Eleco reel LEDs fixed

[drcrippen324]

also make sure that your transformer is of the correct amps as this will afect the leds by burning them out quicker

[websherpa]

The Eleco models with the LED problem are all on original 100/110 volt electronic power supplies I think, no add-on transformer.

[drcrippen324]

ok that one was just a wonderance as i dont know the machine like i said i just recognised the leds i will start digging through my old paper work 2morow for my old companys supplyer would do it now but my other half would go mad at the banging of draws ect at 3am i will post the details as soon as i find them out for you

[Darren]

Let me know ASAP if this works for you.
I have a BEAST SAPP with LED lights out.
Thanks

I still haven't had a chance to get at this yet, and I'm still waiting for the test LED's from mouser (and my replacement reels to experiment on). Drcrippen, it would be helpful to have a reference to the LEDs used in the Eleco machines. I assumed RGB since some of mine only show blue now. The test part I ordered was 604-AAF5060 - RGB Kingbright LED Chameleon Full Color. Once I get them (they sent them by snail mail by mistake) I will be soldering one in as a replacement (and testing the resistors) to see if they work appropriately.

[drcrippen324]

hi as promised i have looked through my paper work and found an exact mach to what we used as i couldent find the supplier but i did have scematics with the component numbers ect on and here is a link to the part with a pic hope this will help they are the RBG modual not RBY
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?...35893&doy=11m1
And here is a pic
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/5966/35893i05qb.jpg

[websherpa]

OK, those are definitely the same ones I ordered from Mouser.com to try out: 604-AAF5060-RGB MFG PN: AAF5060PBESEEVG Chameleon Full Color KingBright LED RGB (Origin: China)

And my mis-shipped order arrived by mail today! Unfortunately for some reason I only ordered 6? So I will only be able to experiment with this order to see if I can get a couple eleco backlights refurbed - possibly this weekend unless I can get some time at night. I managed to mis-order the resistors needed, but I can likely salvage the existing ones if they test ok.

What is interesting is a warning label on the leds: "Notice: PArts are moisture sensetive."

Wish me luck!

[drcrippen324]

hope it works for you if they do they work out at aprox $7.5 each and maplin should shipp if you havent got maplins over there

[websherpa]

hope it works for you if they do they work out at aprox $7.5 each and maplin should shipp if you havent got maplins over there

They cost me US$4.49 in low quantity each, plus a little extra 7% for GST, there is no duty or PST on electronical apparatus, apparently. I did get zinged with the C$5 handling fee by Canada Post but no brokerage fee (which is one of the reasons to ship snail mail).

[fronzdan]

OK guys...I'll add my 2 cents here...I'm a EE by the way, sorry if any of you know all this already. This is probably more than you'll ever want to know about the Eleco reel LEDs. But a bunch of my Eleco reel lights are out and I decided to take a closer look...

The tricolor LEDS were used to get a very bright WHITE light. (Red, Green and Blue, mixed equally = white..three LEDs...3x the brightness) In other applications, designers could probably use these things get different colors by varying the current through each of the three LEDs on the package, but not in the Eleco reels. All three colored LEDs in the package are wired together on the circuit board as far as I can tell. The LEDs here operate as they do in most LED applications...that is, they are all pulled up through a resistor to a certain voltage - in this case I measured 24v. Off/on control is done with an open collector/open drain device on a circuit board somewhere. When the machine wants to turn on a light, they have the open drain sink all the current through the resistor and the LED, which turns it on. Of course this might also be done with a mechanical relay...but that's doubtful.

If you look at one of the reel light circuit boards you only see a four pin connection via ribbon cable. One pin is the 24v which runs on a plane throughout the board. The other three are the open drain controls for each pair (upper, mid and lower) of LED packs. I haven't played the game enough, but apparently it can turn on the upper, mid and lower pairs of LEDs independent of one another.

If your bad LEDs are like mine, they are either very dim, all one color (blue in my case), or just off. The fault is in the LED itself and it's a mechanical issue. If any of you have played around with them you probably noticed if you flex the board and especially pushed on the LED pack themselves, they flicker or might have even come on bright while you poke at it etc. Those that got them to work by reflowing the solder connections were lucky. Heating them stressed the part enough physically so it applied the right force on whatever the intermittent connection problem is inside the package.

Looking at all three of my reel boards it seems like most or all the faulty LEDs were the left one in each pair. That is, if you push on the left LED in a bad pair, they both light up. Not sure why this is. The only thing I know is that the left ones are at the top of the series connection. If that one is faulty, the right one will never get any current. If the left has a weak or intermittant connection to the 24v, the right will as well. Hmm..come to think of it...the left might use the lower resistor..I need to draw out the exact circuit. Anyway, I tried an experiment to bypass the faulty left side LED by jumpering around it. Sure enough the right LED which was previously dead, came on bright and white. This worked on all the bad pairs I tried. So at least on my machine...something causes the left hand LEDs to go flaky.

So what does all this crap mean? Well there's a chance you could just jumper around all the leftmost LEDs and your right ones may light up just fine. You'll at least be able to see light through the reels now.

You can replace the RGB LED and if it has the right specs and pinout it'll work like new. websherpa, I'm also anxious to hear how you make out.

Or you could just yank out the bad LED packs and replace them with a simple and hopefully cheap white LED that'll light with the existing voltage and current.

Tomorrow I'll pull one of the boards again and generate a schematic and figure out if a simple LED exists that is bright enough and that will work. IF anyone is interested (that hasn't already fallen asleep) I can keep you posted on what I find out. Now that drcrippen324 posted the link to the RGB pack's pinout I can make more sense of the board connections.

