Thanks for posting that video in its entirety. BSD looks fantastic!

You're sadly out of your depth when it comes to understanding the technical capabilities and limits of these systems. Your posts regarding ColorDMD read as nothing more than trolling.

Well here's another voice speaking out against Joerg Amman (Lucky1) and his theft of other projects. Lucky1 and Steve also ripped off ColorDMD's patented method for real-time recognition and colorization of pinball frames. I'm not speaking about the general idea of coloring frames. This is a very specific method for uniquely identifying frames based on static content while ignoring dynamic content like scores.

The infringement is so brazen as the Pin2DMD editior and documentation use the same terminology of "hashes" and 'masks" described in the patent. I specifically contacted them to request that they remove the ColorDMD methods before distributing the V2 editor and was told to pound sand because they "live in Germany" and "don't need to worry about US patents."

Lucky1 and Steve have ripped off pindmd, the Run-DMD clock, ColorDMD's patents, and Steve has also gone on to help create "Rasberry PinSound", a complete knockoff of Pinsound. I found out about this last bit after hearing from the Pinsound founders in March, who were equally disturbed.

There's no misunderstanding here. It's absolutely astonishing to me the justifications that Lucky1 has contrived to defend their unethical and abusive behavior. They have absolutely no respect for anyone else's contributions, and are not worthy of community support.

As the creator of a thread instructing others how to create a "poor man's ColorDMD," I wouldn't expect anything less.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/diy-addams-family-poor-mans-color-dmd

However, you've missed the point. The issue isn't with creating/selling a color display. DMD Extender, SmartDMD, XPin, PinDMD3, and others have been doing that for years. The 192x64 display alone is also fine.

The issue is theft/infringement of other projects' contributions to the hobby, specifically by Pin2DMD but now also by PinballSP. In ColorDMD's case, specific patented methods for frame-colorization. And if you have any doubt as to their disregard for ethical/legal considerations, consider this gem above where PinballSP and Lucky1 exchange their thoughts on direct copyright infringment of "third-party" artwork.

pasted_image (resized).png

I agree with you. Unfortunately you didn't create anything "absolutely different". You directly implemented the ColorDMD patent as part of Pin2DMD, just as you directly implemented SmartDMD's technology and included the grayscale-to-color mapping of DMD Extender.

Your initial VPin interface was directly taken from PinDMD.

He specifically mentions TFT. Neither Pin2DMD or SmartDMD support a TFT output.

If you want to debate "illegal" vs "unethical", no need. I'm satisfied with either definition.

I'll give you then that there's no bias in his statement about whose "third-party" artwork is directly imported. Development on any platform is fair game. Great news for all colorists.

We're veering off course but if this is justification for copying work, it's unlikely to play out this way...

It's a small market with high-investment costs (time/resources) and low volume. In the face of reduced volume either by a shrinking market or competition, take a look at the pinball market as a whole.

A manufacturer has a few choices in order to maintain profitability:
(1) Cut development
(2) Increase prices
(3) Reduce manufacturing costs

Of course, reduced volume implies that you're not able to retain market share through product differentiation.

Which methods have you seen used in the pinball industry? Reduced prices has never been one of them.

In ColorDMD's case, at least for the time being, we still have a good deal of product differentiation through LED and LCD support, as well as having a large number of undsclosed methods for handling all kinds of difficult animation sequences that weren't known at the time of the patent filing.

All that aside... remember ColorDMD is a small part-time business that exists only with the support of the community. Producing quality results is difficult. It takes tremendous effort and investment in time and resources. We work every day to make it better and extend support for new titles.

If we lose that support and it doesn't make sense to continue as a business, we'll likely cut development first and eventually give away the IP. Either way, we'll be satisfied with the contribution we were able to make to the hobby.

However, it's still difficult to read posts where blatant copying is applauded and happening on multiple projects.

They are benefiting from the work that Russ, I, and others have already done... today.

With regard to ColorDMD and the rights holders, both WMS/PPS and Stern were contacted before we ever released anything for their games. There was no issue with what we were doing and the integrity of their IP was protected.

In contrast, the project leads that have been affected believe that Joerg/Steve's use of our innovations has been highly unethical (at the least) whether you care to agree or not.

The information is available. Russ and I have shared some of it here. The community will ultimately decide what they want to support.

I'd like to see ColorDMD development continue as it does now for as long as possible, but will adapt if needed.

