A lot has happened since the start of this thread. It may even be better to read it backwards. In short, the development started with addressable LED strips on ST Pro, then morphed into GI Theatre. All the capabilities shown are still there on the board, but are not all used all of the time.

Currently available products are at the website, www.redshiftled.com.au

It's now a long thread, so here are some bookmarks..

AC/DC info starts here..
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ramp-lighting-in-your-face-st-pro-brought-to-lifevideo/page/4#post-2227608

Metallica info starts here..
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ramp-lighting-in-your-face-st-pro-brought-to-lifevideo/page/5#post-2412641

Apr 26.
First demo of custom GI show. BIB. Details page 5 of thread.

Apr 25.
After a long wait for parts. AC/DC is done. Met next week.

Feb 6, 2015

From the team (me, lol) that brought you Ramp Lights In Your Face, comes GI Theatre. Colour changing GI for all those machines that don't have it. Using exactly the same board as the ramp lights, and discretely mounting the strips around the PF, RGB GI is now a reality. More info in the thread. Here is a video to get things going..

This is still the same old thread. I'm just adding to the front page for those who don't like wading through multiple pages. The rest of this post as it was previously remains below...

Check this out. A few caveats..

i) this is a test,
ii) there are lights missing from the left ramp (haven't quite built enough strips yet),
iii) patterns are just for testing. They can/will be updated,
iv) some lockups occur (will be sorted),
v) etc.. enjoy

12/6 - Added Tron ramp test code.

11/27 - Added Tron GI support and scoop light demo.

11/16 - Added full length left ramp strip.

11/3 - Diffuser testing.

Added..
Vengeance return fire.

Added..
Plunge effect
Landing lights for AT and MS
Mode select colour.

Fully interactive, mode-aware, programmable ramp lighting.

The above video is just a test, so anything and everything you see is changeable. Not only is it changeable while in development, but also when it is finished.

Will work on both Stern Pros and Prem/LEs. This is not limited to ST.

Strips are bespoke. Commercially available strips are hopeless for this application. I had to get my own built..

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The strips are matt black, designed so they disappear into the game. From the player's perspective they are hard to see at all.

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Hopefully..It's currently in reliability and power management testing. All on, all white draws about 3A, which is a small concern, but obviously that's a rare event.

The real point of this is that it IS totally programmable, from responding to a simple action like a pop or a sling, to coming in and out of modes. The patterns are also changeable. Ideally in the end I would like a user interface so you could bring in any pattern of your own, plus link to your own rules, but for now it takes me about 5 minutes to put a new pattern in and coding up the behaviour is super quick. If anyone had one of these and wanted new things put in, I could do it and send out new code.

Atmel AT32UC3C1512C. Pretty funky chip. Most of the "artwork" (lol, calling dots 'artwork' to a real art guy), in this test is just manually produced single colour stuff (even though it changes with modes in this case, it is still single at any one time). The attract pattern has some RGB in it, but I have a way of getting full RGB parsed in, so the next test will blow this one out of the water.

Thanks all for the positive comments. Like most of these things, it started because of something I wanted for myself. Plus, it is a fascinating question to answer for yourself as to whether you can actually get it to work.

Yes. There is quite a bit of "plugging" as you can imagine. The board is obviously sniffing the entire bank of switches and inserts, so both matrices are intercepted. Sounds hectic but really, it's just like installing an OCD board - switch and lamp harnesses (or LED data harness on a prem/LE) come off the machine into the board, then new harnesses go from the board back to the machine. Ribbon cables feed the LED strips. So nothing is permanent and your game requires no alteration whatsoever. The pinball machine will operate normally whether the board is powered on or not, if you need to unplug it at all. It taps off the 5 volt in the back box.

Spot on. Definitely designed for plastic return ramps. I have built mounting clips for wireforms though, so not out of the question. It is more a matter of twists and turns. Wireforms are usually more complicated, and you can't infinitely twist these strips around.

Questions are the best thing eva! Indicates some interest

Well, firstly, I'm glad you can't immediately tell which board it is..gotta love that "factory" look, lol. There are three 'channels' of controllable output. You can see the three ribbon cables at the bottom right hand corner of the board. The strips themselves are 300mm long. They are modular and clip together at the end. This way, you can neatly put a single on the warp ramp, and clip two together to go down the long return ramps. In a two-ramp machine, one channel is redundant..or is it? The whole other level for this thing is in GI reinforcement. A two-ramp machine can have one on each ramp and the third controlling a strip on your backboard, or anywhere else for that matter. Hell, the whole three channels could be used on the play field and not even the ramps.
Mounting the strips to the ramps is with a few small pieces of black double sided foam tape. Works a treat. I have messed around protoing some clips, but they are really not necessary..these strips are extremely light and require very very little to hold them in place.

Whatever you can imagine the LEDs doing, they can do. This is early test code that is really just testing reliability and functionality. The drama injected into the final LED patterns is yet to come. And best of all, if you ever want to change it, you can.

It does. You will notice a pattern that starts up with KMB and ends when it goes back to single ball play. I just have it starting here a few seconds later than when the laser starts on the LE. It can be tweaked for that. And I haven't mentioned yet that there are 8 extra I/O ports for controlling other stuff.

lol, no, just another frustrated pro owner who thinks the pros of this world deserve to be the best that they can be.

Should work on any SAM system.