This looks like the board to have. Assuming it works, good work guys.

Does the in-house firmware support frame by frame colouring and pinball browser? If not, is it in the roadmap?

I think the holy grail would be something like this with all these features, and a custom OLED display - which should be possible for a reasonable price in 2 or 3 years.

Wouldn't it benefit everyone if lucky1 and pinballsp were to work together on the software / firmware? many hands make light work, and I'm sure the two of you (or two teams) could come up with something superior to either in isolation ...

Also, great work. This looks like it's going to be the go-to solution.

Re: the gel film .. would probably be a good idea to offer it. It ought to improve perceived contrast quite a bit, depending on how effective it is at eating bleed and bloom.

I can't speak for him, but he may change his mind or be persuaded to make it open or collaborate again. He's already changed it once.

The more people something like this has on board, the more adoption it will see and the faster things will develop.

My only advice would be to not make firmware etc specifically (or exclusively) for LED DMDs, at the expense of other display technologies ... eventually we will get VA LCDs and OLEDs at an affordable price. Any work people do on colouring or adding new graphics or animations ought to be transferable to future better hardware.

Glad to hear there is some collaboration.

Whilst wifi setup via a mobile phone or tablet (or laptop) might seem gimmicky, I think it might broaden the appeal of the device. Some people want to install stuff and not have to touch it again. For them, wifi setup would be a big plus, I think. We're entering the wireless age.

I'm sure someone will be willing to write apps for Apple / Android if you guys are willing to collaborate Ubuntu Touch would probably be even easier with their web based Scopes. That's the beauty of being open. A basic framework surely wouldn't be too difficult to set up.

Speaking of mobile apps ... you know what'd be really awesome? Pinball broswer or an analogous program that allowed you to recolour (or add new) DMD dots ... in terms of interface it could probably be made to feel really intuitive on a tablet or large screened smartphone. On a train, plane, in a taxi, waiting for someone ... bored waiting for food at a restaurant ... go back to your childhood and do some colouring in

Wouldn't it be a good idea to only offer the more powerful processors? Or THE most powerful one. I assume we're only talking a few Euros more, and who knows what future features you or others may want or need to add? Plus with one SKU support and problem solving and testing are easier, and there's no segmentation and complete feature and performance parity. Standardisation makes things much easier in getting this off the ground as a standard and offering a competitive product, and really removes potential confusion for buyers.

There's no reason for it not to become the go to solution full stop. It's far more elegant and featured than ColorDMD or SmartDMD ever were. The community just needs to get behind it, and it's great that despite initial enmity, lucky1 and Luis are now collaborating.

Not only would we then have a better solution than anything now available, but it'd also force the market leaders to move forward and hopefully innovate and lower prices rather than hiding behind assinine patents that will never cover most of the world and would be unlikely to retain validity if tested in the home market.

How much more are the 745 or 746? Probably not that much more? I can't stress how much better it would be to have one standardised platform, and one which will be future proof for quite some time. If you can forsee a situation where the extra speed and resources could be useful, then it's best to go for it.

€10 isn't going to make anyone less likely to buy it, and if the processor is more powerful and allows more ambitious features to be added to the firmware and supported software, then it's likely to help the project a lot. If availability isn't an issue, then going for the bigger, juicer, slightly more expensive one would be better (745/6); I'd certainly want it, even if there is no pressing need for it right now.

Good idea re: right-angle connector ... I really don't understand why they're not more widely used. Only cables that are commonly used with the 90 degree connector are SATA.

If it offers that option, it sounds like an easy decision to make

Unless it's a huge amount of work to adapt the firmware(s), then I really do think it's unwise to start on one and later move to another, especially when the latter option is available now.

That's a pretty small number. Especially if your firmware is going to be just one of several used on this hardware.

FPGA would be a LOT more expensive most probably ... also, how many people potentially interested in writing software or adding firmware features are familiar with what FPGAs would require as opposed to ARM these days?

Raspberry Pi 3 ought to be more than powerful enough to do anything you wanted now, or in future. Also, as it's RP, its availability is ensured for ages and is likely to fall in cost more quickly than other options. If it has all the features needed, maybe it's the best option?

I assume these LED panels should support 120Hz?

