Afterglow (Inserts)

If you’ve upgraded your playfield lamps to LEDs but miss the warm fade of incandescent bulbs, the Bitfield Labs Afterglow board (V3.0g) is the perfect solution. Designed specifically for pinball machines fitted with LED replacements, Afterglow restores that smooth, natural lamp behaviour the way the designers intended.

Installed between the machine’s lamp driver outputs and the playfield LEDs, Afterglow analyses lamp states in real time and adjusts power delivery hundreds of times per second. The result is a convincing “warm‑up” and “cool‑down” effect that makes LEDs look and feel like classic filament lamps.

Prefer a softer look? Some LEDs can be too bright – Afterglow includes full brightness and LED ramp control via a PC and downloadable configuration software.

The board requires no external power supply and is powered directly from the pinball machine. Each unit comes with L‑shaped mounting feet for quick installation in the backbox, plus all required cables.

Compatible cable sets are available for Williams System 11, Data East and Stern Whitestar/S.A.M. Choose your machine type when ordering. Note that these boards include the Pin Bender's 'Hat' to interface the existing cables and connectors to the Afterglow board.

For Bally / Williams WPC machines, see our Aurora Matrix board.

Every board is fully tested and ready to go.

Configuration software - Configuration Software · bitfieldlabs/afterglow Wiki · GitHub

Installation instructions - Instructions Afterglow 3.0 · bitfieldlabs/afterglow Wiki · GitHub

Open-source hardware: Afterglow was designed by bitfieldlabs and is published under the CERN Open Hardware Licence v2 – Permissive (hardware) and the Apache License 2.0 (firmware). The original design files and licences are at github.com/bitfieldlabs/afterglow. This board is built, tested and supported by MC Circuit Works. It isn't made by bitfieldlabs, so please contact me, not them, with any questions.

Shipped weight (inc. packaging): ~170g