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I have been contacted by a couple of people that have bought the recently released, fully lit "serial" speaker light kits from Pinball Life and noticed that they were not my Deluxe Speaker Light Kits as they were expecting. While Pinball Life have sold my speaker light kits since 2013, they, like another reseller, have decided it is OK for them, and somehow acceptable, to just copy my designs (in particular my design for the light frame to light around the entire speaker grill on SPIKE 2 games) and sell "their own" speaker light kits.

In any case...the Serial light kits being sold by Pinball Life are not my light kits and they are not as good as my Deluxe light kits. The main reason I will bring up is they do NOT use INDIVDUALLY addressable light strips. They are using addressable light strips that are only addressable in 3 bulb sections. This leads to a chunkier and clunkier light show, as any single pixel instruction that the controller is outputting will be displayed as 3 bulbs instead of 1.

Another thing that arises from their light strips not being individually addressable is how the various light patterns line up where the light strips begin and end...or I should probably say, how their light patterns do NOT line up where the light strips begin and end. As it is, very few if any of the light patterns actually meet as they should in the corner where the light strips begin and end. There are some of the light patterns that do not line up on my light frames also, but the majority of them do and provide a smooth light pattern all the way around the frame. That is just not the case with the Pinball Life Serial light kits.

Pinball Life have these light kits described as having "Individually controlled LEDs" which is clearly not true. I do not know if this was done to purposely deceive people or just out of ignorance. I'm pretty sure not much thought or effort is put in by people copying my products....so it could have just been an oversight when seeing what cost cutting measures they could get away with and have potential customers still believe it is as good as the original that they are attempting to copy.

They have their kit selling for $79.95 (my Deluxe kit is $85). Of course, with little product development costs and a lower bill of materials from cuts (their kit does not include its own power transformer) ...it would be easy enough to price a bit lower than the guy that actually did the design and idea work you are copying. Taking a light frame to someone and saying "copy this" is much easier than actually doing any design work yourself and paying for prototyping. When you add in the shipping costs and tax and I'm quite certain anyone can get the original and superior light kit directly from SpeakerLightKits.com at a lower price than you can get this inferior looking knock-off from Pinball Life.

Sorry for the poor video quality, but you can easily see the difference even at 240p. I wasn't planning on getting into this until I could get a better-quality comparison video made, but that will probably be a bit if it gets done at all. As it is, I really wish I didn't have to take the time to explain why buying the light kits from me, the guy that actually though up and designed them, is better than buying from places that copy my ideas and designs.

The 2019 TWIPY nominated mod of the year...the "Deluxe SPIKE 2 Speaker Light Kits" are ONLY available at www.SpeakerLightKits.com. Accept no imitations from shady pretenders.

Doug (SpeakerLightKits.com)

This topic is about the Deluxe (Type 12) Speaker Light Kits that I sell.

Doug (SpeakerLightkits.com)

No, it sounds like you are right on. CoinTaker and Pinball Life have both been resellers of my products for years and have taken my light kit designs and had them copied to sell for themselves.

The Pinball Life light kit in question defiantly has a lower bill of materials (due to the lack of a power transformer at the very least) and is selling for a few bucks under my kit (as long as you don't figure in their shipping charges). The video I posted shows the difference in the look of the light kits and that the one from Pinball Life does not have individually controlled LEDs as their product description claims.

I would agree that many knock-offs probably try to target a lower price, but that's not such an easy goal to hit when the original is a reasonably priced product to begin with. None of the people copying my kits have had a significantly lower price, with just as many selling them at a higher price.

Doug (SpeakerLightKits.com)

Copying his supplier's parts and using them for his own competing product and describing that product with features that it doesn't have.

What would you call it?

Doug (SpeakerLightKits.com)

I'm not here to make personal attacks or to make any case about who has or who has not contributed more or less to the pinball community. I also don't remember bringing up anything about anyone violating my legal rights or alleging I had patents on anything.

I am talking about how my Deluxe SPIKE 2 Speaker Light Kits are NOT the ones being sold by Pinball Life. As I mentioned, I had been contacted by a couple of different buyers of the Pinball Life light kits, that seemed surprised and disappointed that they were not my light kits. So, I made a topic explaining the situation and showing the differences in the light kits and why my Deluxe (Type 12) Speaker Light Kits are better than the competing product.

Doug (SpeakerLightKits.com)

Pinball Life have been making competing SPIKE 2 speaker light kits for months. I didn't say a thing about them, but when someone asked, I did explain the differences between their light kits and my light kits. They were not copying my light kit designs at the time. They had made their own type of light kits so; I didn't say anything.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pbl-speaker-light-kit-vs-speakerlightkitscom-

It was not until people contacted me about being confused by the new Pinball Life light kits that I looked into them. I saw they were using my light frame design and misrepresenting what they are selling, and I'm not going to say nothing and just let others continue to buy their light kits that they believed were mine.

Doug (SpeakerLightKits.com)

PS: It seems strange that so many people are ok with someone brazenly copying someone else's work, make cuts to cheapen it (but not offer it at a significantly lower price) and then misrepresent what it can do.

Yep...I would say:

FastLED
Fire2012WithPalette
My SPIKE 2 Deluxe Speaker Light Kit idea and SPIKE 2 light frame design
PersonX99 come up with the idea and did the flame program with the high-density bulbs in the frames
ScottyC decided to do a DIY topic and tweek the flame color in the coding
Fubar improved the coding, giving it the 2 separate flame patterns from 2 separate output connections
DugFreez tweeked the code a little bit to help to get it kit-a-fied at a reasonable cost with a simplified install

Quite the evolution.