---

Also, as commented upon in another thread, the saying is "Necessity is the mother of invention." The innovations by ColorDMD, PinDMD, and others filled a perceived "need."

I've never seen any argument that supports copying as breeding innovation. Though maybe "innovation breeds copying" is true.

My argument isn't with you and you're entitled to form your own opinion. I'll respond to your comments/questions and then you can have the last word.

The ColorDMD patents (there are three of them now, having each been subjected to multiple reviews by different US patent examiners and approved) cover a very specific implementation for real-time coloring of monochrome pinball frames... both hardware and method. it does not cover the general idea of colorizing a video frame.

The patents contribute a unique method of masking and hashing pinball video frames in order to recognize the frame using unique static attributes while ignoring dynamically varying content (like player scores). The technique is applied offline in order to create a lookup table of corresponding color information which is then indexed and applied in real-time while the game is playing. The patent goes into extensive detail as to how these operations are performed. In fact, a basic requirement of a patent is that it can be implemented by someone "skilled in the art."

The Pin2DMD founders willfully and knowingly implemented the patent both in the Pin2DMD editor as well as the playback hardware. This is indisputable, as the documentation for the editor and the GUI itself includes the same terminology (hashes and masks) created and used in the patent.

The only point of contention is that since they reside in Germany, and the patents apply to sales/use in the United States, they believe they are justified to copy and use whatever they want without legal recourse. They have also argued that software patents aren't allowed in Germany and expressed their general contempt of the US patent system on the forum and in private emails.

This is a legal argument by the way, and ignores general ethics which is really what should prevail in a small community.

The international patent system doesn't work this way. The US and international filings need to be made at the same time and international filings are much more expensive because the patent has to be reviewed by many countries.

To be honest, I never expected to need the patent as ColorDMD was a one-off project for a niche market. I never thought anyone would be crazy enough to invest time to copy it. The main reason the US patent was filed was just to have a documented record before disclosing it to others to see if it was worth the sizable investment I needed to make in order to try to share it with the community.

Something like this did happen, and we found terms that were agreeable to all parties. Could I have fought or ignored it? Possibly, but I was doing this to have fun and make a contribution. I never thought the idea would amount to much and thought it might be panned by the RGP purists anyway. I wasn't looking for headaches and if we couldn't come to terms, I would have just walked away.

The actions by Pin2DMD and private interactions I've had with them have never sat well with me. I've since found out they've taken similar actions on three other projects. In the past week, I've seen this push further with PinballSP proposing to copy the artwork outright. It was time to speak up.

When I contacted you, I specifically requested only that you remove the ColorDMD colorization method from Pin2DMD V2 and revert back to the grayscale-to-palette mapping that you had been using to that point.

When you asked me about SmartDMD, I explained that there was no conflict with side-channel method of signalling the frame but there could be an issue with the single byte palette identifier (which Olivier created while consulting with ColorDMD). However, if you want to continue to use SmartDMD's single byte palette identifier, and have Olivier's permission, go for it. I won't bother you.

But I will appeal to you yet again publicly to remove the ColorDMD colorization method from the Pin2DMD, and stop taking from other projects without their permission.

You're perfectly welcome to come up with your own ideas that are better than anything that has come before.

PinDMD, Run-DMD, ColorDMD, Pinsound. It's too much.

+1000

Mayuh, I'll have a drink with you and Russ anytime. On me.

ColorDMD LED retail price is $369USD or 312 euro, not anywhere close to the 400-500 Euros you claim. Our retail price includes a margin for distributors. Wholesale prices are quite a bit lower.

Besides cost of goods, ColorDMD costs include professional volume contract manufacturing of boards, cables, assembly, and packaging. Paid services for fulfillment and customer assistance. Paid development and direct support for a growing library of titles. Free priority shipped replacement parts (including international priority shipments). Monthly costs for our website, e-commerce site, shipping, inventory control and other basic costs of managing and running a business.

You're either being intentionally deceptive in your statements or don't yet understand the costs of running any kind of volume business where you won't be able to do everything yourself.

Best of luck. The most time consuming part is content creation, QA, and developer support. This is also where all the value creation lies, and where you have yet to demonstrate capability.

I don't think much of your plan to enable others to illegally obtain content but I guess time will tell.

No magic... just a lot of hard work.

