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Pin Stadium - Pinball Expo 2018 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2018)·video·30m 17s·analyzed·Oct 21, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

PIN Stadium showcases universal LED playfield lighting system with app control at Pinball Expo 2018.

Summary

Scott from PIN Stadium presents an LED lighting system for pinball machines designed to solve illumination issues on older and newer games. The system features magnetic mounting along the playfield edge, Wi-Fi-enabled app control, RGB and white LED options, and UV glow flashers. Scott shares the origin story of PIN Stadium, operator success stories (including a 30% revenue increase at Logan's Arcade), and demonstrates installation on machines at Pinball Expo 2018.

Key Claims

  • PIN Stadium has sold approximately 2,000 light kits in the last year and works on any pinball machine from the 1930s to modern games

    high confidence · Scott directly states this figure during the presentation as a measurement of business growth

  • A operator at Logan's Arcade reported a 30% increase in revenue on roller games after installing PIN Stadium lights

    high confidence · Scott recounts direct communication with the Logan's Arcade operator who shared financial results from a revenue report shared among five operators

  • Tanya Kleiss, the designer of Deadpool software at Stern, recommended PIN Stadium to the Logan's Arcade operator

    high confidence · Scott states this was told to him by the operator: 'He found out about it from the developer, or I should say the designer of Deadpool, who did the software. And it's Tanya Kleiss'

  • PIN Stadium installation typically takes 10-15 minutes for first-time users, with experienced installers completing it in 5 minutes

    high confidence · Scott provides this estimate while introducing the installation demonstration

  • 98 out of 100 PIN Stadium kits sold include the UV glow flasher option

    high confidence · Scott states this adoption rate directly: 'That's probably out of 100 kits I sell, 98 of them always have the UV glow flasher'

Notable Quotes

  • “I've never seen a play field so well lit... I can actually see the ball. It seems like it would definitely help my playing skills.”

    Trent Augustine (Tilt Amusements dealer, ranked ~7 in world)@ 4:09 — Key moment when Trent Augustine encouraged Scott to commercialize PIN Stadium, leading to the product's market launch

  • “Every month myself and four other operators get together, and we run a revenue report... it went up 30%... it was the only game that did that.”

    Logan's Arcade operator@ 8:09 — Provides quantifiable business impact evidence for PIN Stadium, demonstrating operator ROI

  • “So he's like, I think maybe you should consider trying to sell these. And I'm like, I had no plans to even sell them.”

    Scott@ 4:15 — Illustrates the origin of PIN Stadium as an accidental product from personal modification

  • “You can adjust the brightness of the lights from 0 to 100%. So there's a lot of flexibility with that.”

    Scott@ 18:16 — Addresses common customer concern about brightness being overwhelming

  • “I was able to control his lights remotely... I'm like, turn it to blue, turn it to green. He's looking at it. I'm like, look really close and do you see anything?”

    Scott@ 20:30 — Demonstrates remote control capabilities and troubleshooting story showing system reliability

  • “These have the InvisiShields on them, which is an additional feature that customers had requested, that from the sides you could see the lights standing, not playing.”

    Scott — Shows customer-driven product iteration based on feedback

Entities

PIN StadiumproductScottpersonTrent AugustinepersonTanya KleisspersonLogan's ArcadecompanyComet PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyZachperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: PIN Stadium business expanded internationally from Cincinnati-based launch to global distribution within ~2 years

    high · Scott states 'Penn Stadium's all across the world' with 2,000 units sold; remote control story mentions Texas customer

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern designer Tanya Kleiss publicly endorses PIN Stadium to operators, indicating manufacturer-level tacit approval of aftermarket mod

    high · Logan's Arcade operator attributes product discovery to Tanya Kleiss's recommendation; Kleiss is identified as Deadpool designer at Stern

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo 2018 served as major commercial launch venue for PIN Stadium with substantial booth presence and industry visibility

    high · Scott describes Pinball Ohio show (2017) as turning point; Expo 2018 features 17 fully installed demonstration machines

  • $

    market_signal: Operator interest in LED lighting mods expanding beyond collector market to commercial venue revenue optimization

    high · Logan's Arcade operator explicitly reports 30% revenue increase; Scott mentions operators ordering for commercial locations

