However much you want to flush down the toilet since it's not supported.

Looks great!! Is this a microcontroller based platform or is it ARM based running some form of Linux? For simplicity and startup times it would be nice if there is some form of programmable microcontroller option.

There's some talk about 192x64, are there panels with the correct dot pitch available now?

No, there are DMD Extender and SmartDMD if you want to use an LCD panel. Two different solutions.

I certainly wouldn't mind buying a kit from PinballSP.

Is this the panel you're using for 192x64?

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/HD-full-color-p2-5-160x160mm_60287999395.html?spm=a2700.7724857.29.73.cuyRZL

Here's ColorDMD's display installed in Cirqus Voltaire. They clearly used a dark gel film to reduce light bleed and create true blacks.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/welcome-to-the-circus-cv-club-for-owners-fans/page/5#post-3050711

I would love to see something like wifi setup/adjustments from a mobile device. This will make it a lot easier and quicker to make configuration changes without bringing a whole laptop to open the backbox, remove the speaker panel, and connect via USB or even worse, SD card (which is slower and more problematic yet). If I could just connect to a non-broadcasting WPA2-AES secured access point, enter a password on a web page, make changes from there, and see those changes applied instantly without restarting the display or rebooting the game that would be nothing short of fantastic. For route operators like myself with multiple games this would be great and save a lot of time hopping from place to place where doing it the old way would not be practical.

For me a web page would be more than enough to replace USB, but an application would provide a better streamlined experience for many.

Yes, an application would be specific to that device/operating system.

Shouldn't have to do any soldering at all.

You plan on implementing frame colorization support in your firmware? That sounds exciting.

I'm following this at a glance and don't entirely understand the power options but would I be able to power this board and/or the LED panels using Coyote's power supply board? I take it his board is only used to power the panels, right? If I need a separate power supply for the PinballSP 5v that's not a problem for me.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rgb-led-panels-for-dmd-replacement/page/19#post-3056895

Well that's an interesting find. Is that peak power usage or average, I assume peak? I think we need more info, maybe do a display test and see how much the inverted row/column tests draw maximum at 100% brightness over the length of the tests. I'm not saying your findings aren't accurate, but more information/sample data to solidify this would be great. At least we have some real world measurements to go on now.

Blue LEDs are most efficient. How about red and green? Red should consume the most of the 3 and green should be somewhere in the middle.

Nevermind.

Has anyone ordered some 64x64 panels? Luis is 192x64 support in your firmware coming in the near future? I have a dying plasma and would like to buy a kit from you if it's in the plans.

IMO I would prefer Luis's clean single board solution that is running software specifically designed for it. I really don't like Linux-based solutions for basic applications like this and it takes time to boot, you have to be careful with the SD card, etc.

Does your firmware exhibit color palette ghosting/trailing between planes during scrolling animations? DMD Extender and SmartDMD have this issue and both people told me it was timing issues with using an LCD display and these dim planes are built in to the display signal. I have confirmed this in PinMAME. These artifacts are not visible with plasma displays. I am not sure if this is because they are single color or because of the image retention/persistence of the plasma dots and how they handle brightness modulation.

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That's exactly what I was thinking. It doesn't explain why PinMAME does it though. I opened the Addams Family attract mode in the goDMD animation editor and there are darker/ghosted frames between single frame transitions. I see the same thing in WPCEdit. I'm thinking if the PinballSP firmware reproduces the exact plane clock timing as the original plasma displays it shouldn't be a problem. A lot of it is probably because you're taking something non-standard like 122Hz and downsampling it to 60Hz for an LCD.

Awesome! Thank you for keeping us updated.

Apollo 13 doesn't use a large display.

Yes I can tell just from looking at the dots with the naked eye they are smaller, not only smaller dot pitch but physically smaller cells. If this is correct which it seems to be, hopefully someone can source a 2mm pitch panel.

Looks like the same material as the Fast mounting plates? That looks slick!

You should make a cool sign or a clock out of the 3 panels you ordered, that's a bummer. Maybe play some animations from the 4 Sega games.