To enlighten the interested reader, here's the figure directly from the patent which steve45 copied and implemented in PIN2DMD without permission. https://www.google.com/patents/US8773452

Figure2 (resized).png

This describes the frame identifer block in context of the full architecture below which yielded a novel method for real-time coloring pinball video frames that has earned three US patents both on architecture and method. Of the mutiple US patent examiners that reviewed it and searched for prior art, not one found it to be obvious when it was invented back in 2009-11. Only Steve and Joerg found it to be so, in 2016, after it was published and could be examined and copied.

Figure1 (resized).png

What the reader might find equally interesting is that the actual invention was created and refined over a two year period (2009-2011) during the creation and demonstration of our first game, Attack From Mars. PIN2DMD's "obvious" colorization method managed to be created without Steve or Joerg ever having colored a single pinball game.

My previous post included a link to the entire patent, with claims and a detailed description of the invention. No need for Steve or anyone else to assume anything. It's a public document.

In case it's not clear, a hash is just a method for tagging a pinball frame, similar to assigning it a "phone number" and storing it in a table. Once the table is created you can link and store all kinds of associated information, and look it up using the hash tag.

It's quite ridiculous for Steve to state that PIN2DMD uses a mask and hash, yet doesn't have a hash table to lookup the hashed value. It's also ridiculous to claim that the hashed value isn't linked to the color information which is read from memory via an address.

Regarding serial versus parallel processing, the patent makes no such claim so this is just Steve creating smoke.

What was innovative and non-obvious about the invention is that it contributed a unique method by which monochrome pinball frames could be processed offline, identified, and associated with color information. The masking defined in the invention was needed to recognize pinball frames based on static content (like graphics) while ignoring dynamic content that could change over time (like player scores).

The method was then be repeated during game play, with the stored color data recalled to create real-time frame-by-frame colorization of the identified monochrome video. The claims in the patent (as well as the description of the invention) go into extensive detail as to how this is accomplished and provide sufficient detail to reproduce one embodiment of the invention.

Prior to this work, the only known method for colorizing pinball frames was simple grayscale-to-color mapping, similar to what existed in the Nintendo Gameboy and PinMame.

What you might also find interesting is that within a 1-2 year period, Steve not only implemented ColorDMD's invention, but also wrote the code to knock off the Run-DMD clock and PinSound. He's been a busy beaver. Yet, with all his talent, never found the time to color a single game.

The patent is defined by its claims which are required to be very specific. If you want to play games I'll cite them here. There's nothing general about them. And I'll remind you again, that prior to this work the only known method for colorizing pinball frames was simple graylevel-to-color mapping.

And the SmartDMD discussion that you're referencing was designed while Olivier (Oga) and I were exchanging emails about how to incorporate his idea of modifying game ROMs for reception by the ColorDMD using our existing hardware architecture. I still have all the emails. This was more than a year before MikeD got involved and tried to productize and sell SmartDMD.

Claim1 (resized).png
Claim10 (resized).PNG

So if you want the whole story... SmartDMD was available for free long before Mike showed up.

Olivier first gave it to DMD Extender and created his own Rasberry Pi implementation after we couldn't agree on terms for its release with ColorDMD. Olivier wanted us to embed a license, and I wanted Olivier to have an OK from Stern to modify ROMs. I also told Olivier I didn't think it would be successful because of the missing byte and reduction to 16 colors at the expense of the shading. Again... I have the emails.

Monster_Bash was the first SmartDMD user to "complete a game" with it on Family Guy. This was long before Mike arrived on the scene, and he didn't distribute it or give the rights to Mike.

The Metallica and Avengers videos that Mike first showed when he announced the SmartDMD product weren't made by him at all. He had no content of his own at that time. The original Metallica was from Nerbflong who had already abandoned SmartDMD due to his frustration with the system, and had been working with ColorDMD for some time.

The Avengers video was from JF who had given up because he had run out of memory and couldn't complete it. He later contacted ColorDMD. We contracted him to redo it for the ColorDMD platform and helped him complete it. There were a lot of other projects that have been started and got stuck for the same reason... lack of memory.

Mike did a lot of work on AC/DC and Metallica but my understanding is he quit the project before finishing them. These games used boards with two ROM chips and didn't have memory problems, but there was some criticism about the missing byte (which Oga finally fixed with side-channel) and the lack of detail (due to the 16 color problem).

Mike also wasn't able to deliver a low-cost supported solution and had additional problems with creating content. His final price was similar to ColorDMD. When Mike exited, he made good on his threat and made the unfinished ROMs freely available and others added to them.

Actually... it's necessity that drives inventions, not competition from copying someone else's invention.

