(Topic ID: 140896)

RGB LED panels for DMD replacement

By ecurtz

8 years ago


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  • Latest reply 5 years ago by ecurtz
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    #309 8 years ago
    Quoted from lucky1:

    WPC interface is working good and we can switch color palettes now.
    Here is a short video of paletteswitching implementation on a Dr.Who WPC machine using PIN2DMD STM32 interface.
    Bally Logo is blue and "Dots in Motion" has a pink background.
    » YouTube video

    WPC interface is working good and we can switch palettes now to get more colors instead of a fixed palette for the whole game.
    Here is a short video of paletteswitching implementation on a Dr.Who WPC machine using PIN2DMD STM32 interface.
    Bally Logo is blue and "Dots in Motion" has a pink background.
    » YouTube video

    Wow. I wasn't sure what to expect wrt responsiveness (rise and fall) and how consistent it'd be between colours. this looks awesome though.

    Off the top of my head, Circus Voltaire is surely going to be THE major target for this as laptop LCDs are too big to fit (though maybe 21:9 14.4" would be ok?).

    Also, for any games that have fairly undetailed models but lots of animation and transitions this has to be superior to TN (or IPS) LCDs, even if colour pallette is lower. Certainly anything with pulsing is going to look miles better than any LCDs until we get OLEDs.

    #311 8 years ago
    Quoted from Crash:

    One thing I don't like about LCDs vs plasma displays is the slight ghosting and lower refresh rate. Have you seen the scrolling animations on some games during attract mode? Those panels refresh at 120Hz, about the same rate as many modern TVs. It looks absolutely butter.

    Yeah ... in the PC space I'm a refresh rate puritan / absolutist. Even with early (and pretty dire) 120hz TN panels that were introduced 4 or 5 years ago, I preferred the smooth motion and reduced eyestrain even if colours, contrast and viewing angles were DIRE. 60hz looks like shit to me, even for desktop use. ColorDMD guys have done amazing work, but the cheap 60hz TN laptop screens absolutely aren't at the cutting edge of technology and a final evolution for pinball displays as many seem to think (even if they're the only available or affordable option atm).

    The effective refresh rate looks good on these LEDs and blacks are obviously absolute once any fade has finished. As for modulation of brightness, hopefully they don't use PWM, as that introduces flicker which is very noticeable to some.

    Speaking of displays generally, I'd definitely consider putting a higher quality PC monitor in WOZ if and when I buy one if and when JJP sort out their issues with electrics.

    #313 8 years ago

    Interesting, thanks for the info. I haven't managed to gather, what's the colour palette on these? or can each RGBW array only have one of the 4 LEDs on?

    #324 8 years ago
    Quoted from ecurtz:

    They are only RGB, not RGBW, but they are individually controlled. They have pretty good color characteristics, if you'd like to send me a 32x128 color image I'd be happy to get a photo, but of course it's not quite the same as seeing them in person.

    Were RGBW unavailable or just prohibitively expensive?

    #327 8 years ago
    Quoted from ecurtz:

    Not available in this form factor, but as I've said the color fidelity is surprisingly good once you gamma correct.
    I got the "mini" version of the carrier boards back from OSHPark and I'm ready to provide brains for testing once Aaron or anyone else gets their hands on more panels.

    do you need to program it on a per LED basis or do you have an interface or API that just specifies desired colour / brightness / duration etc? It would be a major pain having to redo everything if and when RGBWs become available.

    Anyway, whole thing looks pretty promising.

    #333 8 years ago
    Quoted from jedimastermatt:

    So, you wouldn't recommend this as a TZ B&W alternative. Best option is still ColorDMD for this I would assume.

    Colour accuarcy of whites on a basic laptop LCD aren't great, maybe better than an RGB LED but not hugely. The latter will however have an immensely greater contrast ratio which is very noticeable for black and white. I'd take the LEDs 100% of the time for this application.