I would also vouch for this solution if at all possible. I am using LCDs in several games and a few are developing defects near the top. Not visible during gameplay but it's an issue. Plus people have had them break when moving games because they are so fragile, plus you have to remove the speaker panel before opening the backbox door.

Currently $525 if you can even find one! I'm sure almost anyone would pay the extra money just to have another option especially if you're wanting to keep it looking stock as possible (being an actual dot matrix display). That's just my opinion though. There is a lot of money that needs to be tied up to use those more expensive panels.

DMD Extender, last I checked, is about $100 for the board and software. This is a great price for your board as people can buy it and pair it with their own LCD display.

Having a harness to use the existing 100vAC would be great, like what Coyote did with his custom board. I didn't realize the 5v 10A PSU you are using would accept 100vAC. This will eliminate the need to run extra line voltage into the backbox.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rgb-led-panels-for-dmd-replacement/page/4#post-2754757

There are several other electrical component contacts right? How are those made, spring tensioned tabs?

Will this software run on Mac or Linux? Or is it Windows only?

Are the cheaper 128mm x 128mm panels you found usable for 128x32 or 192x64?

Do you know if the F746 CPU will absolutely be required for basic colorizing, like palette switching? Doing full frame replacement as you have said will require this chip correct?

I think "most" means more like 99% of all titles. I'm very impressed with these results.

It's not a quote. Based on what has been found 99% of games will work, at least 99 out of 100. The only exception so far seems to be Safe Cracker. I'm also wondering about Cirqus Voltaire.

If something goes wrong during flashing will this brick the controller board, or can you retry?

$45 for shipping, wow. Is that because of the box size?

Looks fantastic!! Won't be long at all now looks like for a full kit.

Your panels need to be lined up square, there's a line going down the center.

Is it possible to access the RNG that creates these animations so their checksums can be exhaustively colorized?

Or maybe is it possible to find/view the RNG behavior in the ROM and determine all possible cases for patterns?

Looking fantastic!

Is this one of the final versions of the DMDST32 kit?

Curious to know about the 2.0mm 64x64 panels and if/how that's working out.

I've also heard a lot of SanDisk ones bought at places like Best Buy are counterfeit. I've seen those fail and do weird stuff like corrupt files in cameras.

Kingston is great. I've used their RAM for years and never had an issue. IT ships their Golden Tee upgrade kits with Kingston drives. I have a collection of like, 4 or 5 of those from over the years. One is a USB 3.0 8GB!

I think my oldest Kingston flash drive started giving me trouble lately. But it still works.

I think everyone is interested in buying a dot matrix solution where originals are $500+ if you can even find them. We currently have DMD Extender and SmartDMD which runs about $250-$300 in parts and software, but keeping that software running with all the intricate connections between the SD card, Pi, screen controller, and adapter boards causes me to restart about once a month at the very least. Plus the SmartDMD software is not very stable and the refresh rates of an LED solution are much closer to an original DMD eliminating screen tearing, pulldown, and giving much smoother motion. Having a single board microcontroller based solution that boots in and instant and doesn't use a desktop operating system would be well worth the money.

I'm not following this part, then again I haven't been reading every post either. I was under the impression we needed P2.0 panels in order to fit a Sega 192x64 game and the current P2.5 ones are being used for testing/toppers.

Ah, nice. Thanks.

I'm thinking about getting the fully assembled PinballSP DMDST32 kit from Louis. Question, this is going to be for a Data East game. I don't see any pictures of the kit used in a Data East system. I know it can be done and the PIN2DMD software is compatible with Data East. My main concern is how would I fit the DMD driver board on the back of this whole assembly and will there be enough room in the backbox for this? Plus, I only see 4 holes in the mounting plate, one in each corner, and none in the center on top or bottom to suggest how this driver board would be mounted.

https://images.pinside.com/e/0b/e0b362e67971abd68974a6bd388b2d6e4f804f26/resized/large/e0b362e67971abd68974a6bd388b2d6e4f804f26.jpg

That's awesome, I can just drill my own holes and follow the video. I replied to your email and will buy the kit. Thanks for all your help.

i bought the DIY $99 kit from Fast Pinball. I have the revision 3 shield/Discovery solution from UncleSash. I don't see a way to plug the shield directly into the display because there is too much of a gap. I realize this board was not specifically designed for the Fast mounting bracket, more so for the custom board Aaron has in progress. Has anyone found a solution to this? I am assuming I will need to lift the board up and connect it via a ribbon cable using the input on the top of the board.

