LP Club Box Extension Socket Pinout?

[griffindm]

Hi,

I am looking for the extension light pinouts and socket type for the LP club scoring box (3-wpn version). I am getting tired of hearing other clubs refer to them as the "sucky boxes", as their sound and lights are no where as pronounced as most other boxes. I have already added LED extensions to some SG boxes, so it should not be too much of a leap to add them to the LP's. I think (old minds can be deceiving here), that the socket is unpowered and I will need some sort of external power to drive the LED's, but that will not be a problem. I could find no reference to this pinout using the Search function here, and I did not see info at the Leon Paul UK website, either in the company site or the associated forum.

Yes I know that LP has extension lights available, but for the price of those I could probably buy a new machine elsewhere with score and timing as well.

Thanks,

Dave

[SJCFU#2]

You could try asking Brtech (at one point he was compiling a list of all of the different pin-outs). Or you can simply open up the box and trace the lines on the circuit board from the individual tabs where the 5-pin DIN socket is soldered to the board back to where they connect with the individual lamps (the extension light socket works in parallel with the four main lights). IIRC the center pin of the 5-pin DIN socket connects to the common +12 volt DC source for all the lights, the two pins on either side of the center pin are connected to the returns (grounds) for the white lights and the outermost two pins are connected to the returns for the colored lights.

I would definitely be concerned about driving anything more than an optocoupler controller through the extension light socket while still driving the original incandescent bulbs (I once overloaded the transistor array used to drive the lights on a machine from a different manufacturer - having had to replace that transistor array I'd rather not have to do it again). However replacing the incandescent bulbs with screw-in LED's could very well reduce the load on those transistors to the point where it would be possible to drive a set of LED extension lights directly from the machine, similar to a SG machine, without having to worry about overloading the transistors.

[griffindm]

No more incandescent bulbs for me. The low power requirements and long life of the LEDs make that a non-brainer.

Interesting on the pinouts, if you are correct, in that both the LP and the SG machines work with a common positive rather than a common ground, though if the socket is unpowered it really does not matter.

I'm think of adapting my SG design for this, and using a battery for the power source. I need to check the voltage tolerance of the 12V LED's I used for those, to see if I could drive them with a 9V.

I'm thinking of a little wood stand that the LP club box sits on that mates with the socket and supports the LED's above and to the sides of the box itself.

I assume from the 5-pin versus the 8-pin on the SG, that the LP design cannot repeat sound. A pity as the LP boxes are a little puny in their sound output.

Dave G.

[SJCFU#2]

I assume from the 5-pin versus the 8-pin on the SG, that the LP design cannot repeat sound. A pity as the LP boxes are a little puny in their sound output.

Actually it wouldn't be that difficult to wire up a piezo cell in parallel with the extension lights (just need a bank of diodes to prevent current from circling back). In fact one of the first modifications I made to my own LP box was replacing the original buzzer (which was only working intermittently) with a 73 dB piezo cell wired to the solder connections for the extension light socket. This not only resulted in a more reliable audio signal, but it also made it last long enough to be heard (apparently LP had tied the signal duration to the lock-out timing - unfortunately with the new timings the audio signal was maybe one-half of a second for foil and in saber it was barely even a "bz").

The downside is that now there's no way to cut out the sound while fencers are changing weapons short of either switching the machine off or switching it to "epee". That and I probably should have used an 80-85 dB piezo cell (73 dB may be fine for practice but it really isn't enough for use in a crowded, noisy venue).