Author Topic: Led-wiz helper app Version 2.0.86 released (UPDATED!) (Read 6147 times)

mahuti · « **on:** June 22, 2006, 11:11:20 am »

I've just finished work & posted my latest version of Swiftled, a simple Led-Wiz helper application.

You can download it here

You can view a demo video of what it does (don't mind the bad camera work)

Features:

DaveMMR · « **Reply #1 on:** June 22, 2006, 01:29:11 pm »

Tried out the program; I like the features. I suppose that since it works in conjunction the LedWiz program, it only supports Device #1, right?

Still, good work. Hopefully I'll get to play around with it more later when I have more time.

mahuti · « **Reply #2 on:** June 22, 2006, 03:07:18 pm »

yeah, only 1 device.... forgot to note that.

Maybe one of these days I can tie it into the DLL that Mike created and make it work at a low level. For now, it only works with one device though.

mahuti · « **Reply #3 on:** June 22, 2006, 04:57:40 pm »

Where this program really shines is that it's a simple way to launch LWA files for a variety of Mame and Non-mame programs based on an arbitrary gamename, and it's a simple wrapper useful in the turning on and off of the LedWiz.... especially when going from something like Led-Wiz software used to display animations while in MameWah to launching PowerMAME where the 2 programs would conflict if operational at the same time.

mahuti · « **Reply #4 on:** June 23, 2006, 05:20:16 am »

Added in support for custom colors on the auto-config tonight/thismorning... a new build will be on the way shortly with this feature added in.

mahuti · « **Reply #5 on:** June 23, 2006, 09:07:11 am »

Also added in support for passing .lwa filename strait into the app, instead of having to add it to the overrides file.... still haven't posted this, but I will soon.

KillerArcades · « **Reply #6 on:** June 23, 2006, 09:41:47 am »

Quote from: mahuti

Where this program really shines is ... when going from something like Led-Wiz software used to display animations while in MameWah to launching PowerMAME where the 2 programs would conflict if operational at the same time.

YAY!!!

Quote from: mahuti

Also added in support for passing .lwa filename strait into the app, instead of having to add it to the overrides file

Double YAY!!

Mahuti, you're a life-saver! Thank you! THANK YOU!!

mahuti · « **Reply #7 on:** June 23, 2006, 12:46:11 pm »

http://mahuti.com/arcade/swiftled286.zip

Just uploaded the new version (updated the link at the top, too)

PLUS I included better (hopefully) documentation.

This version supports strait .lwa filename sending, plus customizeable colors.

Circo · « **Reply #8 on:** June 23, 2006, 03:24:05 pm »

OMG you are the man, I will try this out today!!!

Woohoo!!!

KillerArcades · « **Reply #9 on:** June 23, 2006, 05:17:08 pm »

awesome! I'll try it out this weekend.

buks · « **Reply #10 on:** June 23, 2006, 05:59:13 pm »

mahuti,

You've only gone and bleedin well done it ! Absolutely superb app ! I've just pasted a load of lwa files together and saved it as mamewah.lwa, added the necessary stuff to mamweah.ini and fired it up. Brilliant !

One thing I've noticed is that I probably need to turn the leds off when running a game as powermame does the in game attract mode and also can display the buttons. That wasn't working when I tried Centipede but I've had a hard day today so won't test it again till tomorrow maybe.

Another thing is theres a few seconds delay from running your exe and the lights coming on - I presume this is down to the language its written in ? Not that its an issue but sometimes programmers leave debug traces in beta software which speeds up once their commented out. Just a thought !

Once again, this is just what the ledwiz needs (in my opinion). Full kudos to Randy for getting things out in the field but you and MikeQ should get a mamey or something

I'll post more results as I get them.

Buks

mahuti · « **Reply #11 on:** June 23, 2006, 06:14:49 pm »

I think it has more to do with the method I'm using with the led-wiz app, rather than the app itself. I was a bit concerned about this early on, but through my experiments, it seems that the method (pasteboard posting & polling) is the bottleneck, not my code. Early on I got super aggressive about code cleanup, and it didn't make a difference. Even when I take out a whole bunch of features, it's still a momentary gap. Someday I'll figure out how to interact with the DLL that MikeQ created and that problem will probably go away...

