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Pinball DMD displays (LED) - not ColorDMD or Pin2DMD but ZeDMD

Pick Holder

Pick Holder

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As many of you know I do a lot in the virtual pinball field.... well I did - but sort of retired from that now.

I have just been made aware of ZeDMD which is a ESP32 based display.

Uses the same panels as Pin2DMD and the LED ColorDMDs.

SmallCab - Arcade et Pincab Shop

SmallCab c'est le plus grand catalogue de pièces Arcade en France pour tous vos projets de retrogaming
www.smallcab.net www.smallcab.net

This is for a whole kit assembled....

OKAY - Before you get excited and buy a load of these - DO NOT.

At the moment it is for virtual pinballs only, and not real pinballs. But including postage this is £81.50.

They are working on a version for real pins.

As you can see the cost is about half of PIN2DMD and a quarter of ColorDMD.

They are also doing the larger HD versions.



Unlike PIN2DMD it does not need to be registered (So that saves about £15). It is also open source.

PIN2DMD also started as a 'virtual pinball' only product. But the rising costs and having to pay for activation files and colour files put a lot of people off.

www.pincabpassion.net

ZeDMD installation (English)

Table of contents I- Installing ZeDMDII- Reminder on how to install colorized ROMsIII- List of checked compatible ESP32 and LED matricesIV- Make ZeDMD works wi
www.pincabpassion.net www.pincabpassion.net
 
There's only 5 or so 'Serum' colourations available at the moment (those that run natively on this system). The developers have shown a proof of concept that essentially allows pin2dmd virtual pinball colour files to run on it - thereby depriving the colour authors of the (very) small revenue they get from selling the colour files to real pin users.

Never the less, both this possibility and the fact that freezy (one of the main devs on pinmame and VPX) has cracked the encryption lock for realpin colours, it's caused a massive schism between pin2dmd colorisation authors, lucky1 (creator of pin2dmd) and the virtual pinball world.

For a quick summary of the drama you can read up here


A lot of colour authors will bail entirely over this, thereby depriving all of us of their future hard work. The ones that don't will likely never produce work for virtual pinball again.

I think I have most of that right @Ashram56 ?
 
Considering that I'm against these new dmds. Seems wrong to steal peoples work that they deserve paying for.
 
David_Vi said:
Considering that I'm against these new dmds. Seems wrong to steal peoples work that they deserve paying for.
Click to expand...

They didn't proceed with the work, because they didn't want the backlash, but werent against others picking it up and running with it
 
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stumblor said:
They didn't proceed with the work, because they didn't want to backlash, but werent against others picking it up and running with it
Click to expand...



I don't have any issues with pin2dmd, we have 5 and only 1 colourisation is worse than colordmds, the rest are superior. They're also much better value.
It would be a shame if this causes us to lose those creators.

Always happy to support the authors😁
 
David_Vi said:
I don't have any issues with pin2dmd, we have 5 and only 1 colourisation is worse than colordmds, the rest are superior. They're also much better value.
It would be a shame if this causes us to lose those creators.

Always happy to support the authors😁
Click to expand...
Shortly, I'll be adding a colordmd LED to my pin2dmd & colordmd LCD would be good to do side by side comparisons with all 4 if this is deemed a winner by @Pick Holder
 
@stumblor - one thing you failed to mention is that PIN2DMD colour file supporters only charge for REAL PINBALL COLOURISATIONS. They do not charge for VPIN users. This at the moment is a VPIN only item.

So - it is not really taking anything from anyone is it?

Lucky1 and Freezy have seemed to of fallen out anyway, and you go on about 'the drama'. Look at this forum. VP forums are worse than pinside and this place put together.

Everything in Virtual pinballs is STOLEN. ROMS, ASSETS, ARTWORK, AUDIO...... If it was not for real pinball it would not exist as a hobby.

The colour folks will still make pin2dmd files, then they can port it to real pin files that they will still charge us for (I am always knarked that they dont charge everyone for a colour file).

If you also consider our very own @russdx1 actually did the first PinDMD then PinDMD3 which was the colour one. I have no doubt talking to him that pin2dmd slightly 'borrowed' off him - so who is without sin here, who will cast the first stone.

