Video showing experiment with MM castle...
Kansas Pinball
skull eyes. I inserted 4-3mm LED's in the skulls (red).
I have also drilled out the windows of the tower. I really wanted the
tower to simulate the flickering behavior of the castle being lit by
candles. I used a circuit that causes an amber LED to flicker. I found
the circuit on the Internet. I was going to build a circuit from
scratch but I came across a new product called Flickering LED Candles.
I bought 5 of these off of Ebay for a buck each, tore them apart with
the dremmel and used the flickering circuit for my own needs.
Everything is powered by my bench power supply as a test right now. I
think I need to put two LED's in the tower since it will probably need
to be a little brighter once in the game. That is what experimentation
is for. :) FUN!!
Here is the video.
http://www.kansaspinball.com/mmtowerflicker.htm
Doug
JDix
evil and wrong with this hobby.
But I can give credit where it is due, and your mods are both creative
and cool. Keep up the good inovations.
Joe
miracleman
inside is on fire, but it IS being attacked...
Mike Muglia
Mike
Virt
Kansas Pinball wrote:
> I have been working on my MM's castle.
Very cool! Now, where do I buy the kit LOL :-)
Actually, do you think the bright constant eyes kind of detract from
the flickering flames a little...? Perhaps they eyes should flicker
too...?
But the above is just silly perfectionism. It still looks great.
Virt
> Well I cannot stand MM at all, I feel it represents everything that is
> evil and wrong with this hobby.
Of all the things that are evil and wrong with this hobby, MM doesnt
even make The List.
(My list would go something like this:
spare suppliers who gouge
restrictive parts producers focussed on C&D rather than production,
secondhand market full of sharks and shill bidders
careless operators who don't maintain their machines,
Stern's lack of new millennium marketing savvy
etc
etc
etc
etc)
Angelo Muro
So when can we buy the kit? ;-)
Keep up the good work!
Angelo
"Kansas Pinball" <olds...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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Jim Davis
see the skulls maybe hooked into the castle blowing up. do you plan on
making some kits? Once again good job and thanks for the video.
JIm Davis
JDix
your list). It is the supposedly "best" most coveted, most expensive
(std prod run) game there is. So typically with MM you find high
prices, part hoarding, greed, buying for the wrong reasons, etc, etc,
etc.
I owned an MM and sold it 8 days later for the exact price I paid. It
made me feel shitty and frown at my collection.
GarageDoor
JohnBuzzz
also. I thought that I could cut out the eye, actual size, and mount
the LEDs from the back - maybe glue them in place - so they look like
actual eyes rather than 3mm LEDS.
Steve C
castles, so it makes sense. are the skull LEDs now red or are they
white as they appear in the video? they look a little bright when
compared to the flickering lights. too bad you can't get a slow burn
to brightness on the skull LEDs so that they go slowly on and off
randomly to make it look spooky. get busy man. oh yeah, what about all
those other games that need fixin?
stevebo
On 19 Jul 2006 21:46:34 -0700, "Kansas Pinball" <olds...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Virt
JDix wrote:
> Well I just associate MM with several bad things about pinball (some on
> your list).
LOL.
I associate my MM with my ongoing abject failure to complete BFTK after
1.5 years of ownership :-)
So it's a 'love/hate' relationship.
beaver
Edward Cheung CARGPB26
www.edcheung.com
Kansas Pinball
Jim Davis wrote:
> Good job Doug! I wouldnt mind buying that for my MM, I would like to
> see the skulls maybe hooked into the castle blowing up. do you plan on
> making some kits? Once again good job and thanks for the video.
>
> JIm Davis
Thank you Jim.
I do not plan on making this a kit because frankly, there is a lot of
"modding" going on to accommodate these changes. I am however following
in the footsteps of Beaver and am taking a ton of pictures of how I did
it. I am going to make a webpage to show everyone as many steps as I
possibly can to perhaps held them do the same type of mods.
What you saw in the video was a total experimental setup with jumper
wires going everywhere behind the castle, etc. The skull eyes are all
completely mounted and hot-glued in place. But, the castle tower is
just set up for test right now. I have been experimenting with changing
the resistor value on the circuit to eliminate heat issues and also a
problem of having the LED too bright which diminished the effect of
flickering. I changed from a 10ohm resistor to a 100ohm and the effect
you saw on the video is a result of the change in value.
There is lots of drilling going on and it is not a reversible mod by
far. I have drilled the eyes out of the skulls, I have enlarged the
hole in the bottom of the tower, and now I have drilled a hole in the
back since I forgot that a stand-off goes up through that damn hole in
the castle! Guess I can't mount anything there! To remedy this
non-reversible situation, I have purchased another castle from Marco
which can replace the existing one and be back to factory if needed in
the future.