[websherpa]

No one sleeping here! Then there's a chance that replacing the left most LED may fix the other in the pair (so I'll try replacing one only first before testing).

Thanks for this very useful information. The pinout diagram is also available on the mouser.com board (same LED).

I was already thinking it was a shame that they used these LEDs to produce white light instead of potentially creating a light show (but other than a couple symbols on the reels, most aren't transparent enough to let much light through).

[fronzdan]

Ok I figured out the schematic for the LED board...I'll try posting it later if anyone's interested. It's slightly different than I thought last night. They use the two different resistors so they can run the blue LEDs in each package at a different current than the green and red ones. Looking at the specs for the Kingbright part, each LED has different specs..plus maybe they wanted to tune the "whiteness" a bit. Each left/right pair of LED packs are connected in series (blues in series, all the reds and greens in series) and looking at the pinout of the RGB's you are getting, websherpa, I agree, they will work!

There are a bunch of white LEDs available that should do the trick as well...and you can even go brighter (by a lot if you want). I just ordered a few different kinds to check them out. Some will be twice as bright as the originals using the same current. The good thing is, they are only about a dollar a piece.

It's strange how the originals are so prone to failure. I guess the note that they are "moisture sensitive" is a hint. Maybe the seal on the little clear lens leaks with time and vibration causing problems inside the thing.

Glad we're nailing this down cuz I have another Eleco coming soon.

[Darren]

Thanks, let me know how you make out with the LED lights.
If they work I will have to get some for my Beast Sapp.
Thanks again and GOOD LUCK !!!

Cheers
Darren

No one sleeping here! Then there's a chance that replacing the left most LED may fix the other in the pair (so I'll try replacing one only first before testing).

Thanks for this very useful information. The pinout diagram is also available on the mouser.com board (same LED).

I was already thinking it was a shame that they used these LEDs to produce white light instead of potentially creating a light show (but other than a couple symbols on the reels, most aren't transparent enough to let much light through).

[noobie]

Some will be twice as bright as the originals using the same current.

Is this a good thing? On my Osaru no Gokuu, if the lights were much brighter they might show through the reels in places other than at the 7s, which would make eye shooting more difficult.

Thanks for the excellent work on this, BTW!

[websherpa]

Well there's nothing like soldering a 6-DIP LED to remind you how your eyesight has changed over the last 20 years....

..so far no go though. I only had time to replace one LED in a pair before I got baraged by the afterschool crowd and when tested in the machine, it went from originally a very dimly lit pair to not lit at all pair.

I tested all of the resistors (in one Reel Light assembly) and their values read fine, the solder joints all seemed good on al the components. It's possible that I detect a little bit of discolouration on the led anode/cathode metal leads under the water clear lense though (it varies from LED to LED, again possibly indicating that the LEDs have taken on moisture over time.

The new Kingbright LEDs themselves are very very similar to the originals in all but one apparent respect, the anode/cathode bits inside are slightly thicker in the originals than the new ones. Otherwise they're the same colour, same size, etc. The polarity mark is the same, so I'm nearly certain I put it in correct, I used a grounding strap, I tried not to heat the leads too long (though I didn't heat sink the chip leads which I might try doing next time).

I don't know how to calculate what the voltage on the pins should be (or would be with the resistors), but the specs on the new LEDs give typical voltage ranges from 2 to 3.7 depending on which color, and I don't have a capacitance tester to test the capacitance of the original LEDs (which are given as B110pF, R25 pF and G45 pF).

I will get a chance some time tomorrow or the weekend to complete putting in the pair of new LEDs, and re-check it.

[fronzdan]

Damn that sucks...I thought for sure it'd work on the first try. Well maybe it was just a coincidence that many of mine only had bad units on the left side.

The way the board is wired, the blue LEDS are tied in series with the larger resistor....I think it's 820 ohms? (I left the schematic I sketched out at work)

24v -- 820ohm -- R blue LED -- L blue LED -- open drain/gnd

So if the circuit is turned on i.e. the machine is trying to light them, you should see something like 3.7v across each of the blue LEDs (across pins 1 & 6 of each DIP package). So the current through the Blue LED branch will be (24 - (3.7 + 3.7))/820 = 20mA or so. That is more than enough to light them. You can go through and measure the voltage across the 820ohm, it should be around 16.6v. Then see if you get 3.7 across each of the blue diodes. If not, current isn't flowing and you should swap out the other LED it probably has a flaky connection internal. I'll try and post a schematic tomorrow.

Incidentally the parallel branch for the other LEDs is (trying to remember):

24v -- 780ohm -- right grn -- right red -- left grn -- left red -- open drain/gnd

[fronzdan]

Is this a good thing? On my Osaru no Gokuu, if the lights were much brighter they might show through the reels in places other than at the 7s, which would make eye shooting more difficult.

Thanks for the excellent work on this, BTW!

Oh, good point, that would really screw up any shooting.

[musky]

The Eleco models with the LED problem are all on original 100/110 volt electronic power supplies I think, no add-on transformer.

Ahhh, but you are running them on 120volts

[websherpa]

Ahhh, but you are running them on 120volts

Rephrased: I thought our voltage was 110volts (I haven't stuck a meter in the wall)? Isn't the same both North and South of the border? I'm pretty certain I've read that anything rated 110v can be run from 100 - 130 volts

[fronzdan]

I think it depends on which way the water spins when you flush the toilet.

[fronzdan]

Here's a schematic of one L/R pair of LEDs. The 24v connection for each pair is on a plane on the PCB and comes from pin 1 on the 4 pin connector, if I remember correctly. Pins 2 - 4 on that connector are routed to the "negative" side of the schematic - one to each pair.

http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/2...ghts4ig.th.jpg