Yet Another Quantum Leap "Gummi Bear" Handlink Project - Help Wanted

Hi all,

I've been reading here and at the Quantum Leap site, Al's Place, about the numerous attempts -- many failed -- to build accurate replicas of the Quantum Leap "rotten pile of gummi bears" handlink from season 3 and later. I found several excellent photos for reference (3 from Mark Dickson and 4 from The Leap Back convention display in 2009 -- be sure to get the large size of the Leap Back photos using the link at upper right of each page), a few decent screenshots, a few somewhat-inaccurate drawings, and some info on parts. No insults intended, but upon comparing the reference photos to the few completed projects, none of the projects seem to be as accurate as I would like, though Cyland's is very close. Most appear to come up short in the number and general appearance of the LEDs, some have acrylic and/or cast resin sections that are wrong colors or shapes, etc.

Studying the photos, I see that the prop was made using at least 4, possibly 5 or more different physical styles of LED "blocks" (multi-emitter light bars and single-emitter units), many of which were stacked together to form larger blocks. Checking my electronic components stash, I found that I have 2 of the large 2-emitter style LEDs, but the prop needs many more. A local friend may be able to help me get another handful or so, but not enough for the complete prop. I've had no luck at all yet on the 3-emitter lightbars, but I have discovered that the smaller 2-emitter lightbars and the square single-emitter units are still being made. I also managed to get one of the "T-shirt flasher" kits that apparently may have been used as part of the real prop's lighting control circuit. I believe I have enough acrylic in all the right colors to make the basic case, and sufficient electronics knowledge to build the lighting circuit, if only I knew more detail of what the original circuit was. For example, exactly how were the LEDs wired? Were any current-limiting resistors used, and if so where are they? How did the T-shirt flasher connect to the EPROM? How were the "touch switch" controls implemented, and what did each of them do?

So here's what I would like, and I hope someone here has and is willing to share:

• Photos of the inside of one of the original, opened hero props. Detailed study notes of the wiring and electronics would also be a major help. It would also be somewhat helpful, but IMO not critical, if I could get identification of the exact model of switch that was used for the main on/off control, or at least a clearer picture of it than any of the above references provide.
• An accurately dimensioned drawing of an original prop. If need be, I can scale the reference photos from the known components (the battery and the LED blocks) but IMO a tracing or actual measurements of the prop would be much better. I read here that Mark "Mycroft Holmes" Dickson made a tracing of an original prop, and emailed a copy of it to ONE other member, but if the image was ever posted, it seems to be gone now. Who got it, and do you still have it? Is there some reason that such a tracing shouldn't be posted for all to see? Why was Mark banned, anyway?
• More of those pesky LEDs. Is anyone here who has completed his prop or given up on their attempt, willing to give up any of the correct LEDs you may have managed to obtain?

Soooo, simply put. You want to harvest the forum for as much information as possible while sharing as little as possible. Am I reading you wrong?

Scotophor said:

Astute readers of this post may have noticed that I've hinted that I have some more details but not completely spilled the beans... I'm willing to share my info but I'd really like to get something before I give anything away, at least until I have everything I need.

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Dude… like Rylo said; the RPF doesn't work that way (nor does it like it). Sharing is caring. Be honest, be kind, be humble and give and you will be given. Take care and good luck with teh gummy bear.

You're asking for a tremendous amount of info (That everyone else has been hunting for years) while admitting you're holding back on what you know until you're covered. I think you'll find that sort of thing will fall flat with anyone who has anything substantial to contribute.

Besides, you're bargaining (thus far) with common knowledge. Nothing you've referenced is novel. We've been talking this prop to death for over 15 years.

It's puff, puff pass around these parts my man...

Scotophor said:

I'd really like to get something before I give anything away, at least until I have everything I need.

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Nice !

:$
All right, if that's the way it has to be, here's some info on LEDs still available:

Kingbright.com styles WP1553EDT (orange), WP1553GDT (green), WP1553IDT (red) and WP1553YDT (yellow); all 5 x 5 mm square
and Kingbright.com styles WP835/2GDT (green), WP835/2IDT (red) and WP835/2YDT (yellow); 2-emitter 5 mm x 10 mm light bars.

I believe the LEDs that face out the back of the prop may be the 5x5 mm style, ground down to the minimum height practical without damaging the emitter. Oddly, most of the replicas I've seen posted seem to lack those LEDs; there are roughly 14 of them glued on the inside, rather than the outside, of the clear main body. There is also an additional green one installed in some versions of the prop in the same manner facing out the front, to the right of the large touch switch array.

The 5 x 10 mm light bars are not the main large ones that make up most of the prop's lights; they are slightly smaller. There appear to be three or possibly five red ones used. There is a square yellow block of 4 emitters (appears orange in some photos) which may be two of these, or it may be 4 of the 5 x 5 mm units, or it may be a single 4-emitter unit. One version of the prop has a similar square red block of 4 emitters directly on top of the battery (in place of the pink/orange acrylic square). Between two of the other red 5 x 10 mm light bars appears to be an orange 5 x 10 mm light bar, but since that color is not currently offered in the WP835/2xxx series, two of the 5 x 5 mm single units should work as an acceptable substitute.