Your "engine" is running on the same hashing and masking techniques that ColorDMD invented and patented. Unfortunately for PIN2DMD, you're missing all the additional innovations that we've come up with and bolted on to the original engine to enable us to handle all the rough roads and obstacles you have ahead.

I'll only be satisfied when you and Steve stop copying and cloning other projects without permission. Whether you acknowledge it or not, your behavior is highly destructive and demotivating for anyone to spend time and money to invent anything new for pinball or try to bring it to market.

Until then I'll continue to expose what you're about and let others decide for themselves.

A Pin2DMD is not a copy of a PinDMD. Its all original and the name is just a coincidence.

A Go-DMD is not a copy of a Run-DMD. It's all original and the name is just a coincidence.

A Rasberry PInsound is not a copy of a PinSound. It's all original and the name (which was later changed after a trademark dispute) is just a coincidence.

A method for masking/hashing/colorizing pinball frames is not a copy of a method for masking/hashing/colorizing pinball frames. It's all original and the terminology is just a coincidence.

There's either a whole lot of coincidences or a whole lot of copying going on where you and Steve are concerned. Since I can't tell the difference between s diesel and petrol engine, I'll let people smarter than me decide and wait for your next great "invention."

Really? Here's Limpan's post on the first page of his Run-DMD clock thread from two years ago.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/run-dmd-the-most-amazing-clock-ever-released#post-2317759

Here's russdx's VPForums post from December 2015, speaking out against Lucky's direct copying of his pinDMD code and integration in PIN2DMD.

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=32549&page=9

pindmd (resized).PNG

And here on the Go-DMD clock page is a link to "Rasberry-Pinsound". Interesting name as it was designed to replace the PinSound invention and use the same community sound files developed to support it. Had a long conversation with the founders of PinSound at TPF this year, who expressed real frustration that both their invention and name were copied.

https://go-dmd.de/produkt/raspberry-pinsound-image/

rasberrypinsound (resized).PNG

Here's Steve's own thread on Pinside openly discussing his project where he actually states that sounds can be downloaded from the PinSound forum.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rebuilding-sound-for-de-jurassic-park-using-a-pi#post-3566278

The distributor for Run-DMD. Steve mentioned both Torbjörn and the "distributor guy (don't remember the name)." His name is Limpan.

My last post was 13 days ago. I was done posting to this thread until Steve and you kicked it up again.

This is kind of boring stuff but Joerg still doesn't understand how patent claims are constructed, refuses to consult a lawyer, and continues to misrepresent the patent. There are two types of claims: independent and dependent.

Claims 1 and 10 are independent claims and contain all the elements necessary to define the invention. If an independent claim is infringed, the patent is infringed.

Dependent claims (2-9) and (11-16), which Lucky continues to reference, may only come into play if its determined that an independent claim is invalid by virtue of being too broad. The dependent claims provide fall-back positions that further limit the scope of the independent claim.

The existence of a dependent claim implies that the independent claim is more broad. For example, dependent claim 6 which includes "lcd displays" means that the patent examiner has concluded that the independent claim covers "later generation displays" including, but not limited to "lcd displays".

For a little more color on how claims work, here's an answer from an actual patent attorney: https://www.quora.com/What-are-independent-and-dependent-claims-in-a-patent-What-is-the-significance-of-each-How-to-figure-out-whether-a-claim-is-independent-or-dependent-while-reading-a-patent

I don't have a horse in this race... we're happy with our cable solution and have used a 12V switcher since product introduction in 2012.

However, unless I'm missing something, there are some obvious problems with this design for WPC games, and is the main reason we moved away from the DMD connector.

(1) You can't use 12V from the WPC DMD controller to drive anything. There's a current limiting 56 ohm, 1/4 amp resistor in the path. If you pull too much current through this resistor, you're going to burn the resistor on the DMD controller board like a fuse.

(2) Running the display off the 5V logic supply runs the risk of watchdog resets, especially on older games where the 5V bridge/cap is already stressed. This is the reason there are a bajillion caps on Luis' new DMD board but still don't see how you can predict/guarantee that the 5V won't dip as it's a function of video content, display brightness, power driver board components, and anything else hanging off the 5V supply.

Combining the two supplies with diodes doesn't resolve either problem.

The "best" solution would be one that uses the actual high voltage supplies that were intended to power the display. But this requires a more complex design to safely switch the high voltage to something that can be used by the display, and protect the display in the event of a failure at the switcher.