LuminAudio Engine™ Release - Music-2-Lights for LED-Wiz / LED-Wiz+GP

[rockin_rick]

Heh.  I'd be surprised if there were even 2 LED-Wiz's worth of outputs used in that setup.

Yep, no doubt. I counted only 47 different ports.  I'm going to use 2 LED-Wiz's and use all of the 64 ports. I think it would rule to be able to put on a "performance" like the Christmas house did.   

You'd be better off using 'specific' hardware for this rather than the ledwiz.  With the ledwiz, you'd still have to make +5V to +120VAC circuits and the timing would not be as precise as you'd like.  Without dedicated software to trigger the lights within ms (100's of ms?) of the music, the eye would see the discrepancy.  Check out - http://www.vixenlights.com/

FWIW, last christmas, I got to see a local house with a setup like this and it was very cool.  They had a brief commentary between songs and said that they started on the project in August.  I think that the choreography would take up the most time/talent.

Rick

[RandyT]

Heh.  I'd be surprised if there were even 2 LED-Wiz's worth of outputs used in that setup.

Yep, no doubt. I counted only 47 different ports.  I'm going to use 2 LED-Wiz's and use all of the 64 ports. I think it would rule to be able to put on a "performance" like the Christmas house did.   

You'd be better off using 'specific' hardware for this rather than the ledwiz.  With the ledwiz, you'd still have to make +5V to +120VAC circuits and the timing would not be as precise as you'd like.  Without dedicated software to trigger the lights within ms (100's of ms?) of the music, the eye would see the discrepancy.  Check out - http://www.vixenlights.com/

Cool link, but he was talking about doing this with his arcade machine, not his house   

Also, why would you think the timing can't be as precise with the LED-Wiz as any other solution?   In VB, one can use the Timer function to monitor the passage of time in 10ms increments, and once "fired" the event would take a couple of milliseconds at the most to be manifested by the LED-Wiz.  And unless digital music playback on the pc suffers from an intermittently variable timebase, I'm not sure why synchronization would be a problem.

RandyT

[clanggedin]

I would love to use the LEDWiz in a disco floor type situation, but I have one question. Can you output different colors to each LED bank so baciscally you could have 32 seperate colors at a time??

I want to build a disco floor, but it want to achieve with your stuff what it would cost me $1200+ to do with the stuff that Dropout Design sells.

Would this be some day possible with your software and board??

http://web.mit.edu/storborg/ddf/video.html

[Katana Man]

I would love to use the LEDWiz in a disco floor type situation, but I have one question. Can you output different colors to each LED bank so baciscally you could have 32 seperate colors at a time??

LED-Wiz outputs voltage, not colors.  The color of the LED determine the final output color.  However!!! Now for the good part, you can use an RGB (red, green, blue) LED and then the LED-Wiz will send the appropriate voltages to the 3 different colors to generate ANY color you want.  This takes up 3 LED-Wiz port's per RBG LED light. 

[Katana Man]

double post, sorry.  Delete me. 

[clanggedin]

I would love to use the LEDWiz in a disco floor type situation, but I have one question. Can you output different colors to each LED bank so baciscally you could have 32 seperate colors at a time??

LED-Wiz outputs voltage, not colors.  The color of the LED determine the final output color.  However!!! Now for the good part, you can use an RGB (red, green, blue) LED and then the LED-Wiz will send the appropriate voltages to the 3 different colors to generate ANY color you want.  This takes up 3 LED-Wiz port's per RBG LED light. 

OK, so I can output whatever colors I want depending on voltage, and technically the program right now is limited to 4 LEDwizs hooked up, so I can run 42 RGB LEDs with one port left over. Could I hook up an RGB LED to a single port and have the program just change between Red, Green and, Blue by adjusting the voltage? Then can I have it change in between colors randomly to the beat of the music??

Sorry for all of the questions, but I want to understand fully the potential of this is before I go and buy 4 of these plus tons of RGB leds.

[RandyT]

OK, so I can output whatever colors I want depending on voltage, and technically the program right now is limited to 4 LEDwizs hooked up, so I can run 42 RGB LEDs with one port left over. Could I hook up an RGB LED to a single port and have the program just change between Red, Green and, Blue by adjusting the voltage? Then can I have it change in between colors randomly to the beat of the music??

Sorry for all of the questions, but I want to understand fully the potential of this is before I go and buy 4 of these plus tons of RGB leds.

