AC/DC with a full colour DMD

[Carl Spiby]

This looks really good but who are SmartDMD, are they just competition to ColorDMD or do their displays offer something different?

 

[kevlar]

And why aren't they getting threatening letters like @DrPinball did about his LCD DMD?

 

[mufcmufc]

Pinball Mike D, coupled with Oga83 (the dude who did pinball browser) using basically Dr Pinballs ideas

 

[RGV]

And why aren't they getting threatening letters like @DrPinball did about his LCD DMD?

They probably are, but are likely just ignoring them.

Last time I checked all ColorDMDs stuff seemed to be "Patent pending" - i.e. "We don't have any actual patents, but we will soon (honest guv)".

Unless they can come up with a patent number they own that someone's infringing they can write all the letters they like, without actual confirmed patents they likely won't be anything other than empty threats to discourage competition, which is apparently a fairly common business practice.

 

[Paul]

ColorDMD color the dots
SmartDMD change the palates....

Not sure what the Legal standing of ColorDMD is, however if they patented the coloring of the dots then in theory the patent doesnt cover this "new" method...

 

[kevlar]

ColorDMD color the dots
SmartDMD change the palates....

Not sure what the Legal standing of ColorDMD is, however if they patented the coloring of the dots then in theory the patent doesnt cover this "new" method...

I thought Smart DMD were colouring the dots frame by frame? Dr.pinball is just pallet swapping to avoid possible legal action but these guys are doing it per machine aren't they?

 

[DrPinball]

Oga83 amends the top left section of dots to encode palette information, and updates the altered frames within the game ROM itself. Then when the pinball replays each frame Oga's software detects the top left dots and uses this to decide what palette to apply. You can see some of the frames seem to be missing a few dots from the top left - this shouldn't normally happen as it's possible to supply the replacement dots as well as the palette info.

The colouring process is simply to create a custom palette for each sequence of frames i.e. easier than what ColorDMD do as they have to laboriously paint each frame.

This is a very different method to how ColorDMD does it i.e. SmartDMD does not frame match, it does not apply colours to particular areas of the frame, it just applies a new palette to the existing 16 shades found on Stern pins - the effect works because different palettes are used for different sequences.

 

[kevlar]

Oga83 amends the top left section of dots to encode palette information, and updates the altered frames within the game ROM itself. Then when the pinball replays each frame Oga's software detects the top left dots and uses this to decide what palette to apply. You can see some of the frames seem to be missing a few dots from the top left - this shouldn't normally happen as it's possible to supply the replacement dots as well as the palette info.

The colouring process is simply to create a custom palette for each sequence of frames i.e. easier than what ColorDMD do as they have to laboriously paint each frame.

This is a very different method to how ColorDMD does it i.e. SmartDMD does not frame match, it does not apply colours to particular areas of the frame, it just applies a new palette to the existing 16 shades found on Stern pins - the effect works because different palettes are used for different sequences.

Thanks for the explanation. Could your software do the same thing for your product?

 

[DrPinball]

Thanks for the explanation. Could your software do the same thing for your product?

No - Oga's unique selling point is his ability to amend the game ROM with the palette information. However, you can get hold of his software - it's pretty cheap, and do the colouring yourself. And it's compatible with the DMD Extender hardware.

 

[replicas]

No - Oga's unique selling point is his ability to amend the game ROM with the palette information. However, you can get hold of his software - it's pretty cheap, and do the colouring yourself. And it's compatible with the DMD Extender hardware.

Sweet.