And re: turning leds off... let me know how that goes. You'll want to pass xledwiz to actually turn off the ledwiz if you're using powermame... rather than just turning the leds off (ledsoff.) Passing xledwiz works here (as long as the path is right), but the real world always throws you for a loop. If there is indeed anything screwy, let me know.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #12 on:** June 23, 2006, 06:52:34 pm »

Quote from: mahuti on June 23, 2006, 06:14:49 pm

I think it has more to do with the method I'm using with the led-wiz app, rather than the app itself. I was a bit concerned about this early on, but through my experiments, it seems that the method (pasteboard posting & polling) is the bottleneck, not my code. Early on I got super aggressive about code cleanup, and it didn't make a difference. Even when I take out a whole bunch of features, it's still a momentary gap. Someday I'll figure out how to interact with the DLL that MikeQ created and that problem will probably go away...

Yeah one of my first concerns when randy talked about the product was the copy&paste crap. I know for a fact that the clipboard is slow as hell. The clipboard converts data to clipboard format everytime you send it some... when you poll the clipboard your api call (or whatever you use) has to convert it back as well. On top of that I believe the clipboard has a built in delay of a few milliseconds. This is so teh system has time to catch up.

mahuti · « **Reply #13 on:** June 23, 2006, 07:06:17 pm »

I've been programming web junk for years, including pretty heavy application type ActionScript stuff, as well as php, etc, but I just never have time to sit down and learn Visual C, C++, etc. It's pretty close to AS... just another OOP, but there's enough difference that I have to actually sit down and TRY to learn it.

Too bad... there's a lot things that'd be a lot easier / faster for me in the world of app programming. At the least I'd be able to tap strait into the led-wiz instead of this half assed method. When I started this, I was building it for myself, figuring eventually someone else would build a "real" application to suit. I guess maybe one of these weekends I should actually crack those windows programming books I have laying around.

Circo · « **Reply #14 on:** June 23, 2006, 11:05:25 pm »

I am no wiz with programming but couldn't you take some of the powermame code and use instead of using the clipboard?

RandyT · « **Reply #15 on:** June 24, 2006, 01:11:17 am »

Quote from: Howard_Casto on June 23, 2006, 06:52:34 pm

Yeah one of my first concerns when randy talked about the product was the copy&paste crap. I know for a fact that the clipboard is slow as hell. The clipboard converts data to clipboard format everytime you send it some... when you poll the clipboard your api call (or whatever you use) has to convert it back as well. On top of that I believe the clipboard has a built in delay of a few milliseconds. This is so teh system has time to catch up.

Howard, please define "slow as hell." There is literally just 25ms or so lag between dumping a command into the clipboard for the LED-Wiz and it being collected and deleted by the resident software. That's a maximum of about 40 commands per second, which isn't bad for a method that can be used by virtually any programming language, including oddball ones. You call it "crap", while others have called it a "godsend" to be able to literally start controlling the hardware from their programs within minutes of plugging it in.

Buks stated a few seconds delay. I'm not sure what might be taking so long (hard drive defrag in order?), but it shouldn't be the communication method. There is a possibility that the programming language being used has some really inefficient code for communicating with the clipboard, but I haven't seen this with VB6.

On the other hand, I wrote an ActiveX control that allows for more direct control by bypassing the clipboard. It should work in any programming environment that allows for these controls and it's free for the asking. The best current solution for C++ users is, of course, MikeQ's DLL..