Just understand that this software is a very early version of a pet project.  It's being put out there as a fun thing for owners of the hardware to run on their cabinets and to make jukebox apps seem more at home on cabinets with illuminated buttons. If you decide to base a purchase on it, you should consider that the software is offered strictly as is and will be updated only as I find the time and desire to do so.

That being said, the effects support up to 10 banks of RGB LED's (a bank meaning all LED's in that group will be activated or de-activated at the same time).  Each LED-Wiz can suppport over 250 RGB LED's in that configuration by ganging multiples on the same outputs.  At the moment, multiple LED-Wiz's are supported by the software only through duplication.  This means that whatever gets sent to one LED-Wiz, also gets sent to any other unit selected for output.  This will eventually change to provide unique control to the other units as well as expand the number of units supported, with the caveat given earlier.

RandyT

[Katana Man]

Randy,
   Since one LED-Wiz can run multiple LED's on each port, I apologize for asking this, but currently, what is the point of having 2 or more LED-Wiz's?  Officially speaking, your LED-Wiz's can only support 32 individual controls (and only 10 RGB's)?  I hope that my newly ordered 2nd LED-Wiz won't sit dormant for too long. I'm using Mala for my front end, and I personally would like a minimum of 63 unique controls, and possibly up to 144 (48 RGB's).

[RandyT]

Randy,
   Since one LED-Wiz can run multiple LED's on each port, I apologize for asking this, but currently, what is the point of having 2 or more LED-Wiz's?  Officially speaking, your LED-Wiz's can only support 32 individual controls (and only 10 RGB's)?  I hope that my newly ordered 2nd LED-Wiz won't sit dormant for too long. I'm using Mala for my front end, and I personally would like a minimum of 63 unique controls, and possibly up to 144 (48 RGB's).

You are mis-understanding what is being stated.  This sound application treats multiple LED-Wiz's as duplicates.  The OCX, 3rd party DLL's, Front-ends (like AtomicFE, MaLa, etc. ) all treat multiples as individually addressable units.

Here's something from the "fun with numbers" arena;  With the LED-Wiz, it is currently possible to have 16 unique devices, each having 32 uniquely addressable ports, capable of handling about 25 high-output (20ma) L:ED's each.  That's a total of 12800 possible LED's arranged in 512 controllable banks.  Thats 4266 RGB LEDs in total, arranged in 170 unique banks, each theoretically capable of over 100000 different colors.

Of course, those numbers represent about $720 in controllers.  But it's actually what is possible and at least one commercial project has used 16 units in this way.

RandyT

[Katana Man]

Excellent!  Thank you very much Randy. Keep up the good work.

[metahacker]

Can we get the source to this app so we can improve it ?

If not - can you add command line option support that will turn on 1 or more LEDwiz 's and start output?

i.e.

"luminaudio.exe 1 2 "

starts output on LEDwiz #1 and #2

using something to kill the exe is easy after that point.

this way it could be mapped to menu or button toggle

[Tiger-Heli]

Somehow I missed this thread when it was introduced - very cool app - thanks Randy!!!!

[rooter]

I have about 10 ports that are not in use in my LED Wiz set up.  Would it be possible to attach each one to a different pair of LEDs and use them to measure the volume level across them?  Having something like this:
 
mirrored up by the marquee might look cool.  The colors would be the LED's themselves, not RGB LEDs.

[rooter]

Went back in a tried to present my idea a little more clearly.  This should only take 5 LED Wiz ports.



Would probably make the LuminAudio interface a giant mess, but it would be cool, nonetheless.
(sorry for using your marquee, Webb.  It was the first decent one google images popped up.)

[metahacker]

hey RANDY

can you release the source to LuminAudio so we can hack it up?

or if you dont want.. can u pls make one that autoruns with all connected ledwiz enabled & output turned on =)

pretty please

[headkaze]

hey RANDY

can you release the source to LuminAudio so we can hack it up?

or if you dont want.. can u pls make one that autoruns with all connected ledwiz enabled & output turned on =)

pretty please

I asked Randy to release the source for this a while ago and he said no then so I doubt he will change his mind now.

[SGT]

I asked Randy to release the source for this a while ago and he said no then so I doubt he will change his mind now.

Looks like he would have everything to gain by releasing it.

[headkaze]

I asked Randy to release the source for this a while ago and he said no then so I doubt he will change his mind now.

Looks like he would have everything to gain by releasing it.

