Illuminated Score Board Project

[Trebeck]

Hey all,

Well I have been thinking about this for a while now and I have enough spare parts to go ahead with it.  I have a bunch of buddies who want to see their names on the high score list but MAME won't do this easily, as we all know.  So I have begun drawing up a design for it.
I looked around the internet for what Illuminated signs look like and how they are built.  I think I have a good idea of what I want.  Basically the top unit will have perhaps 4 white LED's pointing down through the plexi which are controlled by a LEDWiz I have sitting around.  The LEDWiz will be housed in the unit itself and be connected by the USB cable which will then run to the PC for power.  I was thinking I may have to diffuse the light a bit or the beams may be too focused.
The bottom will have a routed half circle tray for the markers and maybe a hook for a cloth to erase scores.
This is all in the drawing stages so I am fully open to ideas and suggestions!   

PS I also realized that writing on the plexi will make it bend unless I have a back for it.... hmmmm

[SavannahLion]

PS I also realized that writing on the plexi will make it bend unless I have a back for it.... hmmmm

If it's mounted on the wall, does it really matter?

[Trebeck]

What I mean is the way I have it designed now it wouldn't be flush against the wall.  But there's no other way to do it so I've been modifying my  plans a bit.  I was worried that it would be tough to point the LED's straight down into the thin plexi if it was against the wall.  But now I found some thicker stuff that will work well.
Update coming soon.

[Trebeck]

Well here's the update.

It's been going quite well so far without any real snags.
I assembled the top piece with some left over MDF I had laying around.  I thought 3/4 MDF assembled would be big and bulky especially because I had to shove an LEDWiz in there.  But it turned out not too bad at all.  I was kind of hoping the mitre saw angels would come visit me but I was stuck with my skill saw.



Like I mentioned, I wanted the plexi to be against the wall so when you wrote on it the unit wouldn't jiggle around knocking on the wall.  So I went ahead and sunk the top few inches into the MDF.  Using my router to slice in nice and even.



Now of course I had to secure the plexi to the top and bottom unit so I grabbed my drill press and made a nice set of sunken screw holes.  This wouldn't have worked with a thinner plexi.



Now I had to get power to the damn thing.  Well, it's going to be on the wall right next to my cabinet so I went down to a local PC store and got a 12 ft USB cord that will run right down to the floor and into the cabinet for power.  Do I have an extra USB outlet?  No.
I drilled a 3/4" hole in the side of the top piece after making a pilot hole to see where I was headed.  There's a little more room than I would have liked but it will help with any cooling I guess.



For the bottom piece I just used a 3/4" chunk of MDF and sliced a "pen ditch" using a new router bit.  Worked like a charm.  Just then the Gods of amateur wood working yelled at me telling me not to use the same length screws I used for the top.  They would poke right through into the ditch.



Also, wrapping a large drill bit in some fine sandpaper was a nice discovery.



I just finished slapping on the first coat of paint and began to think of how I'm going to suspend the LED's to point down into the plexi.  I went to my local art store and got a water based white marker.  The kind bars use to write on menu signs.  I was a bit nervous so I tried it on a chunk of test plexi and it works great.  I will write down the brand on my next post.

 

I have created a graphic and am going to get my buddy to print out a sticker that I can slap on the front of the top piece.  Should be rockin.

More to come!

[Ginsu Victim]

What's the point of the LEDwiz? Seems like a waste of a good unit if you're only using it to power the lights and nothing more. Could you explain your ideas for using it further?

[HaRuMaN]

What's the point of the LEDwiz? Seems like a waste of a good unit if you're only using it to power the lights and nothing more. Could you explain your ideas for using it further?

Yeah, if you're gonna use a perfectly good LEDwiz, you might as well spring for some RGB LED's and make some color changing scheme, or something.

[Deefish]

Hmm, yea the LEDWIZ does give you options, like having the board do animations when your machine is in attract mode so that it draws your attention to the scores. Maybe then have it go always on when playing, although it might be a bit much. Light seizures!

If you do not use the LED WIZ, I would use a long Cold Cathode light (like these:  http://www.xoxide.com/dual-white-cold-cathode-kit.html ) that you can connect to the pc with plain wiring to the power supply. They put out great light, especially the white ones.

Love the scoreboard project, I may have to copy yours and build one too. I currently have an old whiteboard with lines on it for scores.

Cant wait to see the finished project!

Cheers,
Deefish

[Trebeck]

Ginsu: The white marker shows up real bright as it is but I wanted to taint the white with a bit of illuminated color when the lights are out.  I'm not sure how effective it will be in the daytime.  Really depends on how many LED's I use I guess.

I do have a few RGB's left over in my kit so I'll give those a shot but on a very very slow rotations.  My cab already has too many lights on it and I didn't want to overdue something that's dangerously close to being overdone

Also, my buddy told me about UV LED's the other day.  That would really make the white explode!