RandyT

BTW, thanks to Mahuti for another fine update!

mahuti · « **Reply #16 on:** June 24, 2006, 01:46:18 am »

I've also noted some slowness, but as I said, in the past I couldn't directly attribute it to my code. I'll have to retest, but I think part of the problem too (at least on my side), may have something to do with a combination of all of the following happening in short order;

a. sending a command from a frontend that
b. uses a batfile that
c. launches my app (hmm.... maybe I should let is stay open in the background all the time)
d. which then checks the commandline parameter against an ini, as well as
e. reads several configuration settings and then;
f. passes stuff to the clipboard which is then
g. polled and executed by the led-wiz.
h. my app then quits
i. command is relenquished to the bat file
j. mame is then launched.

As you can see, there are a number of things happening in that short period. Some of which are out of my control. HOWEVER, I've been intending to spend some time doing things like;

1. reading and storing the config entries in memory after the first time they're accessed.
2. providing more internal options for skipping needless functions based on the specific use.
3. more testing of various individual functions for speed bottlenecks, cutting third party apps out of the picture to get a clearer picture of any problems .
4. setting swiftled to run in the background.... there may some slowdown due to focus issues.
5. Switching to asynchronous coding. Right now my code is running synchronously, it executes a command and waits for a response before continuing on. Those responses happen almost instantaneously, but all together probably add up. In a number of cases, I probably don't need responses before continuing on.

Other than those issues, I can tell you my code's pretty clean, but it COULD use some optimization. There's a lot of functions that could be consolidated, and I'm always thinking how to streamline it. While going to sleep I usually come up with some good shortcuts. On a whole though it's good enough for me, for now, and that's the only reason I built it to begin with. Since I use this app all the time myself, you can bet on the fact that I'll continue making it better when I get the chance.

buks · « **Reply #17 on:** June 24, 2006, 02:51:13 pm »

mahuti,

I tried what you suggested and got the powermame attract mode and button lighting to work. Excellent.

BUT.....

I can't get "lledwiz" to work for some reason. "xledwiz" works - I've tried running the command from the dos prompt and if I start Ledwiz87 manually xledwiz definately closes it. But I can't get lledwiz to launch Ledwiz87.

I've got ledwiz in c:\Program Files\ledwiz so I tried copying the ledwiz folder to c:\ but it still didn't work.

Is the xledwiz parameter using the ledwizpath and ledwizversion settings in the configuration.ini ? If so then I must have them set correctly so I'm not sure what the lledwix param doesn't work.

Any ideas ?

Also as a side note I will do a defrag at some point and see if this speeds things up but the speed isn't really a big issue at the moment.

Cheers for everything so far though !

Buks

mahuti · « **Reply #18 on:** June 24, 2006, 04:24:52 pm »

Also, until I change it, I believe you need the whole path to your .exe....not just the path to it, but also the name of the ledwiz version you're using, like what's noted in the ini file that's distributed w/ the swiftled;

ledwizpath=c:\arcade\support\ledwiz\LEDWizBeta71.exe

See the exe file there at the end? YES, yes, yes, I know, I shouldn't ask for the name of the ledwiz app twice, but I did. I plan to change it, however, but in the meantime, you should change the ini file.

Sorry about the confusion, but I think that'll fix it.

And to anyone else that may find difficulties, feel free to fool around a few minutes to fix it, but also feel free to ask me if there's something else going on. My software's ultra hyper mega beta, so there's still a few things I need to work out.

buks · « **Reply #19 on:** June 24, 2006, 04:33:40 pm »

whoot ! Just tried what you said and I can now get it to run from the command line. Cheers for posting so quickly.

I'll now mess about with the mamewah ini files to get everything up and running then I'll post back my success or failure !

Thanks again,

Buks

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #20 on:** June 24, 2006, 04:34:46 pm »

Quote from: RandyT on June 24, 2006, 01:11:17 am

Quote from: Howard_Casto on June 23, 2006, 06:52:34 pm
Yeah one of my first concerns when randy talked about the product was the copy&paste crap. I know for a fact that the clipboard is slow as hell. The clipboard converts data to clipboard format everytime you send it some... when you poll the clipboard your api call (or whatever you use) has to convert it back as well. On top of that I believe the clipboard has a built in delay of a few milliseconds. This is so teh system has time to catch up.
Howard, please define "slow as hell." There is literally just 25ms or so lag between dumping a command into the clipboard for the LED-Wiz and it being collected and deleted by the resident software. That's a maximum of about 40 commands per second, which isn't bad for a method that can be used by virtually any programming language, including oddball ones. You call it "crap", while others have called it a "godsend" to be able to literally start controlling the hardware from their programs within minutes of plugging it in.

