Does Pinup Popper Menu support Real DMDs?

[Iain]

Hi

So I’ve gone through the video tutorials and I’ve set up FX3 and VPX media in my front end but I’m not sure how the DMD videos work with regards to a real dmd (PinDMDv3), if they work at all? I can’t tell if its virtual DMD support only at the moment.

I tested out a video file to see if it worked but the DMD remained blank. Is there anything specific I have to do for real DMD support?

Also is it full colour videos or just white?

 

Cheers

-Iain

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[Iain]

Oh, just to clarify, I’m just talking about the menu system.

My PinDMDv3 is working fine with 1.6  and the Pinup Player works fine with the tables I’ve got that use it (TRON, Stranger Things etc)

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[NailBuster]

good news… yes, PinUP Popper supports real-dmds.  I know its been tested with pin2dmd…. don’t know about the others.

All you need to do is to modify the pupscript file to set

var useDMD = true; //set to true if using hardware dmdDevice.DLL

Once that is setup, when you run you should get a default png displaying on your dmd.  if that works, then you’re all set, and can use media manager for your dmd like any other display.

Note:  supported formats are png files and animated GIFs (10 fps)

So if you have avi/mp4s you’ll need to convert then to animated GIFs.  I made a simple batch file that may help, or you can use another tool if you’d like.

http://vpinball.com/forums/topic/rotation-of-playfield-videos/

Let me know how it goes…

 

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Iain

[Shadow]

I can confirm that the bath for DMD conversion to GIF is working good with my Pin2DMD

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[Queniart]

boujour fait un raccourci men demmarage windows et sa demarre pas erreur

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[Iain]

So this isn’t quite working with my PinDMDv3.

 

I’ve got 2 gifs set up, for 24 and ACDC. When I edit the config setting, I can see the default image displayed on my PinDMDv3 fine. However when i cycle to 24 or ACDC, it doesn’t update, it still just displays the default image.

 

Then if I launch a game, lets say 24, the DMD works all fine in VPX but when I exit back to Pinup Popper, the last frame VPX rendered to the DMD is left on there, and it stays there (no GIFs or even the default image returns).

Anyone else using a PinDMDv3 and have it working?

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[NailBuster]

i think the format of the GIF is very picky…  try to make sure you setup your animated gif as 1280×320 at 10fps… and see if that works

also make sure you using Mediamanager to add dmds… you may be putting into wrong media directory manually?

 

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[Iain]

Ok I think I found the issue I had and I’m not sure if its a bug or not.

Firstly, res should be 128×32 just FYI.

 

The issue I had though is I think the DMD assets aren’t using the MediaSearch parameter. When I put my DMD gifs into the DMD folder and have them named the same as my Backglass/Playfield assets, even though Game Manager highlighted the DMD files as existing, they never displayed.

 

But. If I drag them onto the DMD section in GameManager (so they get renamed to the same as the game filename), then it all works fine.

 

i.e. I have an ACDC table, the file is something like “AC-DC-LUCIE-v1” or something, but my media search is “ACDC*”. My backglass and playfield are both called “ACDC.flv” or whatever, and load fine, when I put the DMD in as “ACDC.gif”, the MediaManager shows the DMD file as existing (because it matches ACDC*) but it never loads. If I put in the gif as “AC-DC-LUCIE-v1.gif”, then MediaManager shows the DMD as *missing* (because it doesn’t match ACDC*), but the DMD loads up fine!

So my guess is the DMD videos are being looked for purely on game filename instead of MediaSearch ?

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[Iain]

And yeah there see to be two other issues,

1 – When you select a game and go to the game menu, it shows the Default DMD image, going back to the main playlist wheel displays the game dmd again.

2 – After playing a VPX table, when closing and going back to the menu the DMD is either left blank, or has the last frame displayed by VPX on it. The PinDMDv3 doesn’t appear to be reinitialised with the popper system.

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[Iain]

Ok, Getting a bit further. I had an issue with PinballFX3 not returning to Pinup Popper properly and saw someone say to run PinupMenu as Administrator. So I’ve done this and this has *also* fixed the issue with the DMD not re initialising on return from VPX.

So maybe users with a real DMD (or at least PinDMDv3) need to run PinupMenu as an Admin?

It still shows the Default DMD image when entering a specific game menu tho.

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[Iain]

I am quite regularly getting an exception being thrown in the background I *think* when exiting VPX…

“Pupdmd~1

Access violation at address 005EDBB9 in module ‘PIPDMD~1.EXE’.

Read if address 00000008”

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[NailBuster]

I’m guessing… since hardware dmd can only be used by one program at a time, that coming back from vpx that ‘quick’ maybe vpinmame hasn’t released the hardware dmd.dll yet.   the only solution would be to put a delay when returning from vpx to give it time to release the dmd.

if you want to test that theory… here’s how you can test a delay in pupscript;

near top like after variables are defined add this:

var objShell = new ActiveXObject(“WScript.shell”);

and then find the function “MenuReturn”

and put this as first line:

objShell.Run(‘TIMEOUT /T 5’,0,true);

5 seconds is A LOT… but will let you know if that is the reason for dmd issue still being held by vpinmame.

 

 

 

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[Iain]

So I just tried this, gonna have to pack up for the night but I can give you an update on what I saw happening.

1 – The timeout did seem to sort it so that the DMD was correctly displaying again when returning from VPX. Interestingly, although you auto select the *next* game when returning, I still saw the DMD gif/image from the game I just played for a few frames before it updated. I need to just experiment on how short a delay I need to give it, i’m hoping a second would do!

2 – I still had an exception in the background showing an access violation on PupDMD, but its actually shown when *starting* a game in VPX, not returning as I thought previously. Everything seem to work “fine” and the exception doesn’t kill anything. But it consistently displays when starting a game. Maybe need to also delay slightly after Popper closes the DMD? Tbh, for now I’m just ignoring the exception! It doesn’t steal focus and it closes when exiting VPX (I think, or just returning to PinupPopper) so I only knew it was there by Alt Tabbing.

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[Iain]

Hey, did some quick testing this morning and i’ve been trying to post this but it keeps getting blocked/403’d as I guess it saw code in my comment.

So the error is 100% thrown at game launch and even before VPX is launched. I put a timeout of 5 seconds after the DMD is closed at the end of the Game Launch bit, and the error is displayed on the screen before the 5 seconds starts. VPX then loads up and works fine.

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[Iain]

Finally, that posted! Sorry if its not very detailed, the moe detail I add it just 403s :/

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[NailBuster]

can you try this updated DMDcontroler   http://www.nailbuster.com/pup/PUPDMDControl.zip

it just overwrites the one in your vpinmame folder.

let me know if the error goes away…

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[Iain]

No such luck sorry, same issue.

 

 

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[Iain]

In fact, tbh it kinda made it worse! Not only does it throw the exception but the pinup Popper image remains in the DMD (VPX fails to display the dmd for the table) and exiting the emulator fails to go back to pinup Popper and I have to alt F4 out of it all :/

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[NailBuster]

yeah.. this tough to troubleshoot…  i use freezy dmd in LCD mode… and don’t get any errors.  So its a combo of your dmddevice.dll/hardware.

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[Firebat138]

I forgot, what do I do to get PIN UP POPPER to display on my dmd, I set the variable to true, but after that I forgot

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