    1 month later
    #406 8 years ago
    Quoted from lucky1:

    PIN2DMD interface with dual Hub75 output pcb from UncleSash to drive 2 panels.
    » YouTube video

    Motion clarity looks really good and persistency really low (again). I'm impressed. Think these could definitely be the things to have on titles with fast moving graphics or less shading, over a ColorDMD.

    #409 8 years ago
    Quoted from ecurtz:

    I think I've got the Whitestar issue worked out finally.
    Good news is I've been able to optimize the board some while I was working on that, so it's looking pretty good at this point.
    P1000618_(resized).jpg

    Are you able to go all purple to match XPin (which are awesome IMO)?

    #416 8 years ago
    Quoted from ecurtz:

    OSHPark (which is a place is the US that combines small run PCB orders and is really popular with hobbyist designers) uses purple for all their boards. Usually you'd switch to somebody else when done prototyping, since they are kind of expensive for larger orders.

    But it looks so good ...

    #435 8 years ago
    Quoted from ecurtz:

    So you're saying you're in for the OSHPark LE?

    Heh, I'd be tempted.

    When do you anticipate that the finished product will be made available?

    2 weeks later
    #528 8 years ago

    Would be great to be able to buy a whole kit, lock stock and barrel, and you might be able to add a bit more margin to compensate for all your hard work, which I'd be happy to support.

    So now that we have a colour option for CV, CV 2.0 being resurrected?

    Also, with the editor being used to colour the dots, is it possible to do it on a dot by dot basis, or only for existing shades / contiguous areas of dots as seems to be the case for ColorDMD?

    Edit: seems some of my questions have been answered re: the latter. Hadn't realised the thread had moved on so much.

    Would it not be a good idea to try to standardise this somewhat, rather than have people using numerous different mini-computers and software with it? If people were working on the same platform, surely more games could be done (and more ambitiously), whilst providing a much clearer, more desirable platform to buy into for consumers?

    #553 8 years ago
    Quoted from Crash:

    Wow, full bitmap replacement. I wasn't sure if these computers would have the power needed to pull this off. This is huge, not only can you colorize frames yourself without the limitation of a 2-bit palette, you could even re-draw the artwork entirely! I think this will be a big selling point over ColorDMD. And if anyone is wondering no, this does not infringe on ColorDMD's patents. Their system analyzes monochromatic frames and injects chroma information into the stream and displays it as a full-color bitmap, preserving the original luma component of the image. This update skips the chroma processing altogether and injects full color frames in real time.

    Looking better and better from my point of view. I hope these are used in the Fast / PPS 2.0 titles if and when they are restarted.

    MMR's new colour dots show what can be done with colour dots. If you're going to do augmented colour dots there's no argument for an LCD. OLEDs cheap enough and which won't ghost in this kind of application are years off. Surely these RGB LED DMDs have to be the go to display for these and perhaps CGC/PPS' future remakes.

    1 week later
    #674 8 years ago
    Quoted from agodfrey:

    Lots more if I could use more than 3 colors and black BUT....better than all orange!

    I thought one of the Mini-PC / software combos could completely recolour, driving these RGB LED panels, judging by previous discussion ... or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

    #681 8 years ago
    Quoted from Coyote:

    It's on Sourceforge or Github, where the source is downloaded. You set your input frame in the animation, and set a key frame for the palette - you get 16 colors.
    Then select your color, click the pen icon (circled in green), and select the pixels on the screen you want to be that color.
    screen_(resized).png
    Ta-da. 16 colors, you're set!

    Would love to see what some of the more talented people in the community could do with that, especially with some of the old games with really sweet animations ... I have a Champion Pub coming soon, and some of its animations are fantastic.

    #706 8 years ago
    Quoted from michiganpinball:

    The colorization sounds great but I think there is another opportunity here. And that is this can be a low cost product for just replacing an outgassed dmd and also eliminate the high voltage section of the display board.
    A plug and play rgb panel with all necessary components would be a good product IMO. Bonus would be if it could be driven off the 5v and 12v that is already on the connector to plasma dmds. The ability to add color is of course icing on the cake. If this could be around $150 or less then I think you could sell a lot as DMD replacements. This it they type of product that you could sell a lot of.