[Trebeck]

Here's the marker I've used so far.  Left a test score a few days ago and it wiped off very easily.



Tonight I put on the first coat of matte black spray paint, and I was about 2 seconds from applying it on the wrong side. 
Cleaned the surface completely and masked the other side with paper just in case.  I think I will do 2 coats then stick on some black construction paper to protect the paint from being scraped by the wall.  Oh, also I was careful not to spray paint down on the top edge.  This is where the LED's are going to be shining down on and they need a clean path.




Next post: The LED challenge.

[Uncle Monkey]

sweet concept man, should be cool, nice sig too btw

[Trebeck]

Luigi's all over the place!

Well I failed on the first attempt.  I spray painted the back black and it has sucked up all the led light.  Damnit.  I think my next attempt is to shine the led's on the front of the plexi instead of trying to go through it.

Here's the sticker going on the front:

[Trebeck]

Another update

I went and bought UV LEDs and slapped them in.  They do nothing.  They are purple not UV. 
Also, getting two LEDWizs to work together is proving more difficult than I thought.  Seems windows will only work with one at a time.  I plug them both in and I hear the signature USB sound but still nothing.  Maybe I can suck up to Arzoo for help.

Update

Thanks to Arzoo I have found the problem.  My LEDWiz units were bought separately about a year in between.  This means both are ID#1 and I'm screwed.  So I'm going to put it back where I stole it from.  Now I'm going to free up some slots in my first LEDWiz and wire the score board directly up to it.  I just hope  the power can travel up to 10 feet.
My admin buttons were RGB but I think I'm going to go back to white as it looks better.  This will free up almost 8 slots for me.

More work damnit 

[arzoo]

Trebeck,
Couple of thoughts - if you were able to sell or swap one of the ID#1 LEDWiz's for an ID#2 unit, you could use LEDBlinky to control a second animation just for the illuminated board. Or - ditch the LEDWiz/LEDs and use a black light with neon color markers on the black background.

[Trebeck]

Hey Arzoo,

Thanks for your help I appreciate it.
I have made a few changes and the LED's will be getting it's power from my existing Wiz.  Next step is to go to my local store and see if I can find a way of cleaning up my 5 wires coming out of the unit.  Some kind if insulation wrap or something.

[severdhed]

Hey Arzoo,

Thanks for your help I appreciate it.
I have made a few changes and the LED's will be getting it's power from my existing Wiz.  Next step is to go to my local store and see if I can find a way of cleaning up my 5 wires coming out of the unit.  Some kind if insulation wrap or something.

what about using a bundled wire that has 5 or more separate strands in it...like Cat5?  one single run of cat 5 would get you 8 wires to work with, which should be more than enough

[Trebeck]

That would be perfect.  God knows I have a ton of the stuff lying around.
So running a current through Cat is safe? 

[Encryptor]

That would be perfect.  God knows I have a ton of the stuff lying around.
So running a current through Cat is safe? 

Sure it is. We have devices that are POE - Power Over Ethernet and they work fine.


Encryptor

[Trebeck]

Thanks to Encryptor  and severdhed for the suggestion.  I grabbed an extra cat5 and used that for powering the unit.
So what I ended up doing was drilling 4 new holes at a slight angle.  This is so the LED's would be pointed toward the plexi and not just straight down.  At first it wasn't exactly the way I envisioned it lighting up but when the sun went down it made a big difference.  Now I have to create my own animations because the LED's blink a little to fast for me.
I then had a buddy print up a sticker for me which I places on the front.  Looks boss.









The great thing is that my friends have turned into little Billy Mitchells.  The arcade is being used more than ever.

Well this was a fun side project that compliments my little games corner.  If anyone has any questions for me feel free to give me a shout.

[foleykoontz]

This has gotten me to want to build one now but try a slightly different way. I found a Bud Light sign in my garage that had 1/2 " plexi with one of those skinny lights shining through it so that the graphics would light up. I was thinking of doing this idea with a bigger scale by getting about the same size everything you did but center the plexi and have the light focused in the middle instead of shining on the outside. Anybody know if this would work? The main problem I see is that the graphics for the sign were in the middle of the plexi and with my idea I would write on top like this version.

[foleykoontz]

If you do not use the LED WIZ, I would use a long Cold Cathode light (like these:  http://www.xoxide.com/dual-white-cold-cathode-kit.html ) that you can connect to the pc with plain wiring to the power supply. They put out great light, especially the white ones.

Do you know if you can wire these to go into a straight plug instead of through a computer? I wasn't planning on incorporating a computer with this but those lights are so cheap and what I need.

[shardian]

Do you know if you can wire these to go into a straight plug instead of through a computer? I wasn't planning on incorporating a computer with this but those lights are so cheap and what I need.

You just need an appropriately sized wall-wart.