  • ?

    community_signal: Scott's transition from app/website developer to pinball product entrepreneur driven by community advocacy

    high · Trent Augustine's recommendation to commercialize prototype led to business launch; product emerged from personal hobby modification

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.091

0:00
I've been collecting about 20 years now and always collected like the Williams, starting to get into the new Sterns now, and one of the struggles I had was the lighting.
0:19
Commonly, a lot of the pinball machines struggle with the GI illumination difficulty and seeing the play field, especially a lot of the older machines. They've come a long way since then, the Sterns. They still benefit tremendously from the Penn Stadiums. But long story short is about three or four years ago, I started adding LEDs. I was one of those classic pinballers that was a little bit hesitant about changing from incandescent bulbs and going into the LED world. Once I got into the LED world and put them in the inserts and the GI lights, I noticed a tremendous improvement. I got a lot of my LEDs from Comet Pinball, which is a great company. I still use them, and they complement the Penn Stadium product very well.
1:07
But one of the struggles was is that when you put the LED lights into the inlays, into the GI lights, it does create a much better illumination in those areas. But you do also have times where you struggle with seeing the ball because there are areas that are called hot spots. So the inlays are very bright, but then the play field still struggles with the illumination itself. So to try to round that out, I started working with just a set of LEDs, some strips, and just tried to put them around the play field. I put spotlights, and I ended up usually using about seven or eight spotlights in the pinball machines. And that did rather well, except for the fact that where the spotlights weren't, there's usually a dark spot behind them. So then I found myself soldering and putting some more spotlights in other parts of the play field.
@ 22:48
Greg
person
Pinball Expo 2018event
Tilt Amusementscompany
SDTMperson
Cincinnati Grouporganization
Deadpoolgame
Iron Maidengame
Scared Stiffgame
Trongame
Shadowgame

announcement: PIN Stadium LED lighting system formally presented as commercial product with documented sales figures and operator adoption

high · Scott presents specific metrics: ~2,000 units sold in past year, 17 machines at booth, 98% UV flasher adoption rate

  • ?

    product_strategy: PIN Stadium positioned as universal solution compatible with all pinball machines 1930s-present, addressing fragmentation in aftermarket lighting options

    high · Scott emphasizes universal compatibility; single kit works across Williams classics to modern Stern/Deadpool without machine-specific variants

  • ?

    technology_signal: Shift from incandescent GI lighting to LED-based playfield illumination becoming mainstream aftermarket modification

    high · Scott describes transition from hesitancy about LEDs to widespread adoption; notes LED improvements complementing factory options