Doug
Kansas Pinball
JohnBuzzz wrote:
> Looks very good. I was thinking of putting red LEDs in for the eyes
> also. I thought that I could cut out the eye, actual size, and mount
> the LEDs from the back - maybe glue them in place - so they look like
> actual eyes rather than 3mm LEDS.
John,
That would definitely be possible. I am assuming you mean you would
drill out the pupil of the skull's eye? The only problem is getting a
drill bit that small and also, drilling straight. The drillbit on mine
was going all over the place before it bit in. I would say be sure to
have some type of pilot hole drilled and maybe use a drill-press. After
that, hot glue is great to hold it all in and you can pull it out
easily if needed in the future.
Doug
Kansas Pinball
Steve C wrote:
> Doug, the flickering lights look pretty good. they used candles in
> castles, so it makes sense. are the skull LEDs now red or are they
> white as they appear in the video? they look a little bright when
> compared to the flickering lights. too bad you can't get a slow burn
> to brightness on the skull LEDs so that they go slowly on and off
> randomly to make it look spooky. get busy man. oh yeah, what about all
> those other games that need fixin?
>
> stevebo
The LED's in the skull are 3mm red LED's. The LED's give off a direct
light that really makes the camcorder mad it seems. It comes across on
the video as very intense white light. However, they are really
semi-dim red lights that are not exceedingly bright. I would not be
happy if they were too bright because I want it to be something subtle
that people notice not something they have to avoid looking at after a
while.
Yes, this is taking a LOT of my personal time. It is one of those
things where you have an idea of what you want to do, but now you have
to find the resources and parts to do it. Without any write-ups on
these mods besides a few pictures of completed ones, I am having to
push forward on my own. The other machines are just sitting around with
their arms folded giving me dirty looks. :)
Doug
Pin Geek
because of the prices. It's a fun game, but there are better out there, for
less. I will say though, I love the cat-a-pult stuff.
--
Josh
http://www.pingeek.com
Get your pinball show dvds here:
http://www.thepinballshow.com
"JDix" <jenny...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
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beaver
-LEDs. I presume you are wiring the LEDs in series. This will be more
efficient and ensure the same current (and brightness) in both. My
current thinking is to wire them to a playfield light, such as one of
the ramp or catapult ones. This will cause them to turn on and off as
the rule set is advanced.
-Tower post. Yes, I was wondering about that hex post inside the
castle tower. I was thinking of wrapping it with shiny aluminum tape
so that it would reflect the yellow light and not cause you to see it.
-A connector. Since I tend to remove the castle front somewhat often,
I would put a connector (6 pins) for a quick disconnect.
Edward Cheung CARGPB26
www.edcheung.com
Chris Redinger
Awesome mod & thanks for sharing the info with the rest of us !
dsup...@aol.com
This is a cool mod, and for people wanting to do it, I know where you
can pick up the flickering flame LEDS for about 25 bucks. Most Best
Buy's have a small appliance area, and some of them have a candle water
fountain with flickering orange-ish LEDS to simulate candle light. 25
bucks if I remember right. I hope this helps some of y'all....
Brian
Kansas Pinball
beaver wrote:
> Doug, you touched on a few thought I have about this mod:
> -LEDs. I presume you are wiring the LEDs in series. This will be more
> efficient and ensure the same current (and brightness) in both. My
> current thinking is to wire them to a playfield light, such as one of
> the ramp or catapult ones. This will cause them to turn on and off as
> the rule set is advanced.
> -Tower post. Yes, I was wondering about that hex post inside the
> castle tower. I was thinking of wrapping it with shiny aluminum tape
> so that it would reflect the yellow light and not cause you to see it.
> -A connector. Since I tend to remove the castle front somewhat often,
> I would put a connector (6 pins) for a quick disconnect.
>
> Edward Cheung CARGPB26
> www.edcheung.com
Ed,
Thank you for your post. I definitely value your input on this.
I am afraid I wired the LED's in parallel to aid in the ease of
mounting them into the eyes. I laid the LED's on top of each other and
then soldered their legs together. I then soldered a resistor onto the
postive lead of the LED and added heat-shrink tubing to keep it all
from shorting. I then did the same on the other set for the other
skull. I never noticed a difference in illumination. I will have to go
back and look. I doubt I will worry too much about it as long as it is
not too lopsided.
I am also toying with the idea of hooking the skull LED's to an insert
to coincide with a castle event. As you and I have discussed, I found
that they will also work by simply connecting them to the GI circuit.
The A/C cycle is fast enough to keep the lights on, but the LED's are a
tad dimmer. Definitely workable however. But, where to hook the skulls
is still up in the air. That will probably be finalized once I do more
experiments with the castle in the game.
The tower standoff was a nice punch to the head for me. With the castle
out of the game, you forget what does in certain spots. A test-fit in
the game quickly schooled me on what went in that hole in the bottom of
the castle. As for reflective enhancements, I am also looking at that.
