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Expired LCD-DMD

Expired Due to no activity
alchy said:
I can always write you a review on my site.

I can also put them on my site if you need an outlet. 450 unique visits a day:)

I like to support UK based Innovative products.
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Thanks for the offer, I'll be in touch...
 
mark9 said:
How easy is it to install a DMD extender onto the apron?
Very interested in one of these.
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I have a few of the apron sets left if you're interested - it'll fit your FT, TZ or TAF. Send me a PM. Cheers.
 
I've installed a LCD DMD in my Spiderman. Awesome product. I've been tinkering with the colours but have yet to settle on a particular setup I'm happy with. Anyone care to share their setup for Spderman?
 
kevlar said:
I've installed a LCD DMD in my Spiderman. Awesome product. I've been tinkering with the colours but have yet to settle on a particular setup I'm happy with. Anyone care to share their setup for Spderman?
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Maybe @Onze can help? Did you get the preview feature working?
 
Here's a little vid of the LCD DMD installed in my SM. What looks white in the video is actually yellow but as always its hard to capture the colour correctly in a video. I'm not 100% happy with my colour selection, would love to know what others are using. Some of the movie sequences look a bit crap but to be fair they look just as crap with the standard orange DMD. Overall I'm very happy with it and with it basically the same price as a standard DMD its a no brainer if you actually need to replace a DMD.

 
Seems that the guy over on pinside that made the software to modify stern images and sound has made it finally possible for people to use the software to colour frames. I am yet to try it but its been added to the latest version:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/acdc-display-and-modify-dot-matrix-images/page/27

Obviously, you would need a colour output capable screen, so im wondering if the LCD-DMD would simply output the modified image code as full colour without anything extra needing to be done?
 
Rus121 said:
Seems that the guy over on pinside that made the software to modify stern images and sound has made it finally possible for people to use the software to colour frames. I am yet to try it but its been added to the latest version:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/acdc-display-and-modify-dot-matrix-images/page/27

Obviously, you would need a colour output capable screen, so im wondering if the LCD-DMD would simply output the modified image code as full colour without anything extra needing to be done?
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Hope that works out, although I can't see the colour DMD people being happy about it, how is that any different to what David was working towards, I.e. letting customers colour the frames themselves. I'm sure David can shed some more light on this.
 
OK, so after a bit more digging I found a blog from a guy called 'the reckless engineer'. Notice the date when this blog (03/07/11) was written. This was well before Colordmd's patent application.

http://web.archive.org/web/20120119054011/http:/blog.recklessengineer.com

Check out the section 'dmd upgrade'.

Doesn't mean anything though as its just an idea. Not a product :)

I guess anyone wanting to have a product to colour dmd frames must ask permission from colordmd and that's that. If they give it or not is another matter.
 
oga83 supplies the SmartDMD software to colour Stern machines - you use the software to modify the game ROM so that palette information is embedded into the dot information. The software then reads the palette info from a given frame and applies the predefined palette to the dmd frame. This is completely different to ColorDMD who match every frame emitted by the game and apply a palette against the matched frame.

Believe me, if oga83 was doing anything naughty Randy would have mounted his high horse by now!

On a side note, the DMD Extender hardware is compatible with oga83's software - we worked together to get the things compatible. So if you own a DMD Extender you can use a different SD Card to run his software.
 
DrPinball said:
On a side note, the DMD Extender hardware is compatible with oga83's software - we worked together to get the things compatible. So if you own a DMD Extender you can use a different SD Card to run his software.
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Wait. Really?!!?! That is all i needed to hear.

Consider another of your LCD-DMD's sold my good man. (for my Tron). Please let me know some paypal details and i'll buy it right now!
 
SmartDMD cant load the jolly park firmware :( Damn :(

Dave - I had a reply from "the guys" in the USA - this may well mean something to you..... However no support from colordmd anytime soon... if ever...

Coloring a game isn’t that straightforward, and requires quite a bit of support due to issues with uniquely recognizing and coloring frames. We’re currently supporting five active projects (four with outside developers and it takes quite a bit of time) while continuing to make enhancements to the display platform. Given the limited run, Jolly Park would be difficult to take on right now (even in a support role) but could be something for the future.