    • 2:00
    And after I was all said and done, I'd be in my twilight zone and have about seven or eight sets of spotlights and still not have full illumination of the play field, but it was significantly better.
    2:12
    However, one of the struggles was that it would reflect off the DMD into my eye or off the back glass. And I'd have the spotlights lighting the play field, but they'd also be distracting me as a player. So taking a little bit of my skills and background with app development, previously to doing Penn Stadiums full-time, I was an app developer and also a website developer. And I consulted dentists, orthodontists, plastic surgeons, a whole different industry than pinball on how to build patients through mobile marketing platforms. But my passion was always with pinball. So I had integrated the Penn Stadiums, which really weren't a product at the time. I had integrated the lights that I was working with and integrated them with the app so that you could control them through a Wi-Fi signal onto your phone.
    3:05
    And about, I'd say about two years ago, Cincinnati Group came over, and Trent Augustine, some of you guys probably know him. He's from Tilt Amusements, a very good, reputable dealer that I get a lot of my machines from. He deals with the Stern pinballs. He came over to my house, and he saw my collection, and he had noticed some very early stage versions of the pin stadiums. They didn't have a name at the time, but he said, I've never seen a play field so well lit. He's like, what are you doing? And I explained to him what I had done is I had created a magnetic mounting system for these LED lights that I had created, and they mount on the inside edge just below the glass line of the machine. and they generate their own Wi-Fi signal and my phone can connect with it. And he's like, wow, that's really cool. He's like, I've never, you know, Trent's actually like I think number seven in the world. He's commonly in the top ten, which is remarkable to, you know, even be in the top hundred at that point. But he was like, I'm really impressed with these. He's like, I can actually see the ball. It seems like it would definitely help my playing skills. And he's like, well, I think maybe you should consider trying to sell these. And I'm like, I had no plans to even sell them. I was like, they're still in early, very prototype stages. And he said, well, let's go to Expo, or not Expo, I should say, the Pinball Ohio show last March. And so I had to come up with a name for them. And I thought about, well, when you're inside a play field, and if you were down on the play field looking up, where's the best place to put these lights? it would be up top. So the magnetic mounting system made it so we could mount them there. So hence, if you go into a baseball stadium or a football stadium, all the lights are always at the top. You never see lights down at the bottom. And so the word Penn Stadium and the business Penn Stadium was formed based upon that concept. So if you look at a pinball play field, even the newest or the oldest play fields, The GI lighting is currently either flush or about a quarter inch above the play field, and it's really difficult to get any kind of illumination past that point. You can probably get about two or three inches maybe with some of the slingshot GI lights, but that's about the extent of it. So anyways, long story short is I went up to Expo, and Trent had one of the first Aerosmith LEs that were out in the wild. And he's like, can you put these lights in there and take up the show? and I was a little hesitant because I knew they weren't finely tuned by any means. They were still a homebrew version. And I went up there, got a great response. I ended up just saying I was going to do a preorder of 100 of them, and the business just took off. So fast forward, now Penn Stadium's all across the world. We've got about 2,000 lights that have been sold in the last year, and they work just simply because they work in every pinball machine. They're not specific to one game. So you get one set of Penn Stadiums, and it will work in any machine from the 1930s all the way up to Iron Maiden and Deadpool and everything going forward.
    6:16
    So what I want to do, first of all, is address what they are, what the features are of it, but in addition to that, to show collectors and also operators, which collectors are a majority of the Penn Stadium business, simply for the fact that they create a great visible play field, more enjoyment. There's a UV glow flasher that really adds a lot of dazzle to the playability of the game, and a lot of people appreciate that. That's probably out of 100 kits I sell, 98 of them always have the UV glow flasher. So that's been really neat to see that take off to that portion of the lighting system. but so aside from the the collectors getting more enjoyability out of their game and visibility of the play field there's also operators that have been getting on board and interesting story that happened about six months ago you guys might be familiar with Logan's Arcade they're very very well-known very respectable bar in in Chicago and I got an order from a gentleman with the last name I had no idea who he was. And he had placed an order for Penn Stadium for roller games And that was the first time I had ever seen anybody place an order for roller games Usually it you know like a Scared Stiff or it a WPC game or maybe like a Neuer Stern So I sent his order out and about a month later I get a call back or an email back from him. And he's like, I wanted to tell you that I really love your lights. And I'm an operator and I actually own Logan's Arcade. And I'm like, wow, I didn't, I had no idea