any snappier it'll be unplayable. I stripped and rebuilt literally the entire playfield when I had it cleared after painting it, PLUS I've got a glo-ball in there, which is already like playing with a powerball.....on a cleared and waxed playfield. :p

It’s not a very exciting story and way too much to write but here’s a cliffs notes version of the events.

It all started when a friend of mine told me he saw my product in some mail order catalog. Sure as shit, there it was and after a little more digging I find it in other catalogs as well. I contacted the catalog companies and said to pull the product or get sued because I did not authorize this and someone had stolen my patent. They complied immediately.

After a little investigating I found out who the manufacturing company selling my product was and sent them a cease and desist letter and that a lawsuit was being filed to reclaim damages. I even found that the owner’s business partner or marketing head claimed that she invented the product herself on her LinkedIn page. Unreal!

After a lot of back and forth we agreed to not sue but to enter a contractual agreement that entitled me to get a guaranteed quarterly fee to license them the use of the product and a royalty percentage on each individual sale, plus the right to audit them to make sure that they are not lying about the sales numbers. It was good for them and me since they had a lot invested in inventory and sales were doing well.

Fast forward, they missed payment deadlines, said sales weren’t as good as expected, and used other bullshit excuses to justify their breach of contract. I didn’t give a fuck, a contract is a contract. A cease and desist was once again issued and a suit was being brought against them. This company has been in business for a long time and have hundreds of products in their catalog that are being sold to this day, so the not having money excuse did not go over with me at all.

Lawsuit was filed and delivered, but the piece of shit thief kept ignoring it until last minute to prolong it and probably wear me down mentally and monetarily. I didn’t back down. Not to mention he was still selling off his inventory of my product.

When he finally had no choice but to address the lawsuit, he claimed he didn’t have the money that he owed me and offered 10K instead to drop it and walk away. No fucking way was I going to do that! Really? 10K instead of the close to 100K that he was supposed to pay up to this point. Add all the other damages and breaches of contract and he’s at about 200K in the hole to me. This motherfucker was making money off my product and I was getting nothing.

Meanwhile, while this asshole keeps continuing the case and prolonging the inevitable. I’ve had other big time businesses express interest in my product and want to make a deal. Big time like coca-cola/NFL big time. They want to do exclusive licensing deals but won’t until the piece of shit thief is out of the picture. So now this guy is fucking me over in another way.

This guy is still going along like it’s no skin off his back, still making money on all his other products and I’m not going to back down.

Sorry for the long response, writing this actually got me riled up again. I hate thieves! Time for a beer. Or two!

Very nice , well then just connect the bridge rectifier to the GI circuit and use the output just for the LEDs.

The 12V strips run off 6.3VDC fine? What do you mean "snappier"?

Wow thanks for sharing, so sounds like patents are not worth the paper they are written on? how exactly do you stop this guy from selling your product if he just ignores all communications? Does he eventually get put in front of a judge? Who can actually force him to pay up?

You have to file the patent application within one year (or earlier) from the first public disclosure or sale, otherwise what was known/shown to the public is not patentable. How long has the originally sold product been available?

I know that putting LED strip lights on 90 degree brackets was being done at least 7 years ago. Pinballife was selling topper lighting that was done that way. Putting the lights on with a magnet would seem like an obvious known mounting option as well. Controlling the light color for pinball was being done many years ago with the speaker light kits.

If a patent were to be issued, it would likely need to be because of some detailed novel technical detail that would probably be easy to get around when making a similar basic product.

I am still baffled that someone is not selling a much less expensive basic kit having only choices of a warm white kit and a cool white kit and brightness control for around $80 to $150.

The other problem that would still exist is the chiclets look along the sides of the playfield. The design really needs a smoothing filter to get rid of that problem.

While I’ve not installed these in either of my pins yet, seems like the light might be better if diffused somehow. Don’t know if you can buy longer LED strips that have a milky coating instead of clear. For example, I really like the Comet Pinball Matrix strips that have a frosted covering.

Patents are only as good as the specific claims contained within them, and the patent owner’s willingness to take legal action against someone who is perceived to be violating the patent.

Also, just because someone accuses someone else of violating their patent doesn’t mean they are. There is typically much more that must occur than devices looking similar or performing similar functions.

This is the main problem in my opinion. There has been talk of a filter for a while and I haven't seen anything that works. Even if a of some kind were available I can imagine you would still see the refection it would just look less like a candy cain or chiclets or whatever. I realize some aren't bothered by it, but in my opinion it looks awful in person and even worse on streams, especially when there are polished metal or plastic pieces near the edge of the play field. The cheaper solution that avoids this problem is just to add spot lights to games that need them, lighting under the apron or on the back board as needed to address dark areas. For streaming use carefully placed external lights and/or a HDR camera that can capture detail in bright and dark areas.

The diffuser problem is much easier if you are focusing only on single color applications. It’s hard for pinstadium because he’s trying to solve for rgbw strips.

Someone should just do a simple white with Bluetooth dimmer, gi relay and power supply. That’s all 90% would really benefit from and fit the purist market too. I don’t think people have found great alternatives to the plastic extrusion pieces pinstadium uses tho

DC powered coils are stronger than AC powered coils.