It should also be possible to use some combination of the above LEDs to "fake" the 3-emitter light bars -- a cluster of 5 green ones at the top center and a pair of red ones ground into a "ramp" shape at the left center just at the top edge of the battery.

All of this means that it's now possible to easily replicate the original prop's physical appearance with decent accuracy, except for the large 2-emitter LED light bars which unfortunately make up the majority of its front face. I have written to Kingbright asking about availability of the other styles we need but received no response.

Kingbright's stock on some of the above are currently rather low, but other distributors carry them so an internet search should be able to find you what you need using the part numbers.

T-shirt flasher circuit available now on eBay (not my listing): 291212370390

Here are a couple bits of detail that changed from time to time:


These images are, from left to right:

1. Prop photo, Gene Crowell via Al's Place
2. Screenshot, Liberation (ep. 86) {this portion of the prop appears identical in The Leap Back, ep. 53 also}
3. Prop photo, Mark Dickson
4. Screenshot, Lee Harvey Oswald (ep. 75)
5. Prop Photo, The Leap Back Convention display 2009 (photo by Morgan Feldon, prop owned by Deborah Pratt*)

First, the small green section near the top left corner of the prop (bottom left of these detail images)--
In (1) it looks like another of the 4-emitter 10 mm square blocks that may be made of 1, 2 or 4 individual LED "packages" as described in my previous post #6 above. In (2), (3) and (4) it looks like the same thing, but with material added at lower right to give it the 45 degree mitered shape, and a frosted layer added on top. If you look carefully at (2), you can still see the 4 LED emitters inside. This appears to be the only part of the handlink that ever has this exact color and texture. In (5) it appears that there are now either no LED emitters inside, or there may be two of them arranged vertically in the center. I'm more inclined to believe that the apparent vertical line is merely a reflection/refraction off an interior edge of the clear acrylic body of the prop. The color of this piece also seems to have changed somewhat, but it's hard to be sure just from this photo.

Next, the yellow LED blocks--
In (1) and (2), there are nine total emitters here. How did the props makers accomplish that; was there a square, single-emitter version of these LEDs larger than 5 x 5 mm? Or did they simply cut one of the large 2-emitter light bars in half? (I vote for the second option.) It appears that the extra single-emitter square was added on as the "tail" piece sticking up at the left end. Unfortunately, being right on the corner of the prop where "Al" would often smack the balky handlink, this is a vulnerable location for such a small part to be stuck on -- if I had been the builder, I would have wanted to use a normal 2-emitter block for the "tail", and put the single-emitter unit between that and the other group of three 2-emitter bars. Other versions of the prop (3), (4), (5) show this upward "tail" LED is not present -- perhaps Mr. Stockwell broke it off and it was never replaced, or perhaps it was omitted due to its vulnerability. In (5), and possibly (4) also but the photo isn't clear enough to be sure, the blue acrylic tile beside this position has been replaced with one reshaped with a "tail" of its own to fill in the "hole" left by the missing LED "tail". Also noteworthy in (5), the leftmost of the 2-emitter light bars has been reshaped at its lower left corner apparently by grinding it away at about a 30 degree angle, and the blue acrylic tile no longer appears to have the screw hole drilled all the way through it.

*Deborah Pratt was co-executive producer, writer, and occasional actor in Quantum Leap (Troian Claridge in A Portrait for Troian ep. 19, then the voice of "Ziggy" the computer from ep. 22 onward), as well as being married to series creator and producer Donald P. Bellisario.

Rylo said:

It's puff, puff pass around these parts my man...

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Always to the left.

...and don't eff up the rotation!

brandomack said:

Always to the left.

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I agree that the best possible chance at anyone ever completing an accurate handlink will be to fake (cluster) what's currently available as far as LEDs go. The damned blocks are just gone it seems. I searched for years and gave up on those. At one point I was desperate enough to laser etch acrylic blocks for the fake and light them from within the unit.

Obviously I haven't given up... I don't think they're gone, just hiding. Having been sold in retail packaging, I think they were mostly bought by electronics hobbyists. I believe most are probably still out there in projects and component hoards of such homebrewers. The friend I mentioned in post #1 has sent me a photo of several yellow ones that he says he'll give me. He has another photo posted on his website of a project he made long ago with a dozen more of them in different colors, which I think he still has. I'm going to try to talk him into selling it to me, or letting me take it on a collateral deposit so I can replace them with a similar but still-common style and then give it back to him. If I get all of those, that will bring my total over 20, leaving me just a handful short (and probably with the wrong proportions of colors). He's also contacted another friend of his, who may have a large stash of them.

Although it's fairly common for prop builders to get into electronics, the reverse isn't necessarily true. How many hobbyists who build their own non-prop electronic gizmos from scratch, and have been doing so for decades, do you personally know? Although there is some overlap, the two groups don't necessarily move in the same circles. The problem is, how do "we" find out who "they" are, and make the deals for the obsolete parts we want?