I was thinking of something on the LED itself. LED's are so directional
(meaning they are like a thin beam of light not a wide one), that I
wanted to put something reflective above them to scatter the light. I
might simply add a second flicker circuit and LED instead.
I will definitely put on a connector once things are finalized and I
determine where I will be hooking the LED's up for power. I definitely
want this to be functional.
Thanks for the great input. Definitely some great suggestions for
myself and anyone else thinking of doing this.
Doug
Kansas Pinball
Your on the right track Brian!
After looking for parts to build a flickering LED circuit, I stumbled
upon these flickering LED candles. I figured why re-invent the wheel? I
jumped on Ebay and bought like 6 of them since I didn't know how badly
I would blow them up. Here is an example of them on ebay for a buck
each!
This will all be covered also in the page I am going to make.
Doug
Kansas Pinball
> Your on the right track Brian!
> After looking for parts to build a flickering LED circuit, I stumbled
> upon these flickering LED candles. I figured why re-invent the wheel? I
> jumped on Ebay and bought like 6 of them since I didn't know how badly
> I would blow them up. Here is an example of them on ebay for a buck
> each!
Sorry, grabbed the wrong auction.
Here is the ones for 1.00.
Doug
dsup...@aol.com
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150003115382&category=20569
I saw these when I was at a Best Buy the other night and was trying to
figure out a cool use for the flickering LEDS. None of my current
games have any use for a "fire" look. They could probably be used in a
TON of different ways for the model railroaders in the group.
Brian
beaver
package. It is that dome that focuses the light to a large degree. An
example of what I did to achieve a broader beam is here:
http://www.edcheung.com/album/album06/Pinball/ij2.htm#light
Edward Cheung CARGBP26
www.edcheung.com
Kansas Pinball
beaver wrote:
> Another way to modify the beam of the LED is to alter the dome on the
> package. It is that dome that focuses the light to a large degree. An
> example of what I did to achieve a broader beam is here:
> http://www.edcheung.com/album/album06/Pinball/ij2.htm#light
Hmmm, I may experiment with that method and see what changes it makes.
Since I have you here, I was really not wanting to get into this with
you considering the extremely sizable gap in our technical knowledge
(you being the one with the brain here) but I think for my own
edification, I would like to ask.
When you said the LED's being wired in series would ensure me the same
brightness across both LED's in the skulls. My mentality, other than
ease and compactness, was that in parallel, I figured the same voltage
would be split between the two in parallel. But, in series, the first
LED would get more power than the second due to the voltage drop across
the first LED. Am I wrong in this logic?
Thanks for filling in my feeble knowledge.
Doug
martin
beam.
metallik
> made me feel shitty and frown at my collection.
Dude.. it's a game.. nothing more. It's a pretty fun game, although
it gets old after a while just like any other. I can't imagine a
particular game making me feel "shitty" ..?? (well, maybe Gas Attack..
;)
Why do you focus so much on the value of games and the marketplace,
gouging and whatnot? Just play the machine. Selling MM because you
found it boring or not worth the money is one thing.. selling it
because of "bad vibes" is another.. just seems odd to me.
beaver
certain quantum efficiency from electrons to photons (and vice-versa).
For every electron that is conducted through the chip, a certain number
of photons are generated. This ratio is less than one. The actual
voltage drop across the LED terminals will depend on the temperature of
the chip and other parameters. So voltage is not a reliable way to
control brightness (in communications applications LEDs are driven by
voltage to current sources).
So putting two LEDs in series ensures the same current in both, and
presuming similar sized units, it would be the same brightness. In
addition, since the units are in series, the overall voltage will be
twice as high and current twice as low as the parallel case. This is
why the efficiency is better. The resistor will run cooler.
Edward Cheung CARGPB26
www.edcheung.com
Kansas Pinball
beaver wrote:
> So putting two LEDs in series ensures the same current in both, and
> presuming similar sized units, it would be the same brightness. In
> addition, since the units are in series, the overall voltage will be
> twice as high and current twice as low as the parallel case. This is
> why the efficiency is better. The resistor will run cooler.
Damn...that made sense. Now I am considering re-doing it. Well, I don't
mind really. I love learning new things and I am sure this will help me
somewhere down the road when I least expect it.
So, tonight, I will most likely be filing down the end of the LED in
the tower (couple of positive responses to that for giving a wider
light spread) and looking at re-designing the skull LED's to be in
series. Not that big a deal really. They are held in with hot-glue just
in case I wanted to pull them out easily. No glue used.
Thanks for the response. Informative as usual.
Doug
Ceegary
tower but never got round to it. Good find with the flickering candles, I
had looked into them at model railroad sites. Nice work.
GRY
"Kansas Pinball" <olds...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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Cliffy
--
Cliffy - CARGPB2
A passion for pinball!
http://www.passionforpinball.com