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LED OCD board review

windoesnot

windoesnot

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So I got my LED OCD board from Comet pinball on Monday. Took about 10 days to arrive from when I ordered it, of course I got hit with a Royal Mail handling fee and small import charge too.

Put it in my Lord of the Rings and once I managed to fix the issue I was having with the lamp matrix was able to have a proper look at what the OCE board is actually doing.

Installing was a breeze, it’s held onto the back box via 4 sticky holders, 1 at each corner of the board and seems firm enough. It also came with some screws and screw posts for mounting into a SAM back box. All you do is remove J12 & 13 off the driver board and connect to J3 & 4 on the OCD board. Then link the provided cables from J1 and 2 on the OCD board back onto J12 and 13 on the driver board.

The LED’s I’m using are the premium 2SMD LED’s from pinball-led.co.uk for the vast majority of inserts and also the green PoTD and red mode indicator lamps. Am using some basic 1 bulb LED’s in the 3 film title inserts and a colour changer behind the palantir globe. All of the GI are incandescent bulbs. We all know that most non-ghosting LED’s in Stern machines will still ghost slightly and whilst the OCD board isn’t connected there is the expected level of ghosting, not glaring by any means but noticeable if you look for it. Also the LED’s have the usual sharp on/off contrast too.

With the board connected, all of these issues are completely gone. There is absolutely zero ghosting and there is also a far more gradual brightness level increase and decrease, just like how incandescent bulbs work. For further proof, look at the videos without it and with it:



Just to give an overview on my LOTR lighting, all inserts have LED's, all of which are from the Premium 2SMD LOTR kit from pinball-led.co.uk. The film title inserts (blue) are regular single lamp LED's. All of the GI lamps are coloured incandescent bulbs, mix of green, red, yellow and blue. The white inserts are not as glaring in person as they look on the videos, I'm not exactly using a top end camera here :)

There is also a good length USB cable provided in the box which is long enough to reach from the board to the coin door via the cabinet. This allows you to connect a PC to the board and using the software, you can adjust the light levels of all lamps in the lamp matrix. The software is a bit basic in terms of the interface but does the job that it needs to. Have not tinkered with the different levels yet as the default settings already look great. The default setting has a maximum brightness of 85/100 set.

Yes it’s not a cheap solution ($139 for the board plus $30 shipping to the UK) but the results are absolutely fantastic.

Pros:

Easy to install
Removes all ghosting
Makes LED’s act like incandescents with the gradual on / off levels
Adjustable brightness levels with the software
Works with both Whitestar & SAM systems (different ones for WP systems are available)

Cons:

Cost of shipping (unavoidable)
Uses a 20mm fuse, so you’ll not likely have any to hand unless you own a WPC95 machine
 
Nice review, good result too. Just one correction though, it is possible to buy LEDs that don't ghost in sterns at all.
 
I'm thinking about trying one of these, is there no way of getting one in Europe?
 
Carl Spiby said:
That looks ace. Is this the only real way to avoid ghosting on Whitestar machines?
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Don't forget that it'll even make a difference when your LEDs don't ghost to begin with with how it makes the lights fade on and off, rather than full on and full off
 
£8 handling fee and about £4 import / VAT

Annoyingly enough an order from Marcos that arrived today for only £20 had the same :mad:
 
i like how you put the two videos next to each other doing the same thing, makes comparisons easier.

yes the bottom video looks better, makes those LEDs look almost as good as incandescents.
 
Got one of these in Spiderman and Shadow, they look great - you get the rich colours of LEDs, plus the fade effect and all the other led benefits like low heat, low power, high reliability. Only problem is the cost as already discussed above.

Works MUCH better with standard LEDs, not the non-ghosting types.
 
I am going to have a tinker tonight with the brightness levels of the 9 round character name inserts in the middle of the playfield, they are a little bit bright for my liking so will dim them a little and see how it looks.
 
mark9 said:
Anyone know how to get the WMS/Bally version?
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I used a forwarding address with Shipito.com to get several higher tax value bits from the states back to the UK.

Not sure if i'd recommend them over just buying direct, lots of admin faff, but in the case of B/W LED OCD Herg wont sell them to the UK market (for reasons i'm not clear on, except for the GI OCD - which is 110V), so it's one of your only options.
 
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Have done some tinkering with the brightness level of the lamps and its both very easy to do and you can also using the software control a single lamp at a time with all others off to see the different levels at work.

Have toned down the brightness of the the 9 round character inserts in the lower middle from 85% max to 55% max and its better now. Also toned down slightly the 'Lock' and 'Gollum Multiball' green inserts and increased the brightness of 'Mode Start' and 'Destroy The Ring'. The latter will be even brighter when I put bendy LED's in the #44 and #89 underneath it :)
 
Monkeyboypaul said:
I used a forwarding address with Shipito.com to get several higher tax value bits from the states back to the UK.

Not sure if i'd recommend them over just buying direct, lots of admin faff, but in the case of B/W LED OCD Herg wont sell them to the UK market (for reasons i'm not clear on, except for the GI OCD - which is 110V), so it's one of your only options.
Click to expand...

might be something to do with them using lead in there solder
and not rhos compliant
 
rockhouse said:
might be something to do with them using lead in there solder
and not rhos compliant
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quite possibly, hadn't thought of that. I believe Art at Comet will resell them if you ask nicely too. Also, the GI OCD has a 50HZ rom available now, so it would work in Europe. Not tested myself.
 
I've ordered 2 Stern boards from Comet, not arrived yet. Told me to get WMS version you need to order from Herg and get him to ship to Comet, who then ships them for an extra 25 dollars on top of normal charges. The total price is getting silly then though.
 
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