Front Ends for a single 43” 4K monitor Arcade / Virtual Pinball with LEDBlinky?

[websherpa]

(I have built Hyperspin and LaunchBox/Big Box setups - and a few others - in the past.)

Trying to squeeze in a new Retro Arcade emulator build (Frankencade) into my games garage (I’m mainly a pinball guy), I started this project with a rotating 1080p monitor running on an Nvidia Shield… and after some good advice on arcade controls.com and seeing some pretty fantastic Vertical builds around the RRM Xtension stand-up cabinets… I got it in my head to build a vertical stand up cabinet (which I like to refer to as “Arcade on a Stick” because I have my tv monitor on a vertical pole stand (tilted backwards) until I can get around to cutting up a cabinet (and I have a standup controller setup already built around an old Xarcade Tankstick).

So…I always wanted to explore CoinOPS and was rather impressed with an unofficial Pack called “Pinball vs Arcade vs Console” that works for me rather well out of the box (and after doing some early Hyperspin builds) I’d rather like to simplify setup.  That being said I decided to buy an Ultimarc Ultimate I/O board so I could LED and animate the buttons as the ONE thing that I find me and my guests always struggle with is which controls to use for certain games.  (We have no interest in collecting EVERY game out there, one of the nicest aspects of CoinOPS builds is the curation factor.)

Soooo… a 43” 4K purchase (a NOS PC build) and discovery of some excellent hi res vertical bezels (verticalarcade.com) that show the original arcade controls…. I’m on a mission to build a really nice functioning vertical cabinet (with a nicely curated trim collection of classic arcade console games and a virtual pinball setup) that takes advantage of the full monitor bezels (but can still play horizontal games at a nice 4:3 aspect)…. Nearly there with that older CoinOPS PvAvC Pack EXCEPT it and RetroFE don’t appear to integrate out of box with LEDBLINKY (doesn’t yet appear to have accessible Front End command line triggers for things like Front End Start, Restart, Menu System / Game Selections, etc. That I can find anyway.. if it did I could program it myself.)

COINOps looks like it will catch up and latest version (Retro) will eventually have a vertical theme and LEDBLinky plugin (being worked on but early development), but it’s development goes in starts and stops.  I want to “build once and be done.”

So I am looking to see if anyone knows whether RetroFE / CoinOPS can currently be hacked to send additional commands for events, OR if someone here has done say a similar hi-res vertical cabinet setup (with LED Blinky) and can share the basics of their journey to Nirvana and software choices?

Hyperspin is not on the block right now.  Pretty sure I could achieve what I want using BigBox but till a bit more setup work than I was hoping for.  CoinOPS PvAvC Unoffical Pack the closest thing to what I want (but LEDBlinky being the “wall” I have hit).

(My posts always seem to be “tall orders” - but to be honest members here have been invaluable to help my understanding, choices and progress in the past.  Thank you!)

Wayne

[nitrogen_widget]

I think Attract mode is ledblinky friendly.

[websherpa]

A few people have reached out to me here and on CoinOPS Discord Server to say that the Latest CoinOPs Retro, a vertical orientation, and a LEDBlinky integration are currently being worked on.