Another thing is pin2dmd charges for activation and colour files so it is not a true reflection of the actual cost of the units you buy.


@Everyone else -

The company have emailed me telling me the package has been posted.
 
Pick Holder said:
Everything in Virtual pinballs is STOLEN. ROMS, ASSETS, ARTWORK, AUDIO...... If it was not for real pinball it would not exist as a hobby.
Click to expand...

The whole colourised DMD concept is built on very shaky foundations.

I’m VERY glad people have the skills and time to colourise files but the original artists presumably don’t get a penny from it.

I’m just glad we get to benefit.
 
johnwhitfield said:
The whole colourised DMD concept is built on very shaky foundations.

I’m VERY glad people have the skills and time to colourise files but the original artists presumably don’t get a penny from it.

I’m just glad we get to benefit.
Click to expand...
The artists who colour charge real pinball folks. But its free for vpin!

I would say its best to charge everyone say $3 for files. Vpin or normal pin.

The original bally/williams/stern/DE artists do not get a cent.
 
Lucky1 got greedy (long ago) it’s just Karma he’s gonna lose the market share of the aftermarket DMDs once this becomes mainstream and it will because it’s not dictated by one guy! :D

Iv made a board for this as well i think virtaPin will put live at some point.

Dude behind ZeDMD is a decent down to earth guy as well.
 
Fair enough @Pick Holder, you owe me $18, but I don't live in the US so we'll say £18 OK?

CFTBL
TNG
DemoMan
I500
Flintstones
South Park

And actually, I did CFTBL twice (16 and 64 colour, and I suspect you've hoarded them both), so lets say £21 - I'll let you off with the £1, we'll call it a pinballinfo discount, so £20 please, Hmm maybe I should charge you for the real pin files as well, presumably you hoarded them too because they were freely downloadable from VPU? In which case, £40 please. https://paypal.me/slippifishi

As per usual you spout the same misleading blanket statement that the "artists charge for their files", missing out the key word "SOME", or the words "NOT ALL", but this is patently wrong, and I have called you out for it before, so here I am again.

Pick Holder said:
The colour folks will still make pin2dmd files
Click to expand...

This is true for sure, I'm in the process of reworking one of my projects to stick it to the vpin community, but if you believe any new projects will automatically be made available for vpin, then I think you are in for a nasty shock.
 
To be honest @slippifishi - I would sooner artists like you charged. It is up to you if you want to give your work away.

What I think is unfair that vpin use is free and real pinball is chargeable by SOME artists.

The example I gave of $2 a file (irrespective of real/vpin) would benefit you.

Also if I install a pin2dmd for anyone in a real game - I leave them to put the colour files in.

64 bit files - not a clue. Sorry.

Just sent you £20 on paypal as I appreciate your work on the 2 games I actually use your files for.
 
Okay - back on thread now.


After making the same mistake I did with another ESP device recently (not using the correct micro USB lead) it took me an hour to figure that I got power down the USB lead but no data - as the cable I used was actually a charging only and not a data transfer.

Apart from the buttons on the ESP32 - it only has two buttons. The first one cycles thru brightness of the display. This set to 5 in the video, it goes up to 15. The other button cycles thru (by the look of it) - RGB order and some preset palettes. Have not looked thru any instructions.

In windows it does not see the device as a ZeDMD - it is known as a CP2102 silicion labs device (something like that) on one of the com ports. I thought it had installed wrong as I think the Serial to USB cables I use on touch screen jukeboxes use the same chip. I thought one of the drivers got mixed up!

We have to see in the future what happens down the line, if it does eventually get used (even without the colouring) on real pins - it is still cheaper than any other LED pinball display on the market as of today. I have no doubt the price will need to go up from this one I purchased due to the fact more electronics will have to be used.

Got delivered quickly. I would of got it yesterday if the postie had left it in the designated safe place.
 