Well 40 commands a second, in my book is slow as hell. I don't understand the hostility, the clipboard is an inefficient means to control a hardware device, that is exactly why your device is the only one in the history of computers to use it. I didn't say it didn't have it's place, but it shouldn't be relied on to use for time-sensitive operations. The clipboard also gets bogged down if you send it a lot of commands in rapid successsion, it buffers them you know and because of that and the delay requried to actually put data in the clipboard it sometimes gets overwhealmed and just totally craps out.

Granted you are right... if you are just sending a sole command once, it shouldn't be a big deal, but if you are sending multiple commands in rapid succession it sure is. I never suggested that the delay was soley because of the clipboard bottleneck, but I do agree with him in that it is a bottleneck and he should start using a more reliable method of sending the data.

Also there is the problem with windows. The clipboard isn't mean to be time efficient, so if you are doing nothing else the clipboard is fairly fast but if stuff is running in the background, or memory is tight or what have you then windows might take it's time about giving up the data... believe me, I've seen it.

buks · « **Reply #21 on:** June 24, 2006, 05:00:25 pm »

mahuti,

Apologies for mentioning the speed earlier.... looks like Howard and Randy are going outside for fisticuffs

(please, that was intended as a joke and not an insult - call it English humour).

Anyway.....

mamewah starts ledwiz87 and runs mamewah.lwa - check !
shut down ledwiz87 before starting powermame - check !
powermame starts its own attract mode - check !
powermame lights buttons in use - check !
powermame restarts ledwiz87 and mamewah.lwa on exit - check !

Theres about a 5-10 second delay when the mamewah app re-displays after a game. The menu displays but it seems frozen. Then the lights kick in and control is back. I've not run the defrag yet but I will in a minute as Argentina v Mexico has just gone into extra time so I'll go watch that. I'll repost whether this has made a difference to speed.

Excellent app ! I know I've said that before but I just wanted to reitterate it just in case anyone though "what do you expect for a beta ! Its all take take take with you !".

Buks

buks · « **Reply #22 on:** June 24, 2006, 06:05:34 pm »

defragged c: and e: even though they said they didn't need it. Hasn't made a difference to speed.

Heres the relevent bits from ini files just in case I'm doing something stoopid :

mamewah.ini

### External Application Settings ###
startup_app_commandlines C:\SetLedWiz\SwiftLed\swiftled.exe lledwiz;C:\SetLedWiz\SwiftLed\swiftled.exe mamewah.lwa
exit_app_commandlines C:\SetLedWiz\SwiftLed\swiftled.exe xledwiz
exit_and_run_app_commandlines

pmame.ini

### Execution Settings ###
pre_emulator_app_commandlines C:\Program Files\CPViewer\cpviewer.exe [name] -clone [cloneof];C:\histview\histview.exe -r=[name] -p=12 -s=0 -n -e=49;C:\SetLedWiz\SwiftLed\swiftled.exe xledwiz
emulator_commandline E:\PowerMAME_105.0.1b\powermame.exe [name]{autodosbox}{nosafelaunch}
post_emulator_app_commandlines C:\SetLedWiz\SwiftLed\swiftled.exe lledwiz;C:\SetLedWiz\SwiftLed\swiftled.exe mamewah.lwa
general_app_commandlines

Anyone notice anything wrong ?

Buks

RandyT · « **Reply #23 on:** June 24, 2006, 06:27:38 pm »

Quote from: Howard_Casto on June 24, 2006, 04:34:46 pm

Well 40 commands a second, in my book is slow as hell. I don't understand the hostility, the clipboard is an inefficient means to control a hardware device, that is exactly why your device is the only one in the history of computers to use it. I didn't say it didn't have it's place, but it shouldn't be relied on to use for time-sensitive operations.

