LED OCD Boards (for inserts)
A Comet Pinball exclusive, our LED OCD boards are specifically designed to solve the issue with jittery LED lighting in games that use fading effects in the inserts. (These boards do not address a similar issue with General Illumination, however we have a separate line of OCD boards for that purpose.)
The subtle fading in and out of inserts is pretty neat when you have incandescent bulbs, but can be really gross with LEDs installed. Pinball LEDs have a difficult time fading smoothly from bright to dim because they change brightness much more quickly than an incandescent. The games weren't designed to send signals frequently enough for smooth transitions with LED bulbs.
Our LED OCD boards will eliminate the choppy steps between different levels of brightness, restoring the soothing transitions and fading effects that your game was designed to dazzle you with.
The most notable offenders are Lord of the Rings and The Simpsons Pinball Party which use fading effects during gameplay. You'll also especially notice this choppiness during attract mode on modern Stern machines that originally shipped with incandescent lighting. In fact, most games from System 11 and onward that came with incandescent lighting will see some kind of improvement. Check out the videos below demonstrating the difference.
In addition to smoother lighting transitions with your inserts, you can re-program the board (through a PC application with a GUI), to control the brightness of individual lamps. (Although this is an optional extra step for those who really like to obsess over their lighting. All our OCD boards are designed to be plug and play without any modifications).
If you purchase one of these boards, we recommend using bulbs that are not advertised as non-ghosting. The non-ghosting bulbs will thwart some of the advantages of the OCD board, so stick with the standard bulbs.
These products work great right out of the box without any customization and the vast majority of people choose to go that route. However, if you want to get picky, you can tweak the levels of each brightness step, of each individual bulb, but to do so, you'll need a Mini-USB to USB cable (male to male). Most people will have one of these laying around (most commonly used in charging electronic devices), but if you don't, you can purchase one from us.
Here you'll find more detailed technical support.
Stern
Designed for SAM/Whitestar games only. Detailed compatibility list.
See it in action in: Tron.
Bally/Williams
Used in WPC Fliptronics 1 and later games. Detailed compatibility list.
See it in action in: Twilight Zone
Williams System 11 - Data East - Sega