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Pin2Dmd Color - Pindmd Compatible Interface With Led Rgb Color Dmd


lucky1

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I am going to guess it picking the color palette from vpinmame now, which is amber by default.  If you modify one of the roms to these color dmd settings here, do you get the multi color back?

 

http://vpuniverse.com/index.php/dmd_color_codes.html

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=27440&page=3#entry263670

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No still yellow. It's like off is always yellow.
Maybe I need to upgrade my pin2dmd firmware?

Upgraded to newest firmware i could find...got rid of flicker bits but everything is still yellow. re-installed pinmame 2.19 and is fine so i must be missing something 

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They are only talking about a digital arcade marquee, which would not need to refresh at any considerable rate since it's a static image in 99% of the cases

Since the display needs to be refreshed all the time even when the content is static you still need some cpu power.

Data can only be displayed static for one row at a time, thats why it uses multiplexing.

 

maybe i will post 3 versions of the vpm in the future, or 4? :)

pindmd1, pindmd2, pindmd3, pin2dmd... :)

No need for this from my side. Toxie has already pushed a updated version to the official repo which should fix the problem with color 0%.

http://sourceforge.net/p/pinmame/code/3751/

So PINDMD2 version is and will be fine for PIN2DMD also. What´s coming with pindmd3, I can´t tell.

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can you try this vpm version

attachicon.gifVPinMAME pin2dmd.rar

let me know

lucky sent me an unofficial file for the build, maybe i will post 3 versions of the vpm in the future, or 4? :)

pindmd1, pindmd2, pindmd3, pin2dmd... :)

Fixed yellow problem so that's good. But seems a cold boot is needed to reset colors? Should this be the way it works? Would sd card fix that? Or still a bug?

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I'm trying to run some tests. I have a preLoaded STm32F4 Board and one of UncleSash's breakout PCBs. There are multiple issues that I've run into. 

 

I had just gotten through testing some regular monochrome pinball displays using a Russ PinDMD2. I assembled the STm32 and the PCB, and I was hoping just to establish everything was working by just making sure I can receive the PIN2DMD firmware screen. But I wasn't getting any output.

 

With my RGB panels I only have a data cable for 1 panel. I figured that I might at least drive one panel out of the pair, but maybe you have to have both? I was also using a little 2A PSU. Figured that might be enough just for a test, but maybe not?

 

When I wasn't getting any output, I figured that maybe the firmware was not installed after all. It probably was but I don't know. I went through and installed all I needed to flash the STm32 board with the latest firmware on github

 

Installed the Windows driver and found that it was identical to the driver set for PinDMD2 except for the device ID. If you have a PinDMD2 installed you could just use the same driver if you don't mind the device ID being PinDMD2 instead of PIN2DMD.

 

Installed the latest VPinMAME_Unity compile on this site. Tested some roms. Game options set to Use PinDMD enabled. The blue LED light flashes in time with DMD frame changes, so it appears that I am getting input. Red LED is solid. I don't have an SDCard installed.

 

I found the config utility that is used to route output to either RGB or monochrome pinball displays. I can set the monochrome option. I can click Reset and see the red LED next to the micro connector blink. I can click the Save button. I can reboot the board and unplug and then plug in the USB cables, but so far I don't get any output. Am I missing something? Not sure where else to go next, and I've got to clear the bench and run some tests on my LED strips while I can still return them if something is wrong:

 

http://vpuniverse.com/forums/topic/2180-addressable-rgbs/page-1

 

 

 

 

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Fixed yellow problem so that's good. But seems a cold boot is needed to reset colors? Should this be the way it works? Would sd card fix that? Or still a bug?

IMHO that´s not the job of pinmame to upload the default palette of pin2dmd when you exit the table.

Your frontend should take care of what you need for it.

This can be done by executing "pin2dmd.exe /t palettes.txt" as a batch job in your frontend e.g. (PinballX)

Same is for Stern tables which need 16 colors and this is not supported by the colorize option of pinmame.

You can edit the colors in the textfile rename it to eg potc.txt and send it with "pin2dmd.exe /t potc.txt"

to pin2dmd before you start the table. Colorize option has to be turned off in this case otherwise palette

gets overwritten.

Regards

lucky1

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here is the latest vpm version that should work correctly with pin2dmd

attachicon.gifVPinMAME.rar

let me know if it works better, don't pay attention to the rom that i added, potc600af_c, it is not working properly, i need to investigate further

It works in the same way as the custom build, so that´s O.K.

Thanks for your quick action.

Here is the result of our test on a real Stern Avatar yesterday.

Had some flickering problems I hope I fixed with the latest

build of the firmware. I now will add a option to upload colored pictures

directly to pin2dmd with pin2dmd.exe

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IMHO that´s not the job of pinmame to upload the default palette of pin2dmd when you exit the table.

Your frontend should take care of what you need for it.

This can be done by executing "pin2dmd.exe /t palettes.txt" as a batch job in your frontend e.g. (PinballX)

Same is for Stern tables which need 16 colors and this is not supported by the colorize option of pinmame.

You can edit the colors in the textfile rename it to eg potc.txt and send it with "pin2dmd.exe /t potc.txt"

to pin2dmd before you start the table. Colorize option has to be turned off in this case otherwise palette

gets overwritten.

Regards

lucky1

I don't always use a frontend for testing tables so for me would be nice if pinmame did this. But I'm just one user so will see what others think. Great work lucky1 thanks for everything

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I don't always use a frontend for testing tables so for me would be nice if pinmame did this. But I'm just one user so will see what others think. Great work lucky1 thanks for everything

You´re right ! It would be great if pinMame could take care of everything, but since it is limited to 4 colors you still have to open

a cmd window and send the 16 colors palette as described. If you change to another 4 colors table within VP you can use the colorize

option again to set the colors as you wish for the next table. This is not a limitation of pin2dmd, it is the lack of colorize support

for 16 colors tables in pinmame, which are Stern tables and are only supported by a custom SAM build.

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Having fun with this now. :D Thanks to all involved. I will upload some videos later but here are some init feedback. (I downloaded the latest test vpinmame and pin2dmd firmware.)

 

Carny, I can confim the RGB panel will work with just one of the panels.  You will get the right half of the screen displayed.  I am using a PC power supply to provide 5V to the RGB panel and PIN2DMD controller, so only one USB cable connected

 

Here are my test observation so far with vPinmame. 

- Colorize DMD feature works as expected.  Set the 4 different colors and feature works great.

- However, when the 4 color "Colorize DMD" option is unchecked, vPinMame app allows you to pick a primary color for the DMD, i,e red palette or green or blue, etc.  I don't think this palette info is sent to PIN2DMD controller, so you end up with last used palette as randr mentioned in previous post

 

For example, trying to set color to green or blue does not work.  PIN2DMD uses the previous palette.  I think vPinmame just needs to add palette support for this use case also when sending to PIN2DMD

 

post-3067-0-73580600-1448037759_thumb.png

post-3067-0-20153200-1448037772_thumb.png

 

I did increase the RGB brightness level by a factor of 4, just personal taste here, by opening rgb_out.c and modifying the rgbperiod line to

    int rgbperiod[4] = {800,1200,2560,5120};  

It looks like largest value supported is 0x2FF which is 12287, I tried as high as 10240

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