I will admit, I'm a little curious... (Honestly confused.)

If everything was open source (was..), then what's the exact issue?

Okay, true.. However, I tried to read that pinballsp's page, and didn't see any reference to commercial use? (Granted, however, I used a translate service, since my Spanish is no bueno.)

Thanks, but as far as I can tell, that does not answer my question about the "pinball" site.

Wait - how are they selling? I mean, I paid Sash1 for his shield, which came with Lucky's firmware on an ST board. How is that different?

And I didn't ask for the definition of 'commercial use'. I asked how PinballSp was considered commercial. Especially, re:, my above question, right above this paragraph.

No, I'm not trying to be a smartass, I'm tryin' to understand.. I must have missed a key puzzle piece..

I game Sash (I think that was his handle) on VPF money, extra money, to give me his shield and lucky1's ST board and FW together. It looks (to me) the exact same thing this PinballSP is doing?

Okay, that's what I was trying to figure out. My translate never said anything about a business, just "we" (with no definition of who "we" was..)

Question for you guys -
Is the large power supply ready necessary?

When I plug in my STM32 board via USB to my laptop, there's enough power there to light up the display, and not trip the 500ma watching on my USB port.

Same as Lucky's board -
It's a microprocesor - ST STM32 processor. There's no noticeable 'bootup' time - apply power, and the splash screen immediately comes up. If the FW was open source, you could modify the FW and hide the splash screen and go directly to displaying pinball input.

Wonder if anyone would be curious..

I'm thinking about making a small power board. It's mount to oone (or two) of the display's mounting screws, and the high-power AC from the transformer (which would normally plug into the display driver board) would plug into it, and it's give up to 4A of +5v, which should be *plenty* for these LED displays. If noone's interested, I'll just make one for myself (since I hate having a large PC-style, or arcade-style power supply in the cabinet...), but thought I'd check here. The PC-board mount power supplies are expensive, though (like, in the $30 range), so that would likely write almost everyone out.

i can answer this part, at least - I use it to power both the LED panels and the STM board and shield. (It powers everything for the display.)

I'd be curious how much more amperage this board would take with the stronger processor, wifi, etc. That may push the whole system over 4a.

In the test I ran - full brightness, white color, on TZ over two 30-min games, the amperage for EVERYTHING (both panels plus controller boards), there was never more than 2.3A drawn. (2.28a, I believe, but I rounded up.) This included LITZ mode on one game, and powerball on both. (Heavy animation, bright lit, etc.) This did not have any frame-keying done, no palette switching, etc. And, in case it matters, I'm also using the PinLED display driver board, which Lucky can attest, uses a different timing mode than normal WPCs. I doubt that a different timing mode, however, can over double the amps drawn.

I did this not for cost, but because I have a strong diversion to having an arcade power supply sitting in the bottom of my cabinet, and having to either plug it in manually or cut into existing wiring. So, the board I made takes the transformer input, which normally plugs into display driver board (for WPC/-S machines), so no wire cutting, no manual plugging in power supplies, and it's all mounted to the back of the display, out of the way.

WPC machines have a display test, and the two screens before the Paging Tests are All On, and All Off. I can run a test tonight and measure.

Edit: Here you go. I even included a picture. This is pin2dmd's "white", at full brightness on v2.07.

White:
IMG_20160331_204905_(resized).jpg
Blue: Interestingly, blue took the least amount of amperage. And sorry for blurriness:
IMG_20160331_204923_(resized).jpg
And my custom deep orange color, which very very closely matches plasma displays:
IMG_20160331_205028_(resized).jpg

I did the other colors, if anyone wants a reading on a color, lemme know.

Okay, I can't find my Red picture. I'll need to re-test that tomorrow. Green:
IMG_20160331_204932_(resized).jpg

Some panels have green that bleeds out from the active columns into areas that are supposed to be 'off'.

Not all panels - mine, for example, is perfectly fine, but there are pics over at VPU that show the effect.

Fine. I've kept my mouth shut, because I know nothing is going to change, but I'm a customer, and yes, I share those concerns. Mainly about the open-source issue, but the others worry me as well.

Happy?

When you saved it, did you actually save it to the SD card? I don't think there's any code in the FW to actually *remove* files.

Didn't the PinDMD/Pin2DMD guys have the LED panels working before ColorDMD anyways? I thought ColorDMD didn't start releasing their LED panels until after Pin2DMD was out.

Rdoyle1978 , I am a little confused about your rep;ly to him. You both seem to be saying the same thing?

With a lot of tweaking, I got a good set of RGB I used to emulate the plasma. Difficult because some of the dimmer values don't translate to the LED board, sadly. (At least with the FW, controller board, and panels I use.)

Yup - I always do a FULL (not 'QUICK') format on SD cards when ordered, to make sure they go 100% through before using them. Luckily, have had very few issues, but it is good to be safe.

You are correct. I said <b>NOT</b> a quick format. If you do not run a QUICK format, it clears out all the locations on the drive. It takes forever, but it's complete.

9.4H should not be patched, and OEM/Original.