    Agree. But I think this takes off big time as soon as Aaron has full documentation and full kits available on his site. I know I'll be getting one of the Lucky1 controller based full DMD kits (if that's the one that can do full recolouring) as soon as they're available. Has a lot more potential than ColorDMD's currently rather limited recolouring system IMO .. also since eventually I'm likely to stream, there'll be no viewing angle issues per the TN LCDs.

    #712 8 years ago
    Quoted from Blindseer:

    I just got my rgbdmd and the pin2dmd kit yesterday. I am reading through the documentation which is serviceable for a diy kit. As far as doing the cool keyframe coloring you actually need to set up pinmame and with the help of a custom dll you need to get a dump of the dmd and then compress it into a gz file and then import it into the pin2dmd editor. After that you need to step through and set keyframes and custom pallets.
    TL;DR don't expect it to be something quick.

    I'm happy to mess around on my PC (though I'm likely to be crap at recolouring). I'd rather click one button to get a kit in one box though, and I suspect that's the same for the majority, hence why ColorDMD has been so successful.

    #725 8 years ago
    Quoted from lucky1:

    That´s just interpretation. I don´t know what or what not is part of the patent, because I´m not a patent lawyer and even a lawyer is not a judge. So to definitely find out we would have to go to court. In europe, where I live, every private, non commercial development is free of patent infringement of any kind anyways. So no danger for me from that side, but I totally respect the work of ColorDMD and don´t want to endanger his business by competing commercially.

    If your solution is novel and developed indepedently, it won't infringe the patent even in the US, even if the mechanic is identical. But since your software is non commercial, freely distributed and you're not in the US it's moot anyway.

    #727 8 years ago
    Quoted from lucky1:

    That is what I told Randy also. He believes that every color pinball DMD output which is not a static palette mapped to the 4/16 shades is covered by his patent and threatens everybody with his lawyer who thinks different. He believes that even the PIN2DMD Editor is infringing his patent and not allowed in the land of the free. Steve and I had a longer conversation with him the last days. Where I live a idea is not patentable only the technical realization of it. If he thinks he is safe from competition of any kind with his patent and leave colordmd as it is as the only solution for the next years, he maybe should rethink his business strategy. Here is my last E-Mail I sent him about that.

    That's pretty sad. The ludicrous patent system in the US breeds and encourages this kind of behaviour, even when it clearly is over reach.

    Even if a US court granted him an injunction (which they can't and won't), there would be no jurisdiction to enforce it ... and worst thing you'd have to do anyway is IP block US IPs from your website or make sure that Aaron and others do not include your software with the full kits they put together.

    I'm sure the ColorDMD guys know all this. It's just posturing to try to maintain a monopoly. Even if you were located in the US & intent on selling the software, they'd risk putting themselves out of business by pursuing you .... unless of course their margins are much higher than they have let on (not unlikely given their aggressiveness).

    #731 8 years ago

    Me three.

    Have been taking a wait and see approach with ColorDMD to see how they further develop software and hardware, and to see what competition arrives. I'd pretty much made up my mind that I'd get one for Popeye at next availability, then wait a while after that. But with this kind of attitude, I'd rather go without regardless of what they come up with in future.

    1 week later
    #761 8 years ago

    @russdx ... it's baseless sabre rattling to try to retain a monopoly. Lucky and the others behind the software have nothing to worry about.

    #786 8 years ago
    Quoted from Wolfmarsh:

    Neither of those factors apply to me.
    I just don't think things like this should be patented. It's not that I want to compete against them, because I would crush them and have no desire to do that. I just don't see the point in patenting something that is going to generate a couple hundred thousand in revenue and then die.
    It's not like there is a giant untapped market that these patents are protecting.
    Point being, the beauty of ColorDMD is not the patent. It's the community that they have built around it. That's where the value lies. A patent does not protect or cultivate that.

    There's also the point that this clearly lacks innovation in any meaningful sense. The concept of patents is to protect innovators.

    This is relatively basic software with no particularly novel approach, nor the hardware.