It was a means to an end. A way to give anyone a quick means of controlling the device, even from notepad!

Nobody said it was the best way to control a piece of hardware, nor is it the only way to control the LED-Wiz. But if you don't program in VB (or other language compatible with an ActiveX OCX) or C++ you would be out in the cold. Not so with this option.

Quote

The clipboard also gets bogged down if you send it a lot of commands in rapid successsion, it buffers them you know and because of that and the delay requried to actually put data in the clipboard it sometimes gets overwhealmed and just totally craps out.

Some languages allow a user defined event and that can be made to check if the clipboard has changed / been cleared and trigger the next command. It's pretty simple and happens quite transparently once it's been set up. You don't just "dump data" all willy-nilly. If one did, I would expect them to have problems as well.

Quote

Granted you are right... if you are just sending a sole command once, it shouldn't be a big deal, but if you are sending multiple commands in rapid succession it sure is. I never suggested that the delay was soley because of the clipboard bottleneck, but I do agree with him in that it is a bottleneck and he should start using a more reliable method of sending the data.

The clipboard approach was designed to provide non-timing sensitive control over a broad language base. Nothing more. The resident software doesn't use the clipboard to play back the animation files, only to get the command telling it to do so.

If one were to write code to playback the animations (requiring fast access to the hardware) then obviously this wouldn't be the preferred approach. But to light up some buttons or tell the resident software to start playback, there's nothing wrong with this approach at all.

RandyT

Grasshopper · « **Reply #24 on:** June 24, 2006, 09:15:32 pm »

Quote from: RandyT on June 24, 2006, 06:27:38 pm

The clipboard approach was designed to provide non-timing sensitive control over a broad language base. Nothing more.

Have you considered designing the LedWiz so that it emulates a USB mass storage device?

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=53795.msg527407#msg527407

mahuti · « **Reply #25 on:** June 24, 2006, 11:04:27 pm »

Quote

what do you expect for a beta ! Its all take take take with you !".

Heh, I don't care... if I ever get sick of it, I'll just quit working on it. I'm only building it for myself, really... because a. it's fun, b. I need it.

Anyway, I don't notice anything wrong, but I do know that there are things I could do on my side to speed things up. Maybe I'll give you a guinea pig version in the next few days if time allows. I have to update the screenshotarchive first, though.

Circo · « **Reply #26 on:** June 25, 2006, 05:07:02 am »

I am experiencing the slowdown as well, but that is overshadowed by the simple fact of.......it works, it finally works, i can finally get the functionality out of the led-wiz that I hoped for. I am sure that it will get better with time, things always do.

buks · « **Reply #27 on:** June 25, 2006, 03:02:39 pm »

mahuti,

thanks for the reply (again). I'd be happy to be a beta tester for the next version so PM me with details if and when you want. I've never had a PM before so be gentle

Circo,

Do you use mamewah as your FE ? If so, does your ini file setup look similar to mine ? Also I'd like to echo you sentiments in that the simple fact that it works is 95 % of the way there... just a little quicker and there will be dancing in the streets !

mahuti · « **Reply #28 on:** June 25, 2006, 07:35:57 pm »

I did some tests, and there has to be a bottleneck in my code somewhere. I have a few ideas. I'll get back to you.

Circo · « **Reply #29 on:** June 26, 2006, 04:21:45 pm »

Bucks,

I use mamewah... and yep pretty much the same.

buks · « **Reply #30 on:** June 26, 2006, 05:20:59 pm »

circo,

cheers for the info - at least I know we are "at the same point" as it were.

mahuti,

You do what you need to do. I'd order you a pizza and a few beers but that would mean you took time away from the computer ....

mahuti · « **Reply #31 on:** June 26, 2006, 05:48:34 pm »

Heh, well, there's not much leverage anyone can exert on me, but I'll be working on it this week. There's a lot of code I can rewrite. I've been looking into a few different tests to find out where the speed issue is, I have some good ideas.


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