Greetings!
I know extremely little about electronics in general and am looking for a lot of guidance!

I recently purchased a broken down 1987 Winner’s Choice one armed bandit (slot machine) for $1 off trademe (basically New Zealand eBay) in the hopes of not repairing it, but making it look like it works with lights/sounds + basic rotation of the slots.

I have extracted a display board from the front of the machine, of which has a 40 pin socket on one end and a 10 pin socket on the other. I spliced and plugged in some female connector wires into these sockets in the hopes of being able to control the number/letter lights and the other LEDs. I would love for it somehow to spell out ‘Game Over’ as the machine is retired. I believe each light/LED is powered with around 5V/1A.

Can anyone make sense of this board in order to provide power to the lights/LEDs?

Would I be able to somehow hook up an Arduino board to display custom letters/numbers?

Please find attached images of the board. (I apologise if this is nothing to work with; worth a shot)

 

Some of this should help.

alphanumeric led display arduino
https://www.google.com/search?num=2......0i131i67k1j0i67k1j0i20i264k1.0.5GdVhnyZ6nc


This data sheet may show the right pinout.
http://www.kingbrightusa.com/images/catalog/SPEC/PSA08-11SRWA.pdf



That plug on the left with all those wires. Can you tell what other circuit board they went to and take pictures of it. The driver chips will be on that board and you may be able to use them.

 

Here is a basic introduction to the concept of multiplexing data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexed_display

Here is a discussion of your displays:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen-segment_display

You have eleven 16-segment displays multiplexed. Each segment has a current limiting resistor in the two resistor networks, and each display has a common connection for all segments brought out on a separate wire. This accounts for 27 of the 40 wires. Add to this a few for power and/or ground, and that still leaves a few unaccounted for. There may be many pins connected together to interleave ground wires among the LED drive wires.

This display does not have any transistors or other current drivers, so those must be on whatever board it connects to. A photo of the stuff near the connector on that board will help.

An LED has two connections, an anode and a cathode. Each 16-segment display has either 16 anode pins and 1 or 2 pins connected to all cathodes, or 16 cathode pins and 1 or 2 pins connected to all anodes. this can be determined with a DMM if it has a diode check mode. To work out what is called the digit drivers, we need to know if the displays are common-anode or common-cathode. Check the sides of the displays for a part number, you might get lucky.

The GPIO pins of an Arduino can source/sink enough current to see if things are working, but for full brightness you will need at least something to drive the digits. This is because while only one display is on at a time, it might have 7 or more segments lit up simultaneously depending on the character, and an Arduino output cannot drive enough current to bring than many segments up to full brightness.

ak

 

Thankyou for the replies.

I have used my multimeter with the diode check mode and I believe that each display has 16 anode pins and 1-2 pins connected to all cathodes.

I have also included photos of lettering on the sides of the component (hopefully they are of use).

I have traced the 40 pin connector back to the game board, which is slightly rusted around some components, however it looks like the ones directly surrounding the plug are simply dusty. The connection to this board is made through the top left of the board when facing up.

Interesting discussion on the possibility of an Arduino-the brightness of each segment I find is indeed more of a priority than hooking up a way to make custom displays/greetings.

Thanks again

 

photos?

 

photos?

Whoops

 

That is a pretty intense first project. Did you sort it out?

If not and all you want to display is Game Over, you could put those stick on letters on red Plexiglas and spray paint it flat black. Peel the letters off and you can illuminate it from behind and flash it if you like.