From the s/w:

// ------------------------------------------ ZeDMD by MK47 & Zedrummer (http://ppuc.org) --------------------------------------------------
// - If you have blurry pictures, the display is not clean, try to reduce the input voltage of your LED matrix panels, often, 5V panels need
// between 4V and 4.5V to display clean pictures, you often have a screw in switch-mode power supplies to change the output voltage a little bit
// - While the initial pattern logo is displayed, check you have red in the upper left, green in the lower left and blue in the upper right,
// if not, make contact between the ORDRE_BUTTON_PIN (default 21, but you can change below) pin and a ground pin several times
// until the display is correct (automatically saved, no need to do it again)
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// By pressing the RGB button while a game is running or by sending command 99,you can enable the "Debug Mode".
// The output will be:
// 000 number of frames received, regardless if any error happened
// 001 size of compressed frame if compression is enabled
// 002 size of currently received bytes of frame (compressed or decompressed)
// 003 error code if the decompression if compression is enabled
// 004 number of incomplete frames
// 005 number of resets because of communication freezes
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Commands:
// 2: set rom frame size as (int16) width, (int16) height
// 3: render raw data, RGB24
// 6: init palette (deprectated, backward compatibility)
// 7: render 16 colors using a 4 color palette (3*4 bytes), 2 pixels per byte
// 8: render 4 colors using a 4 color palette (3*4 bytes), 4 pixels per byte
// 9: render 16 colors using a 16 color palette (3*16 bytes), 4 bytes per group of 8 pixels (encoded as 4*512 bytes planes)
// 10: clear screen
// 11: render 64 colors using a 64 color palette (3*64 bytes), 6 bytes per group of 8 pixels (encoded as 6*512 bytes planes)
// 12: handshake + report resolution, returns (int16) width, (int16) height
// 13: set serial transfer chunk size as (int8) value, the value will be multiplied with 256 internally
// 14: enable serial transfer compression
// 15: disable serial transfer compression
// 16: panel LED check, screen full red, then full green, then full blue
// 20: turn off upscaling
// 21: turn on upscaling
// 22: set brightness as (int8) value between 1 and 15
// 23: set RGB order
// 24: get brightness, returns (int8) brigtness value between 1 and 15
// 25: get RGB order, returns (int8) major, (int8) minor, (int8) patch level
// 26: turn on flow control version 2
// 30: save settings
// 31: reset
// 32: get version string, returns (int8) major, (int8) minor, (int8) patch level
// 33: get panel resolution, returns (int16) width, (int16) height
// 98: disable debug mode
// 99: enable debug mode
 
Interesting @AlanJ

A little surprised to the reduce voltage supply reference.

I would imagine most people use smallish cable and the volt drop would bring it down a little.

This display actually does run without a 5v supply but I also have a psu connected. Just a wall wart running at 5.1v at the display.

Do not have any problems.
 
Pick Holder said:
Yes. Those and other arduinos are amazing devices!

Has anyone tried making a cpu board for wpc with one?
Click to expand...
Reason no one makes cpu boards with micro's is because you need to emulate the cpu core which is not that easy (and usually better job for a FPGA) although they are expensive but the speed of these micros are becoming so fast they probably can easuly emulate a cpu core these days.

Other issue is all these asics these companies love to use which cant be easily reverse engineered so usually need a donor one.

I do think it will happen in the future though :)
 
Pick Holder said:
Well it is here.

I do not think I have a 5v PSU here to give it a test but looks nicely made

No import duty

Will report back!

View attachment 230909View attachment 230910View attachment 230911
Click to expand...
Looks neat and tidy.

Just to remind everyone this board only supports vpins at the moment… (Phil does mention this - just a reminder!). No logic on board for decoding of the real pin input via the ribbon cable, and as it uses the Esp32 dev boards - all 5V so maybe no need for power management on board.

Anyone know who is designing the real pin version with that logic and power management built in (like the PIN2DMD EVO board)?

Personally I was saddened to read the PIN2DMD fallout on the VPin forum. I always found Lucky (Jeorg) extremely helpful and very responsive to calls for help. Yes his style is quite “German” (I know what I mean :)) - but he always made sure every issue I encountered with the several group buys were resolved. From my perspective he has added a lot to the communities - vpin and real pin.

As for the colourisation artists - they all get huge respect from me… from what I’ve seen it’s a rare blend of creative, technical and organisational skills and amazing attention to detail to get these things looking as good as they do. Massively time consuming. I always happily paid for that skill and time… and happy to continue to do so.

Just wanted to put that out there for what it’s worth.

Will watch this space and wait for @Paul news.
 
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