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Scared Stiff LEDs. Some stay on?

bethamari

bethamari

Registered
5Years
Joined
Oct 16, 2016
Messages
422
Location
Harrogate
Hi all,

We got a playfield LED kit for our SS, as it was looking a bit dark in between Metallica and MM.

We wanted to keep it quite natutal and not loud, just brighten it up a bit.

However we've found that some of the new LEDs are staying on all the time. This happened with the shoot again, some of the tales, The Lab light, the deadhead light to the left (but not the top row) and then the number 9 and nunber 6 on the stiffometer.

Putting the original bulbs back in, they work as they should.

Is there a reason why some of them would stay on when using LEDs?


Cheers!
 
Sounds like ghosting to me. With normal incandescent lamps the game can supply a small amount of power to them without them lighting, this means it can light them quicker and also do fancy fading effects. LEDs light with any amount of power which is why you see them lit when you don't expect them to be. Think about them as lamps being analogue and LEDs being digital :thumbs:

On B/W games like scared stiff you can replace the ROMs with ones patched to help prevent ghosting (@Paul can help you with these) and you can use the more expensive non ghosting LEDs. Be aware that this isn't a guarantee that you will have no ghosting but it does help a lot :)
 
Ahh okay! That makes sense, thanks for the ezplanation :)

We've got the Premium 2 SMD LED set for SS from Pinball-LED. If we swap the bulbs over then it still happens, seems to just be set holders that it happens for and the rest seem okay.
 
Putting the original bulbs back in, they work as they should.
Click to expand...

If we swap the bulbs over then it still happens,
Click to expand...

@bethamari can you clarify? Does it work fine with the original lamps and the 2nd quote meant you tried different LEDs in the same holder and they all behaved the same. Or does it not work when you put the original lamps back in?
 
ronsplooter said:
@bethamari can you clarify? Does it work fine with the original lamps and the 2nd quote meant you tried different LEDs in the same holder and they all behaved the same. Or does it not work when you put the original lamps back in?
Click to expand...
Sorry if that post wasn't clear!

We tried swapping the holder, for another LED in the kit and for some spare LEDs but it made no difference - they'd stay on if LED.

Swapping back to the original bulb fixes the issue. So now we've roughly got 80% of the playfield as LED and the others back as the original bulbs so that they work properly
 
Ok cool, so sounds like ghosting rather than an issue with the lamp matrix :thumbs: You should definitely try a patched ROM and see what difference that makes :)
 
chris b said:
just buy some good comet non ghosting leds
i fit a patched rom in a totan friday and it made no difference to the ghosting
Click to expand...
Is there a decent UK place to buy those from?

We were considering swapping at some point, some of the ones in the kit are coloured and I think we'd prefer to stick with white/warm white so it looks classic - just not as dark as the old bulbs were :)
 
Or buy an LED OCD board. This will also give you back the cool fading effect of the original bulbs.
 
Hi all,

Just an update - we tried an updated ROM (cheers Paul!) but unfortunately this didn't make a difference and it doesn't sound/look like this is a traditional ghosting/flickering issue.

With LEDs, all the lamps in a certain row in the matrix stay on which is Red-Black J125-2 Q108. In attract mode they react correctly in a certain sweep but not in the other. In play they are just always on, even if they shouldn't be.

With incandescent bulbs back in they react quickly.

Had some issues around the time of changing the ROM, spider stopped spinning and different row of the matrix turned off completely. This seemed to sort itself after switching back to the original ROM and a bit of time.

Any ideas what could be causing this particular matrix to stick on? At the moment we're having to use a mix of incandescent and LED to avoid it, which means that we can't get a consitent look/brightness
 
Exactly what I thought - strangely acting transistor....

Couldn't remember - is it just a single transistor on these, or is it a pair, one feeding the other. I seem to remember a larger feeding a smaller - or was I getting confused?? (I was up at 7am and this was 150 miles in and 4pm, with 200+ and 6 hours to go!!!) :)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 
I think it is two Paul. A small driver transistor, then the power transistor. There are one or two diodes and a resistor in there as I recall. I no longer have any WPC games so can't check.
It is a pretty straightforward circuit.
 
Hi all,

We didn't manage to get to the bottom of this issue ourselves unfortunately.

We tried an updated ROM earlier this year, but that didn't work. Paul thought it may be a transistor issue.

Is there anyone locally to us who's familiar with SS/transistors who would be able to come and take a look and hopefully fix it for us please?

We'd really like to get all LEDs in, as we're stuck having to have some as incandescent bulbs until we can resolve them being stuck on.


Cheers!
 
lol - Pinball lingo - the stiff in the coffin -anyone outside of Pinball would
Be like WTF? :D - it’s always the stiff in the coffin of course! :)
 
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