I found a current maker of what may be the correct style of 10 x 10 mm square, 4-chip LED blocks found near the upper left (green) and upper right (orange - a color they don't currently offer in this style) of the prop -- SunLED. Unfortunately, they don't appear to have any retail distributors: there seem to be about 5 commercial distributors of their product lines, who only take "RFQ" (Request For Quotation) production orders, with typical minimum quantities of 1,000+. Interestingly, SunLED also make 5 x 5 mm square single-chip and 5 x 10 mm 2-chip units that look just like Kingbright's. In addition, SunLED make 3-emitter light bars, but they appear NOT to be the correct ones used in the handlink; the correct ones have 4.5 mm spacing between emitters, but SunLED's have 6 mm spacing. I know that doesn't seem like much difference, but it is a +25% increase and I guess you could call me a stickler for accuracy in some respects.

EDIT: SunLED now has a retail distribution agreement with DigiKey, but DigiKey does not list all of SunLED's products, and most of those that they do list, are shown as "non-stock" with minimum order quantities in the hundreds. So we're still mostly out of luck.

For people who like to add sound effects to their replica props:

I have found clear and mostly-clean copies of several of the exact sound effects that were dubbed in for the handlink, in some CD collections of cartoon sound effects from Hanna-Barbera. These sounds were used in many of the classic cartoons from the 1960s through the '80s, such as The Flintstones; Scooby Doo, Where Are You?; The Jetsons; Super Friends; etc. I first recognized a brief montage containing several of the handlink sounds when I channel-surfed into an episode of Scooby Doo where he hides in a barrel, pokes his tail out the top and bends it then pivots it around like a periscope, then peeks out through a knot hole in the side. I haven't listened to all of the Hanna-Barbera collections CDs yet but I would not be surprised if all of the HL sounds are in there. The collection CDs are not cheap, but they and some of the individual tracks containing HL sounds (and even some shorter clips edited from those tracks) can be found online if you search enough. Even if the HL sounds are not all found in the H-B CD collections, I'm fairly sure the missing ones can be found somewhere in the H-B library of cartoons. I haven't been able to find or identify the handlink "Ziggy squeals" yet, but I believe they may be the voice of some cute unintelligible cartoon creature, and are probably not included in the sound effects library. They may have been altered in pitch for the handlink by filtering and/or being played at a different speed than in the original cartoon.

Am I the only person who thinks these two items may be the same or very similar?:



The top part of the image is a magnified detail from one of Morgan Feldon's photos of the hero prop from The Leap Back 2009 convention display. The bottom part is a resistor array. I'm not familiar with very many electronic components that come in this turquoise/cyan color, though one other possibility that occurs to me is an electrolytic capacitor; however, I can't think of any good reason why the handlink should have such a large capacitor in it.

More "Fashion Lites" T-shirt flasher circuits now at Amazon (currently 3 available). Does anyone know what other names this product is available as?

Possible new tips on finding the LEDs:

1. (This one is probably spurious but I thought I'd toss it out here anyway.) While browsing at Apex Electronics, one of Hollywood's legendary prop builders' haunts, I met someone who suggested to me that the LED light bars we want might have been used in some slot machines from the appropriate era. It didn't occur to me to ask him how familiar he was with such things until after I had left. However, several Google searches later (including both slot machines and pachinko games) I have failed to find even one image showing anything close to the correct LEDs, apart from some recent-production Taiwanese machines that use square light bars MUCH larger than what we're looking for.

2. In a different Google search, I located someone in the UK who, in reply to my emails, sent photos and offered to give me three of the large 2-chip green light bars. He even revealed where he got them: they were in a "lucky bag" LED assortment packaged by industrial distributor Kemo Electronic from Germany. This company's products are sold through several retailers, primarily in Europe and Australia, such as AAAA Electronic, Conrad, Farnell, Jaycar, Maplin, MCM, Newark, Octamex, Reichelt, etc. Though Kemo still provides the "lucky bag" (part number S036) and a similar "creative set" (S093), since my source says the assortment was given to him many years ago, I don't expect that their current offerings are still likely to include them. However, if anyone can network to someone who might have bought such things back then... good luck!

Man the crickets are loud in here! :unsure

Rylo said:

It's puff, puff pass around these parts my man...

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brandomack said:

Always to the left.

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Apollo said:

...and don't eff up the rotation!

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Apollo said:

Man the crickets are loud in here! :unsure

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I figure either I haven't shared enough yet, or someone eff'ed up the rotation :wacko, or everyone has been stringing me along and nobody else here actually HAS anything to share that isn't already easily found online.

Just in case I'm wrong on that last point, another minor addition: I have found alternate versions of the "T-shirt flasher" circuits, called "Lightables" by a company calling itself "Paintables". Here are some package variations. Three are 10-LED versions, while the "Mini Lightables" version has 15 LEDs. These seem to still be fairly widely available, so I'm done posting on the subject. Also, I read at Al's Place where Cyland Props alleged that only "less-than-hero" versions of the handlink used these pre-made circuits anyway.

What you are posting is old news here, that and I think you alienated a lot of members here. :unsure