I wouldn't drive yourself too mad or spend THAT much time on the bigger SEGA displays. Especially when the 2mm dot pitch boards are likely much more expensive than they will be in 18 months to 2 years time. Almost certainly 98% of orders will be for 128*32.

Have there been any more thoughts about pinball browser compatibility and full frame recolouring?

Any updates on pinball browser and frame by frame full recolours, vis a vis the Pinballsp controller(s)?

So what's the way forward with the F746?

Rest of the solution looks to be shaping up very nicely.

He previously said it was necessary for advanced recolouring - presumably frame by frame and total recolouring, and anything else fancy they want to support. Now edited out though after the test results to say it would be for the future.

I'd rather wait, personally. The attraction lies for me in a full featured solution, and I'd rather not buy something which is essentially hamstrung or obsolete from the beginning. Also, the system really needs those features ... it would attract people to start colouring games, and make it a much more attractive alternative to ColorDMD.

That's a relief. I was typing a post and looking rather sad whilst doing it. IMO that would have been a disaster for the project

Will it allow full frame recolouring? I.E. the entire frame, not just the active pixels? Can it drive it at 120hz?

Also, that latter video looks like there's really good control of bleed and excellent contrast. Are you using a film?

Are there any issues with the high, or highest refresh rates? Overshoot etc?

Always difficult to tell from videos, but that looks dramatically better than the first lot of videos that did the rounds with the original DMDs that FAST sourced. Contrast looks better than the unit ColorDMD showed.

I THINK it was ecurz's board? But like I say, it's difficult to tell from videos. Unless the camera and lighting conditions are the same, can't say for sure if one was better. Just the way it looked in that video, it seemed to look like the best I've seen so far.

Regardless of display itself, it'd be nice if there could be some kind of standard reached for driving it. Whether it be the pinballsp controller here, or someone else's. Unity on that fron would be extremely beneficial in gaining traction.

Well if the M4s do work for frame by frame full colour (ColorDMD actually has a number of rules and limitations I think?), surely the question is what fancy stuff could be added with more power (M7)?

I'd suggest putting more work into Stern Spike than SEGA games ... it'd help get this whole project off the ground really quickly. Even if ColorDMD support Spike soon, the first Spike coloured titles are probably a long, long way off. People would buy this to avoid the red-mud of the new Spike DMDs, at less than half the cost of a ColorDMD.

They're not going to send an item of that value uninsured and untracked.

This mess really needs to be sorted out. It's in everyone's interests (except ColorDMD's) to have a strong singular standard for this project.

I'll probably buy at least 5 of these immediately, and potentially more, if and when a standard is chosen and stuck with.

Honestly, I think it's in everyone's best interests if you release the whole thing, including most up to date version as freeware, but ask for donations to your chosen charity. People, including luis (and me), are very wary of closed source shareware (which is essentially what this is) with no source access even on a request basis. If you give it away and disclose the source, and just have a splash in the software to remind people about donating to your charity, these problems will go away, and you absolutely will raise more money for the charity. Also, if you open up your software, ecurtz and others can potentially join forces to further development.

You're both butting heads & being stubborn, and, again, the only people benefitting are ColorDMD. Everyone, including the wider community and your charity is a loser in this.

Don't let a great project fail. Both of you (luis & lucky1), work it out.

Some of what you say may be salient, but the point still stands that as a third party closed source source shareware software, both the community and luis relying on it is something of a leap of faith. Not necessarily because of any doubt in you or your collaborators personally, but because you're human and circumstances change.

If the pinballsp solution is ultimately to be commercial, as I think you are insinuating, perhaps a small % of sales could go to charity (or charities). Even if the cut is small, a single standard will sell and gain far more traction than otherwise, and therefore raise more money for good causes.

As was discussed at the beginning of this thread, a robust standard is so important ... and this project (or now projects) already seems close to being fatally Balkanised or fractured.

Why would people donate who would prefer an open standard? You seem to take donations as reinforcement of the status quo.

You may feel that luis is being unreasonable, which he may be, but he also apparently feels that you are being unreasonable, which you may be. There ought to be a solution which can be agreed which is agreeable to both of you, and which would benefit the entire community.

This should not be an impasse which can't be resolved.