like who he was. I knew who Logan's was, but I thought he was just a regular customer. He said, I ran a revenue report last month, and I have some interesting results to give to you. I said, well, what was it? He said, well, every month myself and four other operators get together, and we run a revenue report, and we share ideas. And he said the thing that got me was that I did love the results with the Penn Stadiums, but I loved even better the return on my investment that I got last month. And I said, well, what was that? And he said, it went up 30%. And he said, you may not know my industry, and you may know roller games, but of all things, roller games is a difficult game to increase revenue on, let alone trying to increase 30% on any game, whether it's a new game. And he said it was the only game that did that. And he's like, I know it's because your light's because it was visible, it drew attention, and people were able to play and enjoy it better. So he ended up just filling up the whole arcade. I went up there and personally delivered an order to him, got up there, helped him install the lights. I was excited about just having somebody that reputable to support the product. And he told me that he found out about it from the developer, or I should say the designer of Deadpool, who did the software.
    9:15
    And it's Tanya Kleiss, and he was a Stern employee, and he still is. And I didn't know, I'd known of him, and I know he's been involved with several other games, but he said that he was the one that recommended them. He said, you need to check out these Penn Stadiums. And so it was sort of a neat story to have somebody like Tanya, who's making these superb games and working with Stern to also back up and support it.
    9:39
    But so the install time with these is what I want to get to, is I'm going to have Zach and Greg do an install of these to show everybody how easy they are. and normally about your first since all is going to take about 10 or 15 minutes.
    9:55
    Zach's probably laughing because he can do it in five. And I'm sure Greg can probably smoke him on that too.
    10:04
    But to give you a little more information on the stadiums, let me get some of the features up here on the screen. Give me just a moment.
    10:18
    . So one of the interesting things about the Penn Stadiums is, since they do generate their own Wi-Fi signal, you can connect to them with your phone, and there's an app that controls them. So you can turn them off and on and control them remotely, but you can also adjust the colors. And this machine in particular, a lot of people have ordered for Scared Stuff. It's the WPC Williams games that do struggle a lot with the lighting.
    11:20
    And the multicolor aspect of it on the app itself, there's a color wheel that comes up. And when you connect to them, I don't know if anybody's familiar with the home lighting, like the Hue lighting systems, to give you just an example for your home reference. You can use this color wheel and dial in the exact colors for the Penn Stadium lights. And you can run patterns. You can run all kinds of, you can even take a picture of the play field. So let's say you want to bring the artwork alive, but you want to match it specifically to a certain color of the inlay on the insert or in the artwork. You hit the camera feature on the app, and you go up to the play field, and you'll take a picture of, let's say, a blue spot. Instantly, the Penn Stadium lights will turn the exact color to the play field.
    12:06
    So anyways, that's sort of a bells and whistles. some people really like that feature. I tend to usually use the color wheel to dial it in.
    12:15
    And the way they install is they don't trigger from, or they don't gain power from the PCB board. The early versions of the pin stadiums, you would plug into the PCB board in the back, and it would tap 12 volts. It was plug and play. But some of these machines already have a lot of mods on them, and the older machines can sometimes only handle so much. So now the new versions, Zach and Greg will show you, they install into the service port. The power is tapped from the service port. Simply plug it in. That's also what makes it universal with any pinball machine. As long as you've got a service port, you can install the pin stadiums. And there isn't any kind of splicing or dicing of the wires. There's a GI cable, a GI flasher cable Greg's got down there at the bottom. Those have alligator clips on the end that plug into the GI module, which is on the end of the pin stadiums. And then you just take the alligator clips and you will clip onto the back of a GI. It doesn't matter if it's the positive or negative, as long as you get it on there. The GI module I designed is smart enough to switch the polarity. So anybody can install them. If you're an operator and You've got somebody on the field. There's not a lot of specific directions or anything you can really do to mess them up. You just hook them up and get a good grab on the back of a GI, and that portion of the lights will turn on. And then there's also the other set of clips that they'll install too, the red alligator clips. That connects to the UV Plus Glow. The UV Plus Glow is a second set of lights that is embedded on the light bar up top, and that's what you connect to a flasher. That's the part that gives you the wow, the dazzle. It simulates UV light, so it's not real UV light. UV light technically would be damaging, and some people are concerned about damaging the play field. Also, it's not very bright. Yeah, initially that was some of the questions. But this UV is simulated so that you get the same effect, you get the same kind of the UV reactive glow effect on these play fields as you would with a UV light, but you get the brightness factor of it.
