Virtual Topper Idea

[CarnyPriest]

I have one of these old 5:4 screens. I found that it was workable to unscrew the display from the stand and reattach it as portrait. Works well for coding and reading documents as well as testing FS tables on my laptop. But I can put the display back to landscape. I have a Pinball 2000 style cab, so there is plenty of area on top to secure the stand. And I have a spare output on my graphics card. I wasn’t planning on working on this, but maybe…?

 

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[RustyCardores]

Go on…

I bit the bullet and purchased that screen I linked to. So that’s my afternoon sorted now. 

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[RustyCardores]

What a monumental PITA this screen is being. After about 7 hours I still couldn’t get it to work on my cab.

But it would work on another desktop ???? Grrrrr!! :(

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[randr]

So pbx won’t see it as a screen?

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Messing with the VPinball app and push notifications.
So if you haven't downloaded app yet what are you waiting for!?
for IOS and Android

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[RustyCardores]

randr wrote:

So pbx won’t see it as a screen?

Windows won’t see it as a screen! :(

It works on my other desktop, but it fails to fully install on my cab.  LOTS of similar problems online with Windows…. THIS is why I’m a MacMAN! ;)

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[RustyCardores]

OK I’ve given up on it and am taking it back.  I’ll grab a small 19 inch LG and run a standard HDMI to it from the 3rd port on my vid card.  I presently have a 27 in there to test it. It’s running at 1080 and all the tables I have tested still play just fine, so I guess my 670 card has enough grunt for it.

If I strike any problems, my son upgraded his 980 to a 1080 (or some ridiculous thing like that yesterday), so there is a 980 just sitting there. He has a habit of not bothering to sell his old bits, so it’s just a matter of time before it will end up in the spare parts bin and then it’s MINE…. ALL MINE!!!!!  bwahahahaha!!

I know he would give it to me now if I asked, but I want to give him the opportunity to sell it first, the darn kid has too much money and I fear he doesn’t recognise the true value of it. btw… I can’t buy it, because he wont take money from his dad. Especially on Fathers Day. Perhaps I will try and buy it tomorrow. ;)

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[RustyCardores]

TOPPER UPDATE:

I just mounted a 24 inch Samsung to the back of my topbox. It’s bigger than I originally planned, but it’s a screen that I had just sitting here. I kept the mount neat by using high strength mounting tape to hold two flat plates to the front of the monitor in the lower corners.  These extend to each side and are then screwed to the rear door of the topbox.  It’s not going anywhere, as my back door is screwed in not hinged and that tape is STRONG!!

It’s also sitting a little higher than I would have liked, but any lower and the (bigger than planned) screen would start covering the exhaust fan.

That said, now that I have done it I think it’s not too bad. It certainly offers some good real estate for topper display.

What do you think?

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[RustyCardores]

There was talk of starting a collection of topper images/videos…. did that ever get off the ground?

If not, maybe it’s time to start ;)

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[RustyCardores]

Now I’m thinking of de-casing the topper monitor and cutting a slot in the topbox for it to poke through.  I could hide all cabling inside then.

For final trim around the then exposed screen, I figure some gloss black picture frame mould should do the trick. ;)

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[Pinball999]

Ok.. not virtual and Star Trek only, but some of you might like it..

http://econopick.com/products/star-trek-uss-enterprise-3d-led-lamp

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[Jesperpark]

Umm Rusty, do you have a laser light show going on behind your cab??

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[RustyCardores]

Jesperpark wrote:

Umm Rusty, do you have a laser light show going on behind your cab??

Umm, yeah   lol

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[RustyCardores]

Ok the cab is all back together and now that I see it pressed back against the wall in it’s usual position, I don’t think de-casing the topper screen and cutting a hole in the top box is worth the effort, as the back is 90% hidden anyway.  You have to make an effort to see behind and it’s not that it looks bad anyway, as I’ve done it nice and neat.

Perhaps when I make a new top box to include a real DMD I’ll do it….. but that’s that’s another day, another brain explosion. :)

Now the task is to make a couple of hundred topper images…. :(

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[RustyCardores]

Here’s a quick and nasty video showing the toppers scrolling in PinballX…

https://youtu.be/MyxzyG1deVQ

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[Ark Malmeida]

Wow, that’s very cool – looks amazing on your cab!

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RustyCardores

[randr]

Good video! 

********************************************************
Messing with the VPinball app and push notifications.
So if you haven't downloaded app yet what are you waiting for!?
for IOS and Android

********************************************************

You need to login in order to like this post: click here

1 user thanked author for this post.

RustyCardores

[RustyCardores]

Thanks guys.  All in all it has turned out really well… for what started as the lunatic ramblings of a drunk man just a few days ago. 

My hunt is now on for a few toys/figurines to sit just to the side of it.

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[CarnyPriest]

Another next step is to see if the dB2S image can be spanned across BG and 4th display to have rom controlled lighting/animation. I’ve never worked with the designer program, so I have no idea if would work.

In any case, static or non-rom controlled works for the vast majority of examples, so good work!

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[RustyCardores]

Another next step is to see if the dB2S image can be spanned across BG and 4th display to have rom controlled lighting/animation. I’ve never worked with the designer program, so I have no idea if would work.

In any case, static or non-rom controlled works for the vast majority of examples, so good work!

Yeah I think it would come down to effort v’s return.

If static images or looping vids (I wonder if animated gifs would work?) serve the purpose well for the most part, is it worth the dB2S effort? A question for the designers I guess.

Just thinking…. For those with DOF, it would be silly to think that synced LEDs or flashers couldn’t be used up there in conjunction with the screen.

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[RustyCardores]

Well that sucks!

My original Samsung Topper screen had developed a vertical blue line running down the screen. It was annoying me but considering my topper was kinda in concept stage I put up with it.

….until I couldn’t put up with it any more.

So I dismantled the screen in the hope it was just a bad connector or something simple, but there was nothing that I could do.  Considering the screen to be essentially “stuffed”, I opted for the poor mans fix which involved a ruler and a fine black Nikko pen (felt marker for my OS readers).  This actually worked great. It was much less intrusive than the bright blue line.

…until I couldn’t put up with it and more.

So I purchased a new monitor.  I would loved to have got the same Samsung, but there were a couple of niggles with it…. like the fact that it was not VESA mountable and the removal of the stand required its de-casing. Not something I wanted to do to a new “under warranty” monitor.

I decided on a ViewSonic and the price was super dooper right, it was VESA and its case shape suited my existing cradle perfectly.  But here is the sucky part…. it just doesn’t have a good black in unused portions of the screen.  It’s not bad from the players POV, but off to the side and it’s more a dark grey.

I want my toppers to appear to come out of the darkness from anywhere in the room and this monitor just doesn’t cut it.  I’ve profiled and tweaked. I’ve lowered all RGB sliders equally to reduce the output while maintaining balance and I even have it running in ECO mode that turns down the backlight. …so it’s “ok” but it’s not the Sammy. :(   Thank’s to my “super dooper deal” I can’t return it either.  Even if I could, the price jump to a Sammy with VESA is out of the question.

So being stuck with this one, I have to come up with a cunning plan. So at this stage I’m, thinking of adding a layer of tinted acrylic in front. I would extend this acrylic to the edge of the bezel to make the entire topper look “frameless”.   I have plenty of adjustable brightness in the topper images themselves and I think…. I hope… that the images would still show well, while at the same time, have the dark unused areas of the screen become less obvious.

Fingers crossed that’s the plan at this stage anyway. I will head off now and see if a window tint place can give me some off-cuts of various grades to test.

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