That was my original argument about it since I wanted to add this feature into my LEDWiz plugin for GameEx. I believe Randy has patented beat detection code in his software. Also I don't think the little (tm) next to the name of the software is a joke

That being said I was dissapointed by his decision, but I guess if he sees a way to make money from his software then he has every right to pursue that. Personally I'm alot more liberal about handing out source code (which I have infact done for him on several occasions) but unlike Randy I consider this a hobby. For him this is his bread and butter so we should respect that even when it looks like he's shooting himself in foot.

[metahacker]

well, i'd just like to use the luminaudio as an integrated part of the system.  loading an external app and clicking '1' '2' '3' '4' then 'start output' gets kinda old.  i would like if it could just be invoked and start output automagically.  then i could put it as a menu item or CP button to toggle it on and off. 

releasing the source would be ideal since people could extend the software to do more things, or integrate it directly into other plugins such as the mala/gameex ledwiz plugins.

but if that's not an option, that is fine.  i respect that.   whether things are open source or not is a bigger battle =)

i just would like to get a little more use out of these 4 LEDwiz and 28 RGB white ice buttons + ICE-T trackball...  attract mode is one thing, and the buttons being lit to match the original games color/button scheme is great.  but there's nothing quite so fun as trackball bowling with luminaudio   i can do it manually but ....... it's kinda clunky and when i'm building a cab as a gift for my brother i don't expect him to have to click around dialog boxes... it takes away from the whole experience... the gaming appliance 'illusion' so to speak.

[Tiger-Heli]

Also I don't think the little (tm) next to the name of the software is a joke

I'm sure it isn't but that just keeps other people from calling their software LuminAudio Engine - it could still be TM'd and released as open-source if Randy so chose, although I don't think it is likely.

You could maybe persuade him to add some command-line flags or similar to it so that AutoHotKey or similar could be used to bring up and control the software - just a thought/suggestion.

[RandyT]

That was my original argument about it since I wanted to add this feature into my LEDWiz plugin for GameEx. I believe Randy has patented beat detection code in his software. Also I don't think the little (tm) next to the name of the software is a joke

Like TH said, that TM is just to keep someone else from using the name.  There is no "patented beat detection code" in the software (proprietary to me, yes, but not patented.)  I've already stated that I use compression waveforms as the raw data to perform my algorithms on.  If you think there is only one way to get from waveform data to a "beat" then I don't know what else to say.  Only specific methodologies can be patented, not a general approach to a problem.  I know, I have my name on three of them.

Like some other folks have stated here in the past in regards to their projects, it's hard to know how many people are actually using the work.  This in turn makes it difficult to assign priority to the task.  I have stated in that past that I will add command line switches to the software, but from what I could tell only a couple of people were even using the program.  Hell, this thread was dead for a month and a half before it was resurrected

That being said, I'll try to schedule in some command line additions to allow automation sometime in the next few days (and my feet are just fine, thank you )

RandyT

[headkaze]

That was my original argument about it since I wanted to add this feature into my LEDWiz plugin for GameEx. I believe Randy has patented beat detection code in his software. Also I don't think the little (tm) next to the name of the software is a joke

Like TH said, that TM is just to keep someone else from using the name.  There is no "patented beat detection code" in the software (proprietary to me, yes, but not patented.)  I've already stated that I use compression waveforms as the raw data to perform my algorithms on.  If you think there is only one way to get from waveform data to a "beat" then I don't know what else to say.  Only specific methodologies can be patented, not a general approach to a problem.  I know, I have my name on three of them.

Like some other folks have stated here in the past in regards to their projects, it's hard to know how many people are actually using the work.  This in turn makes it difficult to assign priority to the task.  I have stated in that past that I will add command line switches to the software, but from what I could tell only a couple of people were even using the program.  Hell, this thread was dead for a month and a half before it was resurrected

That being said, I'll try to schedule in some command line additions to allow automation sometime in the next few days (and my feet are just fine, thank you )

RandyT

You won't get feedback on software like you do with hardware in the main forum. The main feedback you will get here is from other programmers or feature requests. CPWizard for example has about 10 people using it everyday. How do I know? I see them drop in and out of the IRC room all day, and that doesn't count the people not using the IRC feature. The response to software releases can be dissapointing but it's not because people arn't using the software.

The people who do show appreciation probably realise it does encourage programmers to continue work on projects that they do in their spare time.

