Inside a casino slot-machine topper (top sign)

This video starts with a strobing alert because at certain times this uh panel will start strobing all its LEDs together. Although as it is, you can see there's quite a lot of flicker because it is actually multiplexing LEDs. So, it can drive 32 LEDs independently. There goes the strobing. This is off the top of a gaming machine from a casino and I thought it'd be interesting to get one to take apart. So, let's go back to the bench and take it apart right now. So, now we're back at the bench. You can see it is just a little bit big for the bench, but that's okay. Once we're inside, it'll be more manageable. And you can also see the LEDs are very flickery. Now, watch this. If I turn this off and on again, you'll see it displays a little code in LEDs. These ones up here. There's also No, I'm going to have to show you this. Hold on. I'll turn it off and on again. One LED over here and three up here. Do you think this is a code for this software? I wonder. Uh, super strobeby mode. Let me show you another of these panels. And this one has a cute pirate theme. And look got all the treasure there. Do you know whose treasure it is? It's yours cuz you put it in his slot machine. But that's okay. You had fun. Okay, let's get one of these open. So, on the inside, we've got these little clips here holding down an acrylic panel with the printing on it. And we've got the shaped circuit boards. quite nice really in there are four identical looking ones by the look of it. Are they identical? No, they're not quite. Uh there's two similar looking ones, but there's also an earth connection that goes onto this terminal here and earth's the chromework of the game. This again is important. Let me show you what's under this. And when we get inside, we find a few interesting things. There's the LED control card. We've got a 12vt electronic ballast and we've got a traditional fluorescent tube as the backlight. That's quite interesting because this whole unit runs off 12vts. So, this is a 12vt power supply. Interesting given that a recent video I was making was about a 12vt power supply for one of these tubes. But, um, we've also got a little extra wiring loom here that is designed to be stuffed out the base. And there's a matching connector that goes to here because there's a bung at the top that allows you to put the uh attendant lights in the top that give indications of the status of the machine if it's working or not. Let me unplug this supply and we'll explore the circuit board. So, I shall zoom down the circuit board for this. It's a bit cluttered with these. I could pull these connectors off. I don't know if that's really going to help much, though. It's not much without actually removing them completely. So, I shall zoom down onto this, right? And just point out the bits of the circuit board and we'll actually pop the cover off this as well. [snorts] So, zoom in. The circuit board has a microcontroller. It's got an option, a jumper position here. [snorts] It's got uh a voltage regulator somewhere in its vicinity. Where are the capacitors? Where am I going to see the voltage regulator? This might be the regulator over here. I'm not sure. It's got a incircuit zero programming connector, a button for selecting various modes, and then it's got the uh drive circuitry for the LEDs, which is two ULN 283s, which are uh Darlington drivers. Is that right? ULN 283. Well, it's printed on ULN 283A. [snorts] And they can each drive half an amp. But one of them is being used to drive uh some pairs of transistors here that are actually operating as uh they're switching to the positive rail. And each of these connectors has uh parallel connection to one of the uln3s. It's eight output lines with resistors. And then the positive to each of these is switched by uh these other transistors driven by that uln3. being casino equipment, it has its circuit diagram uh online. So, we can take a look at that. Um, but let's take the cover off this. The tube driver is actually quite complex. It starts off with a supply coming in here. I don't think there's a rectifier. I think it's just fixed polarity. We've got a fuse and then we've got an inductor and on the back we've got two transistors and that suggests this is probably a Royer oscillator. Uh, and then the output has the multitaps going through capacitors that limit the current through the tube, but also ration current uh through the heaters on the end to actually make sure the tube is a good long life. Looks a fairly decent chunky power supply. Taking a look at the cover on that, it says Suzap, which is the manufacturer of these units. Uh, big supplier to the casino, uh, entertainment industry. Um, I'll provide a link to their website. In fact, largely because it also has the circuit diagram on it for this as part