To answer the technical side of your question, you can often tell how data is being sent by monitoring the ROW DATA and DISP_ENA signals going to the DMD. The ROW_DATA signal will go high once per frame (like a vertical blanking signal). The DISP_ENA should go low each time data is updated and loaded (like a horizontal blanking signal). For WPC, the DISP_ENA will blank 32x per frame (once per row). For Stern, it will blank 96x per frame (3x per row).
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It's not looking good :(
 
Paul said:
SmartDMD cant load the jolly park firmware :( Damn :(

Dave - I had a reply from "the guys" in the USA - this may well mean something to you..... However no support from colordmd anytime soon... if ever...



It's not looking good :(
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What was the technical question you asked?
 
After looking at the threads on pinside I'm more than a little confused as to what we can achieve now. David, can we using pinball browser or smartDMD now manually colour frames for stern sam games for use with the LCD DMD?
 
kevlar said:
After looking at the threads on pinside I'm more than a little confused as to what we can achieve now. David, can we using pinball browser or smartDMD now manually colour frames for stern sam games for use with the LCD DMD?
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It does look that way.

David, you said we can use a different SD card with ogas software. Why would we need to do that if your software is compatible with the pinball browser?

What I mean is, can I just load the modified coloured ROM into the machine and simply plug in the LCD-DMD and voila, full colour?
 
oga's software does 2 things... PinballBrowser updates the game roms with different sound clips. SmartDMD allows you to update the animations to include the palette info. SmartDMD has 2 parts to it... the updating of the DMD animations which is an update of the game rom, and the interpretation of the palette info in each frame is done by software running on a Raspberry Pi (e.g. the one in the DMD Extender) - you need to run oga's software on the Pi, as well as a PC to update the game ROMs. The DMD Extender software won't do the colouring hence you need another SD Card which runs Linux and does the SmartDMD stuff using oga's software.

I don't have the software myself as I don't have a Stern machine - isn't the Pinside thread clear?? I never looked at it too much, sorry. In terms of compatibility, we just agreed to use the same input/output pins on the Pi so that the DMD Extender interface board could be used with his software.
 
DrPinball said:
What was the technical question you asked?
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I asked....
– I note that currently ColorDMD only supports WPC/WPC95. Just wondering why?? I mean – ( I have 3 of these now!!) the interface board sits between the DMD board and the DMD itself. So – from what it said on the FAQ page, the interface board recognises sequences of dots coming in (for a crude way of putting it!!) and replaces them with it’s own custom ones in the ROM’s. So how come this doesn’t support other machines (as long as they use a standard DMD the same as Bally Williams) ?? Surely the same display must equal the same type/format of information coming from the machine to the DMD..??

Just fascinated why, that’s all :D Is there any technical reason why it couldn’t be done on other machines with the same DMD???
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The reply was...

There’s no reason why it can’t be done, and you’ll see it before the end of the year!


The reason it hasn’t been done yet is the format of the data that WPC sends to the display is different from how Stern does it. In fact, every game platform is a little bit different. WPC sends multilevel data as a sequence of binary frames that are averaged by your eye. In other words, they use pulse width modulation (PWM) at the frame rate. Stern does it as they scan row to row.

Getting other platforms to work is mainly an issue of reordering the data and how it gets processed. We’re working on it now while we continue to turn out new titles.
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My reply...

however I’m not sure still if it will apply in my case :D Thanks for the Technical insight though – I understand what you are saying – However my machine is a Spinball “jolly park” (Spanish manufacturer along the lines of Inder etc) – There were only ever 400 created, and allegedly less than 300 left – it uses their own boardset obviously… and the company don’t exist anymore! So as you would agree – not really a candidate to mass produce. I’m more than happy to spend the time converting it if that possibility exists of course! Because it’s based on a fairground, the possibility to use lots of bright colours and really enhance the game exists – it would be a shame not to use it!