I have it sandwiched the exact same way. My problem is, even with the FAST mounting bracket removed, the board's black RGB DMD female header on the bottom side is not plugging into the connector on the back of the display. It doesn't even feel like it's reaching far enough to plug in. It hits the little alignment nubs sticking out of the frame surrounding the display panel.

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Can I get around this by lifting the shield assembly up enough to connect a short ribbon cable to the display panel and connect it to the output connector on the top of the board instead?

Yes that would seem to be the cause. The header is flush against the board on mine. I think I'll just use a ribbon cable, it's no big issue as long as there is an alternative.

I'm having an issue starting the PIN2DMD tool. At first it said MSVCR110.DLL was missing, I checked C++ Redistributables 2012 and 2015 and made sure they were installed/repaired. Then I got "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)." Checked this with Process Monitor and copied the DLL from C:\Windows\SysWOW64 to the locations that were being read by the tool. Still have the issue, any pointers? Running Windows 7 Pro x64, noticed this is a 32-bit program. I installed libusb-1.0.dll into the same folder as the tool from GitHub.

Ah! I believe your description on vpuniverse.com can be misinterpreted as I understood it as the EXE file being the only thing needed.

I installed an SD card, activated the software, configured the settings and palette for Data East/Sega, verified the settings are saved, and connected it to Tales from the Crypt. Nothing happens besides the PIN2DMD start screen, the DMD driver board is working and I checked the cables, especially the DMD input cable orientation. What else do I need to check?

I have a v3 shield, yes. Can't remember if I tried the signal enhancer option, will have to check. Which 2 buttons are you talking about, which board (Discovery or shield)? Am I looking for LEDs?

I'm having trouble saving my settings. When I turn the display on it has my palette and Data East settings on the screen. When I connect it to the computer and launch pin2dmd.exe the settings change on the LED screen to the default palette and virtual pinball setting, which reflects what is shown in the program. If I close the program and restart the Discovery board by powering it off and back on it's back to my customized settings I have on the micro SD card.

Clicking save settings after making changes, including checking the signal enhancer box, doesn't do anything. Then I close the program and reboot the Discovery board and open it again and see the settings are back to the default with no signal enhancer checked.

Updated the files on the SD card, works fine so far. Will let you know if it works in a game!

Still no luck, swapped out 14 pin ribbon cable and tried both orientations. Signal enhancer setting is on. Tested with 2 good driver boards. Pressing reset button resets back to the PIN2DMD screen, tried booting with game on and off, same result. Maybe I have a faulty Discovery board? I know it's loading settings from the SD card but Sasha never showed it displaying a game image before he sold it to me. Video of the board LEDs:

Sure, what needs to be done?

There is a jumper on the back of the board if that means anything.

The pin layout on the board near the connector is not the same. I'm sorry I guess I was under the impression there would be no difference in designs.

IMG_0959 (resized).JPGIMG_0957 (resized).JPG

This! After disassembling the board I finally noticed this tiny jumper that says signal enhancer bypassed when closed. Removed this and got signs of life! But what text that showed on the DMD during attract mode was frozen and the display became unresponsive, even after turning the game off. Now I can't even get it to display the game dots again but the behavior of the LEDs was different in both cases:

However, I did find the chip you mentioned and will try your suggestion next.

IMG_0960 (resized).JPG

IT WORKS!! Removing the LS123 and jumping the pins fixed it. Thanks for all the help!

I'm sure I checked it, but it's fine now. No shift, no issues at all. Thanks again. Hopefully this will help others should they encounter this problem.

Starting palette for TFTC, I'm leaning towards orange/yellow/green.