of the instruction guide for using the whole topper. But in the side of this, it's actually got chin tech. I guess that might be the original manufacturer. And the whole thing was encased in this sort of plasticized card just to keep it all secure and safe inside. Here is this circuit board. It turns out this is also used for power marshalling. the power comes in and then it appears to skip back out and go to that light. Um, and then there's the connectors which are keyed. They've actually keyed all the positions so the connectors can only go in one uh order and that's then driving the uh LEDs. Interesting. Now I see that A there is the F second pin. Uh B is the third pin. C is the fourth pin. And then D is the fifth pin along. And there's the microcontroller and the uh level shifters as you'll see in the schematic although I'm not sure well the schematica will show because it's very thin. It's not the bold cliy uh schematic. It is the official one. Okay, let's take a look at Oh, there's the regulator position but they've not populated it. They've bridged past that. I wonder if it's a regulated supply out to a 12vt regulator, but instead they've probably just got another little low voltage regulator over here that says U5. I'm guessing that may be the regulator just for this chip, the microcontroller. Okay, let's take a look at the schematic. So, it's sideway vision time [snorts] because this is actually uh part of a PDF, the maintenance and sort of operation uh PDF and it contains the layout of the circuit board plus the full schematic. Let's zoom in on this a little bit. Yeah, this is very thin lines. That's a bit disappointing. But you can download this whole PDF and you can take a look at the schematic if you're interested. But here's what it is. There's the power coming and looping back out again. That's those two connectors. That's those two connectors there. And uh it's going to the 5V regulator for the microcontroller. That's a 5V regulator. Uh let me just double check that is the 5V regulator by reading the number on it which says N MC301. Is that Hold on. Is that the regulator? Is it that? Uh one moment. I'm just going to check that. Okay, so that is a voltage regulator. This little component called an MC331 is not actually shown in the schematic. I cannot see that on the schematic. Maybe I'm looking right past it. I wonder if it's another regulator or a reset chip or something like that. Strange. Anyway, uh there's the two uln3s coming from the microcontroller. This one only has four lines used and that is used via these uh PNP transistor drivers with level shifters. Well, they're actually arranged as Darlington's h. This is acting as a level shifter then, but they are pulling one of the lines down at a time and they're basically scanning along. When they do so, the microcontroller sends data, eight bits of data out through this one. It buffers up. There's the resistors that limit the current. That's those resistors there. And they [snorts] drive all the LEDs. They're combed along these. So as it scans along, it basically presents the eight bits of data for each section of LEDs as they get illuminated. And that's more or less it. So it's an interesting thing. I'll just get this out the way. So an interesting thing with some interesting surprises inside it. Now I did mention earlier on that there was a specific reason the earthwire going into this even though it's just 12vt DC. Everything all the metal work in these machines gets connected to ground so that it creates an equipotential shell around the machine. Otherwise, if some used a high voltage zapper on the chromework and it wasn't like that, it would find its way back through the LEDs that could spark onto the leads and then it could affect the 12vt circuit and it could crash the machine and make it behave erratically. And it's to proect protect against high voltage sparking onto the machines and also RF energy. These things often have a antenna wire inside them as well. And if you try to use a jammer on them, they will set off a loud alarm and they'll flash a beacon to show that tampering has been detected. So that's ultimately one of the main reasons that all the meta work in these uh seemingly low voltage areas is uh grounded. It's connected to a common earth. But that's it. Interesting card. Intriguing. Not what I was expecting. I thought the LEDs were going to be driven directly and not multiplexed. But again, it's the nature of the arcade industry that a lot of the uh LEDs and lamps in them are multiplexed. But neat and especially that it's still using a fluorescent tube inside for the illumination of the graphics. So, if you got one of these

you can theoretically get custom graphics made and you can fit them in because it does give the dimensions of the uh acrylic panel, but you could also take the panel out and take it to a suitable place and get custom graphics made if you so desired. Interesting stuff.