edit, disregard, love this project don't want to see it steer off topic.

Very nice, avoiding excess processing as soon as the appropriate pattern is found in the game ID digits. Game detection can also be done instantly in Data East, Sega, and Stern games by reading the display version when the machine is turned on.

50020
50066?

Twilight Zone, Cactus Canyon.

Because you would be using this device in only one pinball at a time and it would be most likely preloaded with colour data for that particular game do you need to dynamically detect the game on boot? Could it all be pre configured in the micro before being installed?

Thinking how this would be used in the real world

It is very cool though

Regards
Russell Pirie

Game detection ! Clever move

If you're downloading palette packs for games yes this would be nice to have.

Yeah I was just thinking along the lines of once its installed in say a twilight zone. That machine is not going to change? The boot screen will always be the same? Only the colour pallets or frame detection settings will change for that game. If they then decide to put it in another machine then you would set the board up for that machine (but would be maybe in a month or more?) I guess its all down to how many machines people have and are going to be swapping it about / It will just work out of the box no setting up needed if it contains pre configured settings for each pinball machine

OK I want in on this,
can someone tell me what i need to get going?
Thanks

The first thing you need is trust in China sending you what you think you're ordering.

Gotta have your China Pride!

I totally see these formatted correctly and legible on my laptop, but when I was on my phone, not so much. I figured they were dot screens, but wasn't seeing anything useful in them.

Great work guys.
I am really interested in this project and install it in my tz that I'm about to finish restoring.
Any links/suggestions of where to get the parts and what parts?
Will the boards be available to purchase pre made?

For the STM32F4 discovery board project PIN2DMD from me, there is a group buy organized in the vpuniverse forum.
http://vpuniverse.com/forums/topic/2250-pin2dmd-prorder-backorder/

For the teensy based project from ecrutz you have to contact him.

Nothing more to add, but this is awesome, keep up the great work!

Here is a video of PIN2DMD connected to a Stern Avatar pinball machine.

So I've been curious about the colorization process. So let's say I play through a game and record out all the animations in the game and definitely want to recolor those, so I assign a palette to each animation. Then is there a "general" palette for the game as a whole that is assigned to scoring, etc. ?

The version of the goDMD editor that allows colorization is still under development, but the current version on go-dmd.de allows you to play back recordings using the custom vpinmame.dll file for PinMAME. You need to make a folder named tmp in the root of your Windows drive or it won't work. Then zip up the text file in a 7z archive using 7-Zip and load the 7z file into the goDMD animation editor.

My RGB DMD Panel sample lot is at the post office. Will pick them up Saturday and see how they look.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Awesome!

First I have to say that this is cool. My question is could you simply daisy chain some 16x32 panels and just hook the ribbon cable in for data? I would imagine the inputs should be standard and just provide a 5v power source to power the display ? would this work on a 90s dmd based game or does the persistence of plasma have to be taken into account?

The dot data coming from the real pinball machine is in a different format / different io signals then of the format / signals needed for these china rgb displays.

You need to read in the real pinball dot data buffer it then reformat it and send out again to the china displays. You need some sort of micro/fpga to do this processing. Not as simple as just plugging the china displays into a real pinball Also each pinball manufacture sends out the dot data slightly differently, different timing / sub frame cycles etc.. so you also need to detect what is coming in before you can process it.

IN:
1 Display enable
3 Row data
5 Row clock
7 Column latch
9 Dot clock
11 Serial data
13 No connection

OUT:
https://learn.adafruit.com/system/assets/assets/000/023/768/original/led_matrix_socket2.png?1426305708

Very cool

Well sort of...

dmddirectish.jpg

It is more than likely possible to use the signal from the pinball machine, without doing any processing, just a bit of logic. You however will only be able to have shades of one colour in varying shades , like an original plasma dmd. The above picture is of 2x64x32 RGB panels, getting clock and pixel data directly from the pinball machine. It was however just done for fun, so it is not a solution just an experiment.
Connect clock to clock, latch to latch, OE to ground... this is where it gets interesting the LED panel gets row data as a 4 bit number, to address 16 lines, and have 2 x R,G,B signals one set for the top half and one for the bottom half of the panel, this is the pixel data! The original pinball DMD gets a frame start signal, and has a row clock to denote the start of a frame and to denote the end of a row.
The solution is to have a 5 bit counter on the row clock, (4bits) 0 to 15 and 1 extra bit , the first 4 bits gets zeroed by frame start signal. The 4 bit counter is connected to LED panel pins A.B,C,D. haha the 5th bit is to toggle where the pixel data signal goes.in short, split pixel data signal from pinball machine in two and use the 5th bit from the counter to control whether is goes to R1,G1,B1 (rows 0-15) or R2,G2,B2 (rows 16-31).
I used an Arduino Uno and very little code and 2 buffer chips to do this, there was issues, just some logic chips will be better.
I am abandoning this line of thought and will start on some other interesting ideas I've had for the panels. There is enough people working on the current trajectory of this project. What fun.

Thats actually quite cool lol. How many logic chips does it need? What does the actual image look like it? is it clean and flicker free?

More updates please!

Love this thread. Once I get my act together I'd love to put a kit together.

Has there been any discussion of a group buy on some of the elements to make it affordable for all?