Any advice on running the Java PIN2DMD Editor on Linux Mint (Ubuntu)? I see the software relies on Apple's Cocoa API (I copied the .jar from the Apple .app file). Can you point me to the Ubutnu version you were running in those screenshots? I only see the Windows and Mac version listed on the downloads page.

java -jar go-dmd-clock-1.0.23.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar<br />
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Could not load SWT library. Reasons:<br />
	no swt-cocoa-4623 in java.library.path<br />
	no swt-cocoa in java.library.path<br />
	Can't load library: /home/username/.swt/lib/linux/x86_64/libswt-cocoa-4623.so<br />
	Can't load library: /home/username/.swt/lib/linux/x86_64/libswt-cocoa.so</p>
<p>	at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)<br />
	at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)<br />
	at org.eclipse.swt.internal.C.<clinit>(Unknown Source)<br />
	at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.<clinit>(Unknown Source)<br />
	at com.rinke.solutions.pinball.PinDmdEditor.main(PinDmdEditor.java:350)

I know, I see some videos posted by Stefan running the Java version on Ubuntu though and was curious to know if that's still possible?

I don't think any color modules small enough exist do they? Plus that would require reengineering the entire driver circuit since everything is one board.

When I create a keyframe, change the palette colors with the keyframe selected, and change to another keyframe (or press Esc to deselect/save the keyframe colors) the palettes for the keyframes don't save. The palette doesn't change from the previously chosen colors when selecting a different keyframe or when playing the dump past the selected scene. Anything I might be missing? I watched your video and followed what you were doing.

Yes I downloaded the nightly build. And I am clicking apply.

The solution has already been explained for Data East games. My understanding is if you remove the chip needed for Stern games, affected boards won't work for Sterns.

Ok, when playing with a keyframe selected I didn't realize it would not update the palette on the next keyframe. I created 5 keyframes, each one assigned to a palette. This works so far, but clicking mark start at the first keyframe and mark end at the fifth then clicking cut to create the scene still doesn't switch palettes when playing the scene. The program is certainly cool, I'm sure I must be doing it wrong.

Actually according to the below schematic, these are the 100vAC and 90vAC leads. 100vAC is on black-red and white, at least on US games.

IMG_0992 (resized).PNG

I put my Data East kit together, but I had to move the display controller. I decided to attach this to the backbox door which works out pretty nice.

IMG_0978 (resized).JPG

IMG_0980 (resized).JPG

IMG_0981 (resized).JPG

IMG_0983 (resized).JPG

IMG_0987 (resized).JPG

IMG_0988 (resized).JPG

IMG_0990 (resized).JPG

IMG_0991 (resized).JPG

IMG_0993 (resized).JPG

I'm looking for the post in one of the old threads where someone was trying different types of gel filters to improve contrast. He tried 3 different shades of filter side by side and there was an extended discussion on that, I think he was using it on Twilight Zone in white. Can anyone find this thread/post? If not does anyone have any suggestions on where to buy a small sheet of gel filter and cut it to size for 128x32/192x64 windows?

Based on this it doesn't seem to be an issue with the game. Elwood are you using the Discovery board and shield solution from Rappelbox? If so I ran into this issue which is a design problem with the signal enhancer circuit not working.

You must distribute the bitmap images (copyrighted content) if you want more than 4 colors. Because instead of telling PIN2DMD to use a color for each shade, you are instead telling it to replace the frame with another piece of content entirely. There are 4 shades built into the original display architecture. If you want to exceed 4 colors you must import colorized (modified) custom frames (copyrighted content).

Why are you copying and pasting the same post twice? We get it the first time.

Correct, they did it first. It was implemented and tested before ColorDMD announced their version. I have a feeling ColorDMD's product would have been delayed or not released at all if it weren't for PIN2DMD's proof of concept.

Ok cool, I wasn't stating this as fact, just a guess.

Are you just bent on making yourself come off as a bit if a jerk in this thread? All they ask is the section of your code the project infringes upon so we can clarify this issue and hopefully put this disagreement behind us so both parties can move on and enjoy pinball.

Do any of these on that list feature full colorization? Or are they mostly single colors?