Have someone else mediate if you don't want to speak directly.

Have either of you ever picked up a phone or talked on skype? Might relieve some of the tension and lead to better understanding. If there's a language barrier, then have someone sit in on the call who speaks good spanish / german.

Re: commercialisation, ColorDMD is not an issue. Can just sell the hardware without software to the US, and every other market with.

You can continue to contribute however you like, with no fear of reproach provided that a solution containing software which (allegedly) violates patents is not offered for sale in the US. If one is, in contempt of your wishes, it is not you who's liable.

using pin2dmd firmware, you already can. per the video here https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stolen-pin2dmd-color-rgb-controller-from-pinballspcom/page/8#post-3147820 I assume pinballbrowser was used to colour it.

the problem is, unless luis and lucky stop butting heads, I don't think a combined solution (former's hardware & latter's firmware) has any future. it will have to be rgb.dmd rather than pin2dmd based. hopefully the currently missing features from rgb.dmd can be quickly added, then we'll have a combined and hopefully dominant solution (until someone produces better hardware).

there needs to be a strong competitor to ColorDMD, and two different hardware standards (incompatible) and two different firmwares, with more argument than agreement, cannot possibly be a strong competitor.

If you're not going to be proceeding with any firmware for it, what is the point of selling the STM F427 boards, rather than the Freescale ones you're now working on .. or do you anticipate reaching a resolution with lucky? If no resolution is reached, it just harms the standard (meaning there isn't one).

But then there are two mutually incompatible products, with different hardware and firmware. It causes confusion and will almost certainly lead to lower market penetration. It's splintered, and probably won't attract enough people colouring games to present a viable alternative to ColorDMD. There's also a lot of duplicated work, and probably a huge amount of unnecessary support queries and issues.

Whether you think it or not now, one of these standards will likely fail, leaving only one. That may then cause additional problems for the legacy userbase. ~200 on the STM platform is nothing really ... but what if support ends when there are 1000? That's a lot more ill will and disappointment.

**Can you guarantee that the frame by frame colouring and / or new animation data will work unmodified on both firmware / hardware archetypes? If it doesn't, that's absolutely terrible ... surely this would have to be a baseline level of compatibility to support the two standards simultaneously?**

Then I seriously hope Luis does so. This is surely vital. Colour data not being compatible would kill work on a lot of colourisation.

Hopefully FAST too will agree on a standard for the data .... and any further entrants.

Is pinballbrowser support going to be added to both? Being able to check out new animations and colouring with the ability to quickly test them via wifi would be great, particularly.

why can't you use pinballbrowser to colour the animations, whilst you wait for the dust to settle re: firmware (and then presumably choose which solution you want)?

So is Stern Spike support already in for pin2dmd firmware and / or rgb.dmd?

Assuming agreement is reached between all relevant parties to conform to one standard for colouring / animation data - pin2dmd / rgbdmd (and any interpretation Luis uses) / FAST - a central repository for the data ought to be made where people can upload and share it.

Aside from any files, each game should also have a list that people can add their name to which indicates that they're working on it, and contact details on pinside or email, to promote collaboration.

Read above?

Read above ....

Hardware wise it looks miles better than anything else that has been produced, ColorDMD or other. Most look like scruffy hack jobs. The latter particularly.

I'd be more inclined to wait for Luis' own hardware design and his branch / newer version of ecurtz's software. He seems to think it won't take too long, and then there won't be a 3rd party with the ability to nix it.

@pinballsp ... when do you think it will be ready?

Sounds great in theory.

You appear to work very quickly, but that appears to be a MAJOR project. Far bigger than any that have gone before it, or ColorDMD in its entirety.

Realistically, how quickly are you likely to finish that? It took you days or weeks to prototype other things .. but won't this take many months?

If you could have it ready, and displayed (preferably ready to buy) at Expo in Chicago in October, that'd create a huge buzz, and certainly put a huge amount of pressure on ColorDMD to offer a more price-competitive product.

Have you also contacted FAST to see if they want to be a part of this, with whichever controller they're doing?

Good job.

In my case, yes. There's no noticeable difference in latency to the Stern DMD. My Met has pinballsp's DMDST32 pin2dmd compatible product. Can't comment on other solutions as I've not tried them.