Hi! I purchased one a couple weeks ago, asked a few questions, and have not heard back. I sent another pm to you Rappelbox

Has anyone here received confirmation their order has shipped? OP seems unresponsive....

I ordered a diy kit coming close to 3 weeks ago from UncleSash at VPUniverse. Asked last week if there was any tracking info, said he’s look into it then nothing.

The pinned order thread says shipping is USPS priority of which I get automatically notified for by usps as soon as something addressed to me hits their system so I know it hasn’t even been mailed yet.

I’m probably about 2-3 days from going ahead and opening a dispute then forgetting about Pin2DMD. Bummer too since I already bought and recieved the panels, power supply and Nucleo board.

I was so excited to give it a shot with my TZ too.

Sasha is on a business trip for his real job from beginning of last week until thursday this week.

I fixed some triggering issues in Malenkos project and just updated the project files in the google drive link in the first post.
You are adviced to use it with latest firmware 2.11 version of pin2dmd XL from my github account.
https://github.com/lucky01/PIN2DMD/tree/master/firmware/latest
I added color correction to this firmware to have better color matching to the editor colors.

I used all scenes colored by Malenko but there are still video sequences which would look best if we had the original video snippet to extract the color from.

Give it a try if you want.

Ok good to know, I’ll wait a couple more weeks then.

Videos of what is not working are appreciated.

Looks like there's some competition on the horizon. ColorDMD just dropped this teaser on their FB page today ...

ColorDMD - Sega (resized).JPG

Competition is good!

True ! It is questionable wether a LED version would exist, but definitely no Sega version without the PIN2DMD project.
But now back to the topic.

I think its great they are coloring it. I dont think its great that when pin2dmd is mentioned in a colorDMD thread everyone shits a brick, but there is a colorDMD post in pretty much every single pin2dmd thread concerning one of my projects for some reason.

It has to do with most people thinking that pinDMD 'borrowed" the ability for how the colorization works based on what colorDMD first came up with. No idea if that is the case, but perception is all that matters.
Many people dont care for others that come in and piggyback off a great idea to try and make money. Innovation is great. Taking ideas from others is not.

Beyond that, some pinDMD supporters started hawking the crap in colorDMD based threads first and that tends to push people off.

Last and likely most important, the support for early adopters was complete garbage. I know a few people that went through all the crap of buying and piecing together a pinDMD to put in a game, only to have issues, realize they had to send more payments to get stuff unlocked, and never could get the stuff to work.
Maybe it was a language or cultural barrier, but man what a waste of cash to try and support what was going on when it first came out.

I personally am very happy that there appears to be a plug and play alternative on the horizon, with great colorists, a known quality product, and fantastic support.

I am sure there is still a market for your product and people that feel the need to do their own coloring, but lets be a bit more realistic on the reasons people have certain perceptions about pinDmD vs colorDMD.

The 3 things that stand out the most at this point are:

1. Match sequence is not in full color (i.e., no red swimsuits, blond/brown hair, blue squid girl, etc.).
2. Tidal Wave - it goes in and out between color and mono blue.
3. Ball Locks - they also go in and out between color and mono blue. Also, there is a ghost image of the ball rolling up the ramp for some reason.

There are also monochromatic frames during many transitions (like perhaps the correct keyframe wasn't chosen?).

Also, a lot of still frames are not colorized. I know that a lot of scenes were not colorized due to a higher level of difficulty, but the ones I am talking about are just still frames. Not sure if they were never colored or just not keyed.

Thanks for the video !

1) Match - The sequence of the girls is random which needs special colorization work which is not done -
I made a replacement till it is done
2) Tidal wave - will fix the triggering of the start sequence but the successful end scene is missing colorization. I only have the scene where it crashes.
3) Ball lock - will fix triggering
4) Variety award - never seen this scene in the recordings -> needs colorization
5) Three of a kind - same as above
6) Shoot hole for extra ball - same as above
7) Multiball - Need the video snippets for the intro and colorization
8) Transitions need colorization. Currently only the end frames are colorized.

Except 2 and 3 the triggering is working fine. I will try to fix this.
I already told you that I´m not good in choosing colors that is why I leave
the colorization work to others. If it is done, I can easily add the scenes to the project.

just shoot me any scenes that need colored and I'll do them.