    The idea that the whole concept of it - regardless of the actual way it's achieved - can be patented, or that Randy wants to try to frighten people out of the market on that basis, is farcical.

    The US patent system is patently (I had to) not designed to protect innovators, but to preserve monopolies.

    The only IP protection they need and / or deserve is a trademark protecting their brand. Though that in itself would be highly subject to doubt given that I'm sure they didn't coin the term Colo(u)rDMD / Colo(u)r DMD, and would probably have to just be the logo rather than the name as a descriptive term.

    2 weeks later
    #894 8 years ago
    Quoted from Crash:

    Look who caught up to the technology. They better not try and shut these projects down.
    https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/colordmd-previews-new-led-displays

    They've already tried, if you recall. They have no reasonable claim whatsoever about any of the stuff they've rattled sabres over, but that won't stop them trying to scare people off.

    Given their behaviour and the fact that they have well over $250 gross margin on their ColorDMD product (which is faintly obscene), and they won't allow any openess or community involvement (besides getting people to do their colouring work for them), I can't really justify buying it. Given the advances we've seen for controllers for LED DMDs in just a few months, from multiple parties, it can only be a matter of time before someone does the same with LCDs, and makes it more open and reasonably priced. OLEDs aren't THAT far off either, and the LCDs will be completely obsolete (especially at $400) when they are available. SmartDMD failed to catch on, but if something with the featureset that pinballsp is working on is made widely available, I can't see it not catching on.

    #897 8 years ago
    Quoted from shimoda:

    Love to know where you get the $250 gross margin. Running a business isn't free and the contractor fees for people like me that colorize as well as his own distribution costs... Really seems like you are frustrated it isn't cheaper so just grab numbers out of thin air. You put in 80-160 hours coloring a game and tell me $400 is obscene.
    Lots of hate in the last few posts for someone simply protecting their patent. As for this being a solution he hadn't looked at before, or 'just caught up with' I imagine posters here also have clairvoyance to see what Randy thinks. It's been said before, why should he open up his architecture just because people want it to be open? The Open Source movement is great for some things but it isn't everything for everyone. SmartDMD ran into other issues, like licensing and support - not to mention the colored roms for games were too big to fit.
    People being "afraid' because of 'rattled sabers' isn't really an argument either. If you are afraid of competition, better not to enter the market. Otherwise, the only fear would mostly be from infringing on actual patents that might snub your business model. Otherwise, the entrepreneur makes a go of it. Randy isn't awash with cash to go filing lawsuits at everyone that thinks about producing a competitive product but he'd be a fool to just hand over all the work he's done.

    Do you know what gross means?

    The patent is a joke, as is their attempt to hide behind it. Even if it was breached by anything (which it's unlikely to be even within the US), it would likely be unenforceable.

    Re: fear of competition .. are you joking or actually serious? The ColorDMD guys are clearly terrified of competition, hence their behaviour.

    #905 8 years ago
    Quoted from djb_rh:

    I'm fairly certain that pin2dmd infringes in the US. I'm fairly certain the authors of pin2dmd believe it does, in fact, but they are in Germany where the patent doesn't (and can't ever) apply, so they don't care much. And if you happen to acquire hardware somehow here in the US and then download software from Germany to run on it, well, there's not much that anyone could do to stop that.
    What Randy can do is stop someone from selling a product here in the US that in whole infringes on his patent. And that's within his rights whether anyone here happens to like it or not.
    --Donnie

    We've been through that before and I don't think it does. ColorDMD are certainly claiming it does. Software patents (in the US) can only be enforced if the method AND the code are the same - i.e. the plaintiff merely needs to provide evidence of their code being an independent effort. Does anyone really believe that other people are lifting Randy's code and copy pasting large parts of it? Even in the US, the idea can't be stolen, only the code can.

    Quoted from emkay:

    I was under the impression that most of the colorization efforts were unpaid/unquantified and that no actual discussion of algorithms has taken place in public.

    That was my impression too. I've never heard any mention of a cut of sales or even pay before ... though absence of disclosure does not necessarily mean it doesn't exist.

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