    14:35
    So here we're going to look to find a GI bulb. Commonly underneath the slingshots is usually a very accessible area.
    14:46
    You got them on the side there? Yep, that looks good. So half of the lights are already connected. And then the flashers, you can choose any one. That's the fun part though. Yeah, exactly. You can pick a flash here and see how it goes, and then pick another one Yeah you can just go to any one you want I usually recommend trying to find one that doesn go off too much so that because of the impact of the Penn Stadiums or the UV you want to be something that special You know like you can put it in the pop bumpers and it hits every time and that neat A lot of people do that However I think it it better when something like a later mode in the game or maybe the completion of a game or nail or not completion of the game but completion of the game completion of a mode or some ramp shots. I like them as spinners. Yep. Yeah, actually, Zach had installed the first set on, or actually second because I had them on mine, but the first set publicly on a Tron. And one of the things a lot of the potential customers were saying is that, I don't know, you know, I don't know if you really need them, it's a newer game. And so they had done a video. They were the first ones that did a video on, well, actually you did Shadow and you did Tron, didn't you? Shadow was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, Shadow was a night and day difference. A lot of people, I mean, you can simulate the name Shadow with how dark that play field was. And he picked a great one. I had not personally installed him on the machine. And then he did a review of him. And I think that's one of your top ten video views. A lot of people go to that to check it out. So definitely go to SDTM's YouTube channel and look at the Penn Stadium install. It was about a year ago.
    16:31
    Yeah. And then, so he's got the connection of the flasher and the GI on there. And now what they'll do is they are going to use the rubbing alcohol packet to clean the area in the back because there's going to be some ribbon cable clamps that will guide that ribbon cable so it's a very clean lift when you open up the play field.
    16:58
    The magnetic design, the reason that the magna mounts are on here is because when you raise the play field, you need to remove the lights, and they simply remove within a second or two. So you just rest them in the play field, or you can crisscross them in the back of the back box for easy maintenance. We all know that we have to dig into our pinball machines, maybe more than we would like. But the ribbon cables will guide it in the back so that you don't have it flailing around there.
    17:28
    But what did you have on your Tron? And did you have the kit, the tubes that go on there that do the LE? Did you have that? Yeah, absolutely. I was worried that it was going to drown out the EL wire. Yep, yeah. So that's been some of the initial concerns to people that haven't installed the lights. They've been wondering, hey, is it going to drown out my inserts? Is it going to drown out some of my mods? Is it going to affect any of those? And it won't. I mean, it would take maybe a blast of sunlight to drown out an inlay bulb, because you can't take away the power of that source that it displays to you. And with the adjustability of the lights also, some people don't like them bright. Some people want them dimmer. You can adjust on the color wheel. You can adjust the brightness of the lights from 0 to 100%. So there's a lot of flexibility with that. That's what you always hear about. Everybody's like, oh, Penn State, it's too bright. I can't stand it. It's too bright. Yeah.
    18:57
    No, you're fine. I'm sitting here just turning off my lock screen so people can actually see the product and see the layout of it. So here you've got an iPhone or Android. It's a free app that you download on Android or iPhone platform. This is the color wheel that you'll see that comes up once you connect with them. You can even organize your machines. So if you've got multiple pin stadiums, which a lot of people do, they will organize the machines. It'll come up with a list that shows Iron Maiden, Deadpool. You've got Scared Stiff on there. And then you tap on each one of those, and then you can adjust the lights for those. You can do it remotely, too. Technically, the way I designed it is I've had customers going through an install. They've hooked up the flashers and the GI backwards, which is common. I've even done that sometimes in a hurry just trying to get things installed, and I tell them, don't worry about it. But the interesting story was one guy called me, and he's like, look, my lights are not working. They're absolutely not working. But if you hook up the GI and the flashers backwards, the flasher is so powerful, it overpowers the GI, and it looks like it's off. So he said, I created a Penn Stadium account. I can log in and I control it on the app, but nothing's happening. So he gave me his log in and so he was in Texas and I was in Cincinnati. I was able to control his lights remotely and he was just like blown away by it. I'm like, turn it to blue, turn it to green. He's looking at it. I'm like, look really close and do you see anything? He's like, it looks like it's changing color. I'm like, okay, you've got them hooked up backwards. So it's probably overkill to say that it will ever change your lights on the other side of the world, but you do have a lot of accessibility with them. Or if you're an operator or something, you