Love looks.like there is already something happening with the boards. Anyone putting together a led panel group buy?

Aaron at FAST was, but I don't think he's gotten them yet..

Sorry I have been so quiet lately. We had our meet-up(which was awesome), then I got sick(not so awesome), then Thanksgiving(yum), then catching up with everything else going on(ugh). I received the sample lot of 10 and distributed them to a couple other guys already and have another to go out soon.

So far they look pretty good. One was a little streaky, but I want to test it more extensively. I am thinking there needs to be some sort of rating system on these. What I came up with so far was:

A+ = Looks perfect and functions perfect.

A = Looks really good, functions perfect. Differences might be slight heat effects on the LEDs when you are viewing them with light off, close up.

B = Functions perfect, but definitely looks a little rough. This is basically the line I would draw and not accept any worse than this. Basically, good enough to not be worth the return shipping expense.

People I have spoken to vary in what they want to buy but the majority say they want to pay more for the A+.

The idea would be if you pay for A+, you get that. If you pay for A, you get an A or better. I (and others) felt this was a fair way to set expectations right for the product. I have seen a few different panels that area gnarly. I expect most companies selling these are buying up the rejects and refurbishing them. Remember, these things go on giant screens and nobody puts them under the scrutiny that we pinball folk do.

So I am going to be doing some more testing this weekend and grind the numbers and come up with what makes it worth doing. If all goes good with testing we will be doing a 100 piece order, enough for 50 panels.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

2 buffer chips used as switches,1 counter,1 inverter, but I used an Arduno Uno instead of the counter and inverter. The picture refreshes a 100% like a plasma dmd, there is no processing or saving of the signal,it just gets passed through from the pinball machine to the LED panel. Because of limitations with the Arduino Uno there was some problems with lines 0,15 and 31. I tried on a 90's Williams and Data East machine worked the same. Maybe something here, but maybe not as cool as colouring the frames and so forth.

You can also use a FPGA to do the logic : like this

Our hero

Was there ever answered? I would love to have this in my Hook (incidentally it's Winter's Hook that I picked up in Louisville....full circle). I would be happy to make some measurements to determine where it would be best placed on DE with 16x128

I think he was referring to a Pinmame setup. An actual 16x128 machine would be more complicated to replace. The logic and glass panel are all in one board and hard wired, so you're lacking hookups to intercept. While it can still theoretically be done, it would require a working 16x128 board (glass might ideally be bad or maybe just don't give it high voltage), and soldering an adapter onto specific points on the board. If I recall correctly, these smaller displays use an extra logic input, which might require a new output on the RGB panel logic board that no one has planned for. Not saying it can't be done, but I briefly worked with Oga83 trying to get SmartDMD working in Hook. We both got busy and then I sold the machine.

Well win some you lose some. I won this machine...and then lost color...haha

I wonder if at some point in the distant future, if this project gets off the ground, someone can make a cheaper version of this using single color LED displays and minimal signal processing as you described? Something that is driven by a simple microcontroller and uses the original clock and latch signals provided from the DMD driver board. Would it even be practical to try and source a 160mm x 160mm monochromatic display, when RGB ones are one of the most common types available?

They really aren't all that expensive, so I'm not sure how much cost cutting is required.

The one I ordered from Ali was under $65 shipped for two 32x64 panels (oriented in the 64x64 form factor). Plus the power supply, teensy, and smart matrix board, you're in under $125. Compared to pricing of a new plasma display or new led displays, this is a great deal.

I don't think sourcing them in monochromatic would be be worth it. These panels are only the price they are because they are being produced in high volume for other purposes. I really don't think the savings on LEDs would be worth setting up to manufacture single color panels. Maybe you shave a a few dollars off (if you can find the LEDs in 2.5p) but the NRE charges wouldn't be recouped for a while.

It wouldn't be that bad to just use these for single color uses.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

My buddy and I got our panels! We also have the STM32F4s and a couple of Lucky's shields. Time to make some magic happen!

Our panels arrived with a couple of leds ripped off the edges, so we're going through the process with AliAba to get that fixed but at least we can start to play now.

Maybe a plug and play solution with RGB pots to adjust the color?

Some might like that type of option, but I personally want to be future proof if DIY colorization options come up for the older 4 shade games.

We're close, but something not quite right.

Star Wars? Maybe the noise is coming from the lamp matrix.

Duh, fixed the star wars gaffe, sorry. It's not going off the splash screen. Just displays it all the time.

You have the wrong device mode configured in PIN2DMD.exe config tool. I assume you are still in Devicemode0 which is PinMame USB input. You need to set devicemode3 for Stern input. From your video in vpuniverse forum I can see you already fixed that but still have noise.

Random pixels and sync problems are coming from bad input signal quality, which differs from machine to machine. Try to put 220Ohm resistor in line of data and clock signal and also a 33,47 or 100pf capacitor to ground. I hope that kills the noise. Got this from a Stern LED DMD which I removed from my vpin cab. You may also use shorter connections or a shielded cable. We are still in beta with real pinball
input but getting closer to a reliable solution from day to day. However code seems to work fine. Unfortunately I don´t have a Stern machine here to test myself.
Thanks for your support. Great to see the real pinball community also supporting this project.

Here is PIN2DMD working in a STTNG. No Signal quality problems in this machine.