I think this is a nice feature although I use MikeQ's dll and would like to have this as a feature in my new V2 plugin that I'm working on. So I would have loved to have this beat detection code as a dll that I could output to his dll. As I've said before I am happy to port the code from VB6 to a C++ dll that people can use in their plugin's. It would have to be seen as a benefit to LEDWiz customers to do that, and I certainly think it is. Unless there is some other use for this software your thinking of that I'm not aware of.

Incidently I heard that Jonathan is writing a keyboard driver for Xpadder that might allow key injecting into Mame. We will have to wait and see if that pans out.

[metahacker]

That being said, I'll try to schedule in some command line additions to allow automation sometime in the next few days (and my feet are just fine, thank you )

Randy... have I told you, lately, that I love you?

;-)

[mccoy178]

Randy, I bought two ledwiz's and a dozen rgb led's just for this software.   I wouldn't mind more functionality.

[RandyT]

Ok, the plan has changed a bit.  I've changed my mind about the command line.  Command line switches are unwieldy, so I will put a "Make Default" button on the main screen.  This will allow one to set it up as desired and have it be in that state on the next run.

I'm also going to add support for other apps to control it via window captions.  This will allow anyone to write an app that can change the parameters of the program, including output control and shutdown.

I have a lot of things going on right now, but I'll be starting on it today.  I don't expect it to take awfully long to finish if I can get some momentum.

RandyT

[metahacker]

any news?

[rovingmind]

off topic and directed at Randy,  completely apart from your lumina audio engine which is a great app,

You mentioned Vixenlights earlier, have you used the LED-wiz with that program and if so do you have a  plug-in you used to control it?

the 5volt output of your controller will straight feed the SSRs used for the christmas light displays. 

Unfortunately i'm not a programmer and the plug-in documentation for both items goes right over my head.

[metahacker]

I made a set of 'helper apps' today, to handle front end integration with LuminAudio. 

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=73641.0

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Just wanted to chime in and express my intense interest in this project. I've got about 3-4 other people that would love to use this software on projects of their own as well. (Not arcade related)

So, carry on!   

[superbigjay]

Hello Randy,

I just started to play with the luminaudio and I have a quick question...

If I want all the LED on my CP to flash simultaneously at the music, what kind of WLA file should I use?

Can you point me to a "ready to use" WLA file or to some documentation about how they work.

thanks

Jay 
 

[metahacker]

what effect are you going for exactly?

i would just use the stock pulse, pulse/sweep modes... check out the videos in the wrapper script post i made... you can see the 4 built in combinations with randy's software

[superbigjay]

what effect are you going for exactly?

i would just use the stock pulse, pulse/sweep modes... check out the videos in the wrapper script post i made... you can see the 4 built in combinations with randy's software

Hello MetalHacker,
so far, your "Pulse / Normal" is the one that gives me the best results.

However, I'm trying to make all the outputs flash together...

I'd like to understand how to make my own lwa file to achieve this with the luminaudio sw.

[metahacker]

try the software here
http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=239

[superbigjay]

try the software here
http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=239

Thanks for the link MH,
I should be able to understand how the LWA files works with the documentation...

what effect are you going for exactly?

I'm looking for a simple effect like : ALL LEDS responding to the bass..

[iano]

Hi Randy. I've been trying to get this to work for an hour now and i just can't see what i'm doing wrong. I have onboard sound (realtek AC97), my master (playback) volume up almost full, my wave output at full, my recording source is selected as stereo mix and it's up at full. I'm just puzzled. Would be any other reason why no leds are lighting. They work fine with Headkaze's plugin. The ocx file is in the same folder as the luminaudio app.

Cheers,
ian.

 

[iano]

Nevermind. Got it working (my bad). Looks great !

 

[unclet]

Please share ..... what did you do wrong and how did you fix it.   

I still can not get all my lights dancing to the music at the same time.  They all dance but not at the same time.  However, I can not solve this problem yet since everything is disconnected at the moment.

[iano]

This is a bit embarrasing.... Actually, i had my soundcard mixer set correctly from the start. The problem was on the interface of the luminaudio app there's a display of ledwiz devices (1234). I have 2 ledwiz and they were circled (1 & 2) so i just thought that the luminaudio app had detected my ledwiz. I didn't realize that you had to click on the ledwiz devices to get your electric ice buttons going.

 

[unclet]

Ok thanks ......  good work figuring it out though ..... everyone has had stuff like that happen to them 

[iano]

Hi. Just thought i'd bump this. I got the luminaudio app working but basically it's virtually impossible to get this app seamlessly integrated with your frontend of choice. I hope Randy hasn't given up on this project because the engine is cool.