MaLa Plugin - LEDBlinky Version 2.0

[arzoo]

MaLa Plugin - LEDBlinky (v2.0)!

What's new for 2.0 - LEDBlinky is now speech enabled! The configuration app has been revamped. I've also added the ability to run a second (independent) animation file for cabinet lighting.

Here's what it can do:

• Light active and/or inactive controls for MaLa front end (user interface).
• Light active and/or inactive controls for MAME emulation.
• Light active and/or inactive controls for other emulators.
• Remapping controls (MaLa or MAME) will automatically remap the associated LEDs.
• With RGB LEDs, you can specify colors for individual controls or using a pre-defined colors.ini file, match the original game control panel button colors.
• From the MaLa UI, game controls can be lit as you scroll through the game lists.
• Designate LEDs as "Always Active" for use with coin, start, or administration controls.
• Use the LED-Wiz built-in blinking effects.
• LED Attract Mode. LEDBlinky supports standard LWA files. A single or random file can be played when the MaLa screensaver is active.
• Support for pre-defined controller files (X-Arcade, SlikStik, etc).
• <New for v2.0> When starting a MAME game, LEDBlinky can speak the game name and then speak each button "action" while blinking the button in its correct color.
• <New for v2.0> Other speech features include - Custom voice message when MaLa starts, when a game starts, and when MaLa quits. Choose from multiple voices (downloadable) and set the voice rate and volume.
• <New for v2.0> Run a second (independent) LED animation for cabinet lights. This animation can run when MaLa is active, when the screensaver is active, during game play, or any combination of the three.

LED Animation files: All standard LWZ commands are supported with the addition of one new command: LWZ-REP:n. The REP command can be used to define repeating groups of commands. The LWA parser also supports sending commands to individual LED-Wiz devices - with this you can create sequential or parallel patterns across multiple devices. Eventually I hope to include an animation editor with the LEDBlinky, but for now the files must be created using the GGG LumAura app or manually. Headkaze has also graciously provided a set of pre-defined animations!

Speech Capability: LEDBlinky uses the "text to speech" components that come standard with Microsoft Windows. This includes a single voice - Microsoft Sam (sounds a bit like the Berzerk voice). Two additional voices are also freely downloadable from MS - Mike and Mary, but only as a merge module included with the speech SDK. I've compiled the Mike and Mary merge module (Sp5TTIntXP.msm) into an install package which can be downloaded here. After running the installation, you can select the new voices from the LEDBlinky config app.

Please refer to the Install and Config.doc file to get LEDBlinky up and running. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome. There may be a bug or two , so let me know.

Download LEDBlinky v2.0

Here are screen shots of the config apps...

[arzoo]

Here are some videos of the LEDBlinky in action.

The first video shows Asteroids starting. I'm using all three game start speech features - name, controls, and custom text.


This next video shows NBA Jam starting. It's a four player game, but my cp only lights up the buttons for players 1 and 2.


Here's the screensaver attract mode. My cp uses two LED-Wiz Controllers and the wiring is rather bizarre. For reasons I won't go into here (mostly stupidity ) I wired all the RGB blue leads to LED-Wiz ID1 and all the RGB green and red leads to LED-Wiz ID2. The animation file I created uses the same buttons and colors as NBA Jam and demonstrates the ability to address each LED-Wiz individually while keeping both in sync.


Here's a single player game that uses TEN buttons, and the track ball!


And lastly, here's a video of the Cabinet Lighting feature. Since my cp doesn't have any cab LEDs, I used the left side buttons wired to LED-Wiz2 for the cabinet animation.

[squirrellydw]

where is the color.ini file?  I am going to try your plugin this week

[Green Giant]

Here is a copy of the one I downloaded.  Just make sure and use the latest update from the other ledblinky topic.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=67134.40

[squirrellydw]

so this is not the latest version of LEDBlinky???.....grrrrrr

[Green Giant]

The one on the topic is the latest arzoo did.  Still version two but it fixes a bunch of little bugs.

[arzoo]

so this is not the latest version of LEDBlinky???.....grrrrrr

squirrellydw,
The version in this thread has all the bug fixes, but is missing a couple of minor enhancements. Here's a link to the latest "beta" version.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=67134.msg686015#msg686015

[Green Giant]

Arzoo,
I was wondering what kind of features you are adding with the next update to the ledblinky.  Just curious what we will be seeing.

[arzoo]

Arzoo,
I was wondering what kind of features you are adding with the next update to the ledblinky.  Just curious what we will be seeing.

Well, I’ve been working on the animation editor, but I may release an update to LEDBlinky with some "fluff" enhancements before I finish the editor. Mostly stuff with the speech and animations for various events - when MaLa starts, when the screen saver starts, when a game starts, etc. I think a couple of the new features are pretty cool 

Let me know if you have any suggestions!

[squirrellydw]

Do I just overwrite the old version?

[arzoo]

Do I just overwrite the old version?

yep

[GlennEdwards]

I posted this in another section but will repeat here...

Hi Arzoo,

Great program you've got there in LEDBlinky :-)

I've got a few problems and errors using it. I'm just preparing for my cabinet, and I've got two single LED's connected to my LEDWiz. One on port 16, and the other on port 32.

I've set up the input map as follows: P1B1 = port 16 KEYCODE_LCTRL, P1B2 = port 32 KEYCODE_LALT

I've also setup the mala and mame profiles accordingly, and left everything at default settings

First strange thing is that the test buttons don't seem to work in the Mame profile setup? No matter how hard I try, the test buttons will not light any LED's.

If I set LEDBlinky to light mala and mame controls, it lights the LEDs within mala no problem (animations work as well). But not within mame. So LEDBLinky is able to access and set my LEDWiz ok.

If I set LEDBlinky to just light mame controls, I get no LED's lit at all. I realised I hadn't setup the mame config directory in LEDBlinky, so set that to the Mame\cfg directory.

Now upon loading mala I get the following Exception:

     Exception EInOutError in Modul LEDBlinky.mplugin bei 0006A901

and it crashes mala, and no LEDBlinky.log file is generated either?

If I remove the Mame\cfg from LEDBlinky I can load mala, but get no LED's in MAME.

I'm running Windows Vista 32-bit if that's relevant

Please help   Let me know of anything you want me to do or run in order to help you find the problem.

Thanks,

Glenn