I've been looking around for some diffuser material. Haven't ordered yet but shipping is decent. Thoughts?

https://www.solidapollo.com/78-Corner-Opal-Diffuser.html

Using opal diffuser to achieve linear effect rather than dotted effect:

The problem with the diffusers (that I have seen), is that you need a lot of space between the LEDs and the Diffuser. Otherwise, you still see the dots on the playfield. Perhaps there are better diffusers than I have tried. But, the only solution that seemed to work decently (for me) was the "LED Neon". Here is a link to my post where I installed them on my Shadow:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/poor-mans-stadium-lighting/page/10#post-4876519

You can use a high number sandingpaper on acrylic or polycarbonate to achive diffuser effects. Ip67 class strips comes with a bit of diffuser effects, or maybe....
https://m.aliexpress.com/api/stat/p4p/ping?productId=32859926228&pid=808_0000_0109&clickUrl=%2F%2Fus-click.aliexpress.com%2Fci_bb%3Fot%3Dlocal%26a%3D219950717%26e%3DroP.SAVEkREDaZpDTYKedyELKXsAfkhg4dt8B.r748IGS9qfOfGQ6cDQ-ebhvWUmoLMedA9xOl9zy0XxONIfp.KopUSt.t2eDcBjHMKR0gEeWfCbBYv92ENiykOwq4eihgOr4m1X3.6QPgaPZgKwQcgkgZZ7AzHj.Ru-KsUNW7MiXD-RestEY1vRJOsYu0JI8yDzWxNcJhYBx.bQdxaMGEpfQROqpLZQ-Zs5Pt1tWBOWJZ2iNvZkRkSdnhZb4gEjqhr9x8GbsEruNX6TkMhxawfuDR-Ri.HW0GwZnSievx9XM9Iy-x5MTKWc4bLUsvbpJ8RM-8HRwS1SHmprJGgPvJt.2WHyLHhBHLq02xyu9wzt1UKZwb15eqwZaqYAAZwddo130j-wrGlUKYtUWGmvnQu1mwMt3ruGxA2au6tFdS78jO2y1ElebyT6GSqg11EGURycLmHvNtJE-oL2LASJm.-J6RzEBPR8NBGUctWivxjRG05IO1oihYGYSjcuHmoDXVS53gnbP1N4QUoCV1SVFHHeOaj9TuMshxNTJSgChQESJclVJTYAHRP.U.UlyknqknRI5tkRwVUydT.s-yTZ5AVyvOk7SviF7SxeM7h2ax80arufe9nAhrBqy-u6a4EG%26ap%3D11%26rp%3D11&spm=a2g0n.search-amp.list.32859926228&aff_trace_key=593e2ccd30934d3aabed1d08e00a067b-1565567952896-03524-UneMJZVf&aff_platform=msite&m_page_id=5135amp-A_z1EBUZn55ePlIX7v3BBA1565568173353

If Lee Valley's picture is to be believed, those frosted L bracket diffusers would do the trick.

http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.aspx?p=71702&c=2

Screen Shot 2019-08-11 at 8.17.22 PM (resized).png

Looks like the Muzata products I've been looking at on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Muzata-Aluminum-Diffuser-Mounting-V1SW/dp/B076D45YK1/ref=sr_1_5

I used the opal ones at an angle (bottom right picture) it diffuses well on the playfield, just gives light without bad reflections I have seen in some pics. I used RGB+W LED strip with them.

I have used such led-RGB-strips, whose color I can adjust with my iPhone. Actually it seems that the pinstadium app works also with the led-strips. However, it has now happened for 3 of my stadium-light pairs that they seem to have lost the yellow/white color altogether. What might be the reason there? Could it be that the controller for the led-lights would be malfunctioning or what?

Thanks for any tips!

My version of stadium lighting (Pete’s Cheap Seats). 100% interactive!

love it

great name

Nice.. Are you making kits? : ). if not could you do a little write up with links thanks
stadiums are more like 400.00. so He's mark up is like 700% and people praise the guy.., He's a hell of a salesman .

I think most pinball people now are just more willing to pay for stuff rather than do it themselves.

Its why people are harking to buy 'playfield glass protectors' and crap... rather than sit their glass on a piece of cardboard, carpet, or something out of the corner of your basement. And why people are paying $100-$400 for figurine mods, etc.

I've seen several remarks made.... something along the lines of "you can spend X amount of dollars on a pin but you wont spend $400?"
I literally despise that line of thinking. First of all I support any business that makes stuff for the community, but for me, I cant stand stadium lighting tied into flashers. It hurts, however I sincerely love adding light to the entire playfield. Spot lights just dont do it for me. But even the "cheap" pin stadiums are what.... $200ish? Luckily I'm a do it yourself type of guy but for someone that's not so "handy" $200 is actually not a bad price. Regardless of his profit margin. $400 is just too damn much money. I used to run a business. I made the choice to make the money in the end not the beginning. What that means is I sold stuff at a lower price but at the end of the quarter I ended up selling more and because of the volume I actually made a little more. I always stuck with that business practice until the day I sold the business. The new owner reverted back to "bleed em for every nickel and the business failed in a year.
This is not a "must have" product so you lose the power to command whatever price you want. Hes a super nice guy, I hope for some reason he sees this and rethinks his business model.

I made my set for Jurassic Park. Data East loves to use the GI as flashers but my eyes prefer some form of light being on all the time. These really help minimize the blinding I don't need high end functionality, I just need to be able to see. And, yes, I play my games with the lights on.

I don’t have any intention of making kits but I’ll try and write something up.

Also, I have since 3D printed some parts that make a better transition from wire to led strips

F088B90F-4018-4D0E-8B77-CA387B453F42 (resized).jpeg

Care to share stl file?

Not a problem-it’s made for a specific angle bar that I’ll include in the write up. It uses a small cable tie for strain relief.

Has anyone come up with a way to mount these on the sides of the playfield rather than the inside of the cabinet? It would be really nice to be able to lift the playfield without needing to remember to remove them.

https://pinstadium.com/product/hover/