.

Added over 6 years ago:

Maybe they're actually ship product, unlike SOMEbody here

.

If you can post on here you could reply to one of my many messages. I ordered around 20 days ago and have heard nothing.

Really?

JellyNeck's situation is what I was referring to. It looks like they're starting to work on getting things shipped, which is good. Hopefully this is a learning experience for Pin2DMD, and they figure out a way to communicate with customers in a timely manner, even when the person who normally handles communication is ill.

I know European and US opinions on how long it should take to ship often differ - i.e. on arcade forums, US members tend to be apologetic if they don't ship within a couple days, European members tend to take a week. (That's not a value judgment - just an acknowledgment of cultural differences.) I don't think people would be upset if it took a couple weeks to ship this product, but no communication for 3+ weeks seems excessive.

I ordered/paid 3 1/2 months ago and got a shipping number a month ago. Shipping number gives me no info other than that it was dropped off at shipping. No response from Dom. Going to give it a little longer, but it is getting a bit ridiculous.

I must say that I´m also not satisfied how currently these things are handled and unfortunately I don´t have much influence on that.
I have no business partnerships with any of the hardware suppliers. From my side it is a hobby software project and the hardware part is DIY. From my experience with chinese suppliers I can tell you that it is hard to make any schedules but that is only an excuse for the late delivery and not for the bad communication. The only thing I can say is that there is not a single pin2dmd user I know of who did not get his display in the end. If anybody wants to jump in and sell pin2dmd compatible hardware kits, feel free. I´m happy about anybody helping this community project and I can provide the necessary information.

Will do, but first I need a recording of the missing scenes

I uploaded a new version for testing the tidal wave intro and ball lock scene.

not to bring up colorDMD vs Pin2DMD but 3.5 months tho....

I don't see any changes - both scenes look the same as the previous version.

I think you may be missing a crucial point, though:
COMMUNICATION.

If people are contacting you with requests to, say, include a ROM instead of burning their own, I think that warrants a response within a week. To go 3 weeks without acknowledging an order or answering questions is going to upset more customers than (understandable) delays in product availability and shipment.

I certainly understand that. I thought about going more DIY on my build, but after some learning "mistakes" on some parts of my virtual pin I decided it was worth the money to save the time and hassle of figuring it all out and just getting one pre-made. Just like I thought about the project to use a raspberry Pi to replace a soundboard, I went ahead and bought a PinSound instead and couldn't be happier.

If colorDMD had my game colorized I'd probably have gone that route. The decided not to hire Malenko to do it (LW3), so he did it for pin2dmd anyway. I do like the fact that the pin2dmd software is available to the end user. I love tinkering and would be interested in messing with colorization.

Anyway, here's hoping I get my order, its one of the last big upgrades to my machine.

I updated the project on google drive for public testing.

1. The ghost ball image is now fixed on the ball lock, but the scene still transitions to mono blue at the end.
2. In Tidal Wave, a successful rescue is now colored properly, but the intro is still not colored correctly.
3. It appears some palette changes have occurred (inadvertently?) in the pop bumper (buoy scene) and Guard Millions mode (surf board scene).
4. One time during CPR mode, the fleshtone palette changed to a red/yellow palette about midway during the mode. I'm not sure what I hit that caused it to change, but I could not get it to repeat so far.

If you need video for any of these, let me know.

EDIT: Also, there are a couple of frames in the GUARD letters scene that aren't colored (see below). They go by fast so it looks like a discontinuity or skip in the scene, but it is the uncolored frames.

pasted_image (resized).png

2. a video would be helpful
3. I changed that palette because I did not like the other. Feel free to change it yourself to what you like

1 and 4. maybe the colorization of these frame ends to early. I adjusted the times a bit. Let´s see if it helps.
New files on google drive.

Edit:
Changed the keyframing for Guard. Please test.

I can say the way I colored the "GUARD" scene is so that the same overlay plays every time.

No change.