know, you can adjust them remotely. Somebody's saying, hey, we got one that's too bright, turn up and down remotely. It's very convenient that way. But you just add them to your home Wi-Fi network. You just open up the app. You don't have to connect to them directly after that. So, but then there's the RGB controls. So the lights here have RGB lights and white lights. I chose warm whites because I find that warm whites do very well with play fields. They usually bring the artwork up. It's not stark. You really get a lot of vibrancy and true colors out of that richness. So with the full spectrum white GI and then the colored lights, the RGB lights, you adjust those separately. So what I find is that when you get your kit installed, I usually turn the white lights down completely. I will adjust the colored lights. So you'll get like this red, blue, or yellow, or green glow. But what happens is when you look at the play field, you can start to see certain aspects of it come alive. And that means it's going to highlight the artwork really well. And then what you'll do is you'll go in the app and you'll adjust just the white lights themselves. And that's what gives you the illumination. So RGB lights will give you the color casting, and then the white lights will give you the illumination of the play field. And you can change them. I mean, you can make them to where it's like really blue. Some people like that. I mean, I try to retain the original artwork and make it respectable to the artist. But then some people like the color changing patterns that they can create. You can do custom patterns with it too. And the Penn Stadiums are, they look stealth. So when you're playing the game, they look like a factory option. You, as you can see over here, I mean, a lot of people don even know when they playing at the booth and they never heard of Penn Stadium they like well what going on We don really know other than the fact that our game doesn look like this But it a matte black finish These have the InvisiShields on them, which is an additional feature that customers had requested, that from the sides you could see the lights standing, not playing. So this right here is an additional awning system that just mounts on the top of them. You recently installed some of those InvisiShields on yours. That was my only complaint about the product when Scott had done it, was that I didn't like being able to see the bulbs from the side. I didn't like to be able to see them actually. It was a few machines down.
    23:17
    Oh, you didn't? No, you don't have to add to it. I can just connect to it directly. It made a huge difference. The only complaint that I had about it. Just connect to it directly.
    23:32
    There's two of them. So we're... Those are yours? Okay. Are you on the Wi-Fi? Okay, let's go to the Wi-Fi on your phone. So what he's going to do is he's going to go to Settings, and then... So Wi-Fi, he's going to look for the Wi-Fi that it generates.
    23:51
    Settings, and then Wi-Fi, yeah. Yeah, yeah, let me get mine. Here, let me hand this to you. You can talk to the people on the phone. Hey, guys. Let's hope I had these things hooked up right. I did. I just don't like hooking things up on other people's machines. That's what it sounds like when Greg turns on all his machines. No, it actually, it's almost like an L-channel. It mounts on the top of your light strip, comes out, and does an L down. So it just blocks. Scott, I mean, this is... Yes, yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, before, if you were standing at a machine next to it or two machines down, you'd catch all that visible light out of the side of your eye, the bulbs themselves, and that eliminates that, but it doesn't interfere with any of the lighting of the play field itself. Yeah.
    25:11
    Can you hold that up for me just a second? No, absolutely. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, we don't know if the . It's always just a fuse, isn't it? . Yeah, but I don't know if this is the right spot. It does stop.
    25:55
    Yeah, that's it. Right there. Oh, there we go. Yeah, we can just get an extension cord and run it straight to the wall.
    26:08
    I just wanted to see if there was a GI socket. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, there we go. It was just a bad... Yes, you can.
    26:25
    You could until you add it to the Wi-Fi, and then it secures itself. So we just had a bad socket on the game. Of course, I picked the wrong one. Robert, we'll take care of it. Yeah, leave it in the back. Sorry. We told you when it comes to technology, anything that can go wrong will go wrong with straight down the middle. Right?
    26:49
    People really wouldn't want to see that. Oh, I put the balls back in. Go ahead and lay the paper back down.
    27:02
    Let's see. There we go. Oops. All right, here, go back. Come on, Zach. Thank you. I think it's just a bulb that was the NGI connection here on the machine.
    28:52
    But Zach and Greg can attest to it. If you guys really want to see the Penn Stadiums in action, we've got 17 games at the booth, all of them installed, all fully working. And we've got a lot of range of different machines, so anything from the old era to the new ones. But that's pretty much about it. Sorry that that didn't go well. I wasn't familiar with that machine, but I think it's just a matter of the GI sockets on that we have to probably work on a little bit. But anyways, I appreciate you guys all coming and checking out the seminar. And thank you, Zach and Greg, for doing that.
    29:30
    Very thankful for you guys. You guys have been great for the product and for our industry, too. Thank you.
    29:41
    you