[RESOLVED] Issues with FX3 and PinDMD3

[Erzak]

I'm having some issues getting my DMD to work with Pinball FX3 in my cabinet.  I have a PinDMD3, I've got the latest Freezy DMDEXT (1.7.3) installed in my VpinMAME directory, and everything works fine for PinballX, VPX, and Future Pinball.  I have tried the following:

1) Open a cmd window in c:\visual pinball\vpinmame and type 'dmdext test'.  Gives me a test pattern both on the PinDMD3 and a virtual DMD on the playfield monitor.

2) Open a cmd window in c:\visual pinball\vpinmame and type dmdext mirror --source=pinballfx3 --no-virtual [enter].  Gives an error that need to run in administrative mode

3) Open a cmd window with admin privlidges in c:\visual pinball\vpinmame and type dmdext mirror --source=pinballfx3 --no-virtual [enter], then start Pinball FX3 and launch a game.  Nothing appears on the PinDMD3, I see the virtual DMD that is coming from FX3, both one on the playfield and one that I've moved to the bottom of the backglass monitor.

4) Did some more reading and set the coordinates of the FX3 DMD screen back to 0,0, tried 3) again, still nothing on the PinDMD3

In FX3, I do have DMD repositioning turned on, and the dimensions are set to 780x204.  I read somewhere, either here, or another site that the FX3 DMD should be somewhere off-screen, and maybe my dimensions are incorrect.  Reading thru the command line options, I see the '-d' option, do I need to include '-d pindmdv3' in the commmand?

I've tried it with both a Zen original table and a couple of the Williams tables, since I read that there were some issues with Williams tables, though I believe I read that those got fixed in the latest Freezy release.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.  Thanks!

[Mike_da_Spike]

If you use the -mirror option, you don't need have a dmd displayed (outside) the screen.

Check in the dmdext screen if any frames are captured. Do you also have a teensy board in your cab ?

[Erzak]

When you say to check the dmdext screen, do you mean the virtual DMD that is on the playfield monitor?  If so, I think, yes, there was stuff there.  But nothing on the the real DMD.  What do you mean by teensy board in my cab?

[Mike_da_Spike]

When you run dmdext from the prompt with the parameters you specified, it will give you i formation. Info is stated if the pindmd3 is found on what port. It also should end with something like "waiting for frames". If this is the case, launch FX3 and it should shows that frames are send to your physical device.

 

A Teensy board is used for adding addressable leds. On my cab the Teensy board is a bit the same as the pindmd3, and change the communication port from com3 to com5. I needed to change that. But the info can be found how I described above. It will show your device and the com port.  

dmdext mirror --source=pinballfx3 --no-virtual

This should be the correct command. You can also add to exit dmdext when process is finished. 

And make sure tou have the version from begin November 2019 from dmdext !

[Erzak]

Should the information be shown in the command window, or in the virtual DMD window?  

I do not have a Teensy board.

The latest Freezy release I see on github is from October 2018, v 1.7.3 (though the archive is labeled 1.7.2)  Is there a newer release elsewhere?

[Mike_da_Spike]

Check this :

https://github.com/freezy/dmd-extensions/issues/197

 

[Erzak]

The latest update did the trick! Thanks for pointing me to it.  Now I just need to figure out how to get rid of the virtual DMD that FX3 puts on the playfield...

[Draco1962]

28 minutes ago, Erzak said:

The latest update did the trick! Thanks for pointing me to it.  Now I just need to figure out how to get rid of the virtual DMD that FX3 puts on the playfield...

You probably have to modify your FX3 cabinet mode settings to move the DMD within FX3 settings outside of PinballX.

The following will guide you in modifying your FX3 integrated settings.

 

[Erzak]

Still seeing some intermittent issues.  I've tried a couple of methods of launching dmdext from PBX.

First, I created a .bat file that contains:  "C:\Visual Pinball\VPinMAME\dmdext" mirror --source=pinballfx3 --no-virtual --quit-when-done

That didn't seem to work, so I tried putting the path, command, and arguments into PBX like this:

This sometimes works, but not always.  It always seems to work for the couple of FX3-original tables, and sometimes works for FX3 Williams tables.  Wondering if it has something to do with permissions?

I thought I'd try the --fx3-legacy flag, but that didn't work at all, though I left all the other arguments in, perhaps that was incorrect? 

[Mike_da_Spike]

I run dmdext.exe as admin. I noticed that sometimes it could not see the fx3 process

[Erzak]

2 hours ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

I run dmdext.exe as admin. I noticed that sometimes it could not see the fx3 process

Yep, I think that was the issue.  I found that by default, PBX is being launched by a .bat file when Windows starts up.  I changed that to a shortcut to the .exe itself, and made it run in Admin mode, and so far things are working better.  Seems that if PBX is running as admin, anything it calls is as well?

[Mike_da_Spike]

Yes. I thought that Tom mentioned lately that pbx should not run as admin to get all working, but then you need to give dmdext.exe run with highest privileges ( I run my pinballx also as admin and removed the uac popups)

 

But good it is all sorted out ! Did you retract/removed your question on github for Freezy?

[Erzak]

1 hour ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

But good it is all sorted out ! Did you retract/removed your question on github for Freezy?

I just did, thanks for reminding me