(Topic ID: 206424)

Poor man's Stadium lighting

By Fytr

6 years ago


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  • 197 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 46 hours ago by digitaldocc
  • Topic is favorited by 332 Pinsiders

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#21 6 years ago

How much room is there to lift the playfield if you have mirror blades?

#33 6 years ago

id be a little careful running 6-8 feet of led strips off the GI unless you can calculate the load you are putting on that circuit. you can grab constant 5v at the coindoor on stern games, same place you get 12v and that would work, but they would not be interactive with the game.

#35 6 years ago
Quoted from maffewl:

Where on the coin door do you pull from? Does this work for DE/Sega games?

there is a connector at the coindoor on sega/de games (right side down from flipper button, bunch of orange wires in a connector). I know there is 12v, but not sure about 5v, check your manual for pinouts. On modern stern games, it is the 3 pin molex connector near the right flipper, ground, 12v and 5v.

3 months later
#235 5 years ago
Quoted from PoMC:

I keep the kits simple and plug each strip into a 12v wall adapter. The two adapters are plugged into a short extension cord which is plugged into the service outlet.
I power my games on and off with power strips so the lights turn on and off with the games.
I bought a bag of 12v power supplies from a local indoor flea market for $1 each. I now use led strips that cost $5.99 each and gets me 2 sets of kits.

Don’t you lose interaction with the games lighting effects?

9 months later
#409 5 years ago
Quoted from Fytr:

If you want both GI lighting and the ability to have a flasher effect you can add two LED strips to your angled plastics, one facing straight out for GI (white, warm-white, or RGBW) and another facing down for the flasher in whatever colour you want.
The flasher strip could be powered directly off an existing flasher bulb (for SAM and earlier games anyway, no sure about Spike/2) so this is easy enough.

Check out the new system from Rock Custom Pinball. His game on system powers from the service outlet, but he uses one to three light sensors to turn on mods. Great for interactive modding. Rock914 I’ve tested it and it works well.

6 months later
#526 4 years ago
Quoted from chuckwurt:

Yep. I’d love to pay someone $100-150 for an always on, brightness and color controlled set that doesn’t attach to the sides of the game.

Where would you want it to attach?

1 week later
1 year later
#894 2 years ago
Quoted from Nepi23:

Yesterday we had a game night and the stadium lights were on the whole evening. One on pin the light bars, which were attached with velcro, had melted the tape's glue and also had manage to melt the glue on the sideboard panel. So in essence the lightbar was trying to pull the decal away from the wall on the places where it was attached to the sideboard with velcro. I managed to fix the sideboard decals as they were soft and easily workable.
But how is that possible - how can the leds-strips produce such heat?
I guess the brightness setting might have been on some high position and also the other thing that may cause problems is that the L-bracket I used for stadium lights, is made of plastic. Aluminium brackets might be better to protect the sideboards from heat?
What are your thoughts on this - how could I make the situation better?
Thanks for any info!

Absolutely leds can melt glue, they produce significant heat. Not as much as incandescent, but they will definitely soften hot glue.

#896 2 years ago
Quoted from Nepi23:

Thanks! I need to figure out how to put some insulation between the bracket and the velcotape pieces.
Any suggestions? Too bad I made my brackets out of plastic L-channel, aluminium would have been much better.
Might it be sufficent to cover the bracket with a black decal?

My suggestion is to use 3m backed mounting tape, 15 or 30lb. Clean with alcohol before adhering

#898 2 years ago
Quoted from Nepi23:

But wouldn't 3M double-sided tape be difficult to remove, when one needs to remove the lightbars and get access to the playfield?

Oh, I thought you were talking about the led strip being adhered into the brackets. To adhere the brackets to the cabinet you should use magnetic strips. The leds won’t transmit heat to affect those. Velcro doesn’t have great glue on it. I use it to adhere my radar detector to the dash and in the summer the glue can turn into a soft mess.

7 months later
#918 2 years ago
Quoted from Ace8Track:

Does anyone know the exact type of UV light strip that is used on Pinstadiums? I've ordered three different kinds of amazon, but all of them put out very dim light. The Pinstadium UV lights get very bright when they flash, and gives a really nice effect.

Maybe they are using purple and not UV? UV lights don’t tend to be bright.

10 months later
#951 1 year ago
Quoted from ray-dude:

Has anyone experimented with COB LED strips? What approaches have people looked at for mounting?
At 2.7mm wide for narrow strips, I'm wondering if strips are narrow enough that a scheme to mount on underside of playfield glass would be workable
https://www.ledbe.com/super-narrow-2.7mm-dc12v-flexible-cob-led-stripe
GOing a different direction, I haven't seen anything about these in Spinal Tap machines, but if it is reasonable to mount them to the side walls without having a plastic channel for them, all the better.
At 1.9mm thick, these RGB COB strips are danger close to being able to mount to the side walls directly (no magnetic strip, just leave them in all the time)
amazon.com link »
Has anyone seen a Spinal Tap in person to see how HomePin is doing it?

We use them..they have pros and cons. They put out light at 180 degrees so they may not be good for cabinet mounting as the light will.shine more directly at you.

2 weeks later
#961 1 year ago
Quoted from mcalon:

No one replied, I did 70cm.
Bttf will be 1 meter.
Easy. Cheap. Can't believe this thing should cost so much from suppliers
[quoted image][quoted image]

Maybe it looks better in person, but that is way too bright in your pic. COB lighting isn’t great for this application because it emits light at 180 degrees while 5050s or 3528s emit straight ahead. COB is great for back lighting, but not to light a playfield. At a minimum, you should add a dimmer.

#964 1 year ago
Quoted from mcalon:

Yes. Dimmer ordered, but the thing is that the reflections of the 5050s or 3528s, the squares all around, really bothers me.
In my photos the only leds are the strips, the rest is still normal bulbs, so that adds.
I like the outcome, but maybe it's a little bit too bright. I think a little dim should do good.
Thanks for the advice and thought

Yeah, that is a benefit of cob I forgot to mention, the lighting is very even. Maybe think about how to cover the channel with some frosted plastic to diffuse the lights. Btw, another benefit of cob is less heat and power draw.

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