I changed the palette for surfboards.
Comparing the Guard pictures of my recordings and the pictures in your video there seems to be a
difference. I changed the keyframes again and hope that helps. Otherwise I need a new recording.
For the Lock scene I definitely need a new recording because I´m missing the end frames of the scene.
Please check the guard scene and the Tidal wave intro

The palette for the surfboards definitely changed to red/yellow (this must be the same palette that CPR mode was using earlier today for that one instance) - looks better than the bland colors previously used IMO though. The GUARD and Tidal Wave scenes remain the same. I PM'ed you about recordings yesterday - I would be glad to provide them to you - but there is nothing "easy peasy" about that process on my machine for some reason.

I figured out what happened in the CPR mode when the color palette changed this morning. When you are in the CPR mode, anytime the ball is ejected from the shark hole and then drains within a short period of time, you get a ball saver and the "Baywatch will be right back" frame is displayed, which uses a red/yellow palette. When the ball automatically returns to play then and the CPR scene continues, it retains that red/yellow palette for the remainder of the mode, instead of it's normal fleshtone palette. It's repeatable. I'm sure this will also occur in any mode that is interrupted by the "Baywatch will be right back" frame.

That is a good info about CPR mode. I will see if I can reproduce that behavior in my baywatch virtual pin and catch the moment where the CPR scene starts again. About recordings on real machines, the early versions of the custom controller used USB only to power for testing and not for communication. So dump recording depends on wether you get the device recognized in your PC or not.
We did not plan to do that when we started the XL project. Look in your device manager if anything comes up. I have to find out where the differences in recordings come from. Maybe Chads code changes are the reason ? I will check. What is your display version ? 4.00 ?

New version is up for testing.
Changed

CPR after Drain
Tidal Wave
Guard
Ball Lock

So if I understand correctly, I was given an old controller even though I bought this a month ago?

I don´t know if and when the design got changed. I only tested USB with the DIY Nucleo shield because I have a first generation board in my Batman Forever. Pinmame recordings work better anyway.
Did you test the latest files ?

Why are you guys still not communicating with people who paid a month ago?

You guys ? I can´t answer your questions because I have nothing to do with any of the hardware suppliers. Sorry.
If you are desperately waiting for an answer from Rappelbox best way is to give him a call. That is what I do if he is not answering my mails. https://germangamingsupplies.com/Impressum

Is that a "yes" to my question?

No it is a I don´t know. He talked to me about that but I don´t know whether he changed the design.

Earth to Dominick...come in Rappelbox - can you answer this question, please sir, over...?

Lucky1 - I am testing now and will make a video for you shortly.

My controller board is white, so it should work then, right? Here are some pictures of it. If I can get this to make dump files, I can then send Lucky1 any animation he needs. I just need your help to get it working.

DSCN2508 (resized).JPG

DSCN2507 (resized).JPG

DSCN2509 (resized).JPG

The good news is Guard scene is now working perfectly. Video is better than words for the rest, but summary is:
1. The CPR mode after ball save no longer changes to the red/yellow palette, but it now goes in and out of mono blue.
2. Tidal wave intro may have improved somewhat but still not right. On the bright side, it doesn't look like ball save affects it colors.
3. Chopper Rescue mode is affected by ball save - sometimes it goes mono blue, sometimes red/yellow.
4. Diver Trapped mode is affected by ball save - sometimes it goes mono blue, sometimes red/yellow.
5. Shark Cove mode is curious because the "Baywatch will be right back" screen is a blue palette when activated (instead of normal red/yellow). Looks like the Shark Cove blue palette is affecting the ball save screen palette in this mode?

In addition, I noticed the Guard Millions screen momentarily uses the blue mono palette when it resets sometimes.

One more thing, the Earthquake mode needs to be colored (I know, I know you are not responsible for coloring! Just bringing it to everyone's attention).

***EDIT: Ball lock scene still displays blue mono at end***

An off topic but slightly on topic question. I have a pin2dmd with below controller board. Thinking about giving coloring a JP a try but as this board is not white it can’t be used to dump recordings on SD ? Guess I will have to learn than also virtual pinball ... trying to keep it as easy as possible. Having already a RasPiSound board which is giving me a headache

E1BD8930-12C5-4726-A7B8-E28EEDC39BCC (resized).jpeg