I have a scope/access to a reasonable amount of lab tools – Is there any way in which I can check and see what method is used on this machine??
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Final reply from Randy...

I’m familiar with Jolly Park. A couple of collectors in Southern California have them.


Coloring a game isn’t that straightforward, and requires quite a bit of support due to issues with uniquely recognizing and coloring frames. We’re currently supporting five active projects (four with outside developers and it takes quite a bit of time) while continuing to make enhancements to the display platform. Given the limited run, Jolly Park would be difficult to take on right now (even in a support role).


To answer the technical side of your question, you can often tell how data is being sent by monitoring the ROW DATA and DISP_ENA signals going to the DMD. The ROW_DATA signal will go high once per frame (like a vertical blanking signal). The DISP_ENA should go low each time data is updated and loaded (like a horizontal blanking signal). For WPC, the DISP_ENA will blank 32x per frame (once per row). For Stern, it will blank 96x per frame (3x per row).
Click to expand...

:(
 
I just donated for the pinball browser as I think its a worthwhile cause. I was also confused what you can and can not do. It is still not clear but I got this message tonight from Oga.

I told him I was interested in playing with my Stern Batman pinball and I was thinking of buying a Dr Pinball LCD and extender.

This is what he told me.


Regarding the compatibility with DMD Extender :

- You can modify any images into your Sam/Stern firmware as long as you don't change the palette on a frame by frame basis (use the default palette). The current version of DMD Extender is not compatible with this feature. Of course, you can change each color in the default palette.

- In the very near future, DMD Extender might be compatible with the frame-by-frame colorization feature.


You can also have a look at SmartDmd (http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/smartdmd-dmd-interface-with-colors-upscaling-network-and-more). It can work with the DMD Extender board.


The anti-aliasing feature is usefull for videos. Otherwise, I prefer the "Led" display in "Red" which is closer to what I have on my ac/dc dmd.
Leds/Blue might be better for you.



Regards David
 
Paul said:
I asked....


The reply was...



My reply...



Final reply from Randy...



:(
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I'm familiar with the different methods used by the various pinball manufacturers - I do the same type of data interpretation as ColorDMD so that I can support Bally, Williams, Stern, Sega, Data East and Gottlieb (each one is very different). I have test software that records the various data signals passing through the ribbon cable and can then adjust the DMD Extender software to understand a different manufacturer's data signals.
 
alchy said:
I just donated for the pinball browser as I think its a worthwhile cause. I was also confused what you can and can not do. It is still not clear but I got this message tonight from Oga.

I told him I was interested in playing with my Stern Batman pinball and I was thinking of buying a Dr Pinball LCD and extender.

This is what he told me.


Regarding the compatibility with DMD Extender :

- You can modify any images into your Sam/Stern firmware as long as you don't change the palette on a frame by frame basis (use the default palette). The current version of DMD Extender is not compatible with this feature. Of course, you can change each color in the default palette.

- In the very near future, DMD Extender might be compatible with the frame-by-frame colorization feature.


You can also have a look at SmartDmd (http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/smartdmd-dmd-interface-with-colors-upscaling-network-and-more). It can work with the DMD Extender board.


The anti-aliasing feature is usefull for videos. Otherwise, I prefer the "Led" display in "Red" which is closer to what I have on my ac/dc dmd.
Leds/Blue might be better for you.



Regards David
Click to expand...


I got the same reply. In short, you CAN'T colour ANY game like colordmd do. Not without them getting p*ssed and making legal threats. Its colour palette options ONLY. That goes for any custom frames you create yourself and load into the original ROM via pinball browser which you now need a licence to use properly ($25). You also get a licence for smartdmd too, but it looks like it does the same job as the DMDconfig utility from Dr.pinball.

So, you can make your own animations and images, parse them to the Stern game rom of your choice but are limited to the colour palette within dmd configuration utility and/or smartdmd.
 
Just got my LCD-DMD installed in Tron. Looks fantastic! Cheers David!

Some pics: (i'll do a vid soon)

20140703_133421.jpg
20140703_133425.jpg
20140703_135418.jpg
20140703_140806.jpg
 
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