The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: MikeQ on January 12, 2006, 10:55:09 pm
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For all those following the blinky lights LEDwiz - www.GroovyGameGear.com thread, here is the LEDWiz client driver DLL for all you programmers who want to write programs to control LED's.
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I saw that video and really love it. I just wish I could program my way out of a wet paper bag.
Hopefully someone will make an idiot proof program to get this kind of stuff running, otherwise I fear I'll have a hard time getting it all to work together.
My next panel will have translucent buttons and LEDs, so a simple way to make them light up all purdy like sure would be cool, especially lighting up the active buttons in games like your video shows. I can't wait to see what some of you guys come up with.
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I saw that video and really love it.
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Let's say I'm an idiot that hasn't programmed since Amstrad Basic (don't laugh). If I were to spend some time learning a little Visual C# (Express Edition), do you think I could actually do something with this? Is there a particular area I should focus on? Or would it require too much effort on my part?
Right now I can only dream of a Winamp plugin style app that syncs LED patterns to a detected beat. That would be pretty sweet to run behind a frontend. I know there's a beat detection dll (http://adion.djdecks.be/vb/bpmdetect) out there, but it's useless in my hands.
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I'd look at Winamp and see how plugins are made for that. You could take a winamp pluging that does an equalizer or some affect based on the beat and instead of creating a graphic output of this, create an LEDWiz sequence.
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How beat detection programs work is quite simple, it's just the doing it part that's hard.
Instead of opening the music file once, it is opened twice... once for listening, and another time (at a much lower sample rate) for beat detection. As the music is playing, the low sample version is literally read a chunk at a time as music files use a numeric value to determine the frequency height. This number is then normalized and converted into something useful (like a value from 0 to 100) and this value is then, in-turn used to adjust something graphically. Of course what you do with that number is up to you.
I don't know if you'll find any of that useful, but I thought I would try.
HAC
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Mike,
I am very interested in playing with this. I am in the process of building my cab and have been playing with the LEDWiz software, but have not purchased it yet. I wanted to see how it shaked out first. What I saw in the video, do we just download the dll and put it somewhere (like we do with roms) and it works or is there more involved? When it is attract mode, does it go out and find an animation made with the LEDWiz? Did you have to tell the it which buttons to light per game or does it look at the cfg files?
Nice work BTW.
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Mike,
I am very interested in playing with this. I am in the process of building my cab and have been playing with the LEDWiz software, but have not purchased it yet. I wanted to see how it shaked out first. What I saw in the video, do we just download the dll and put it somewhere (like we do with roms) and it works or is there more involved? When it is attract mode, does it go out and find an animation made with the LEDWiz? Did you have to tell the it which buttons to light per game or does it look at the cfg files?
Nice work BTW.
This DLL is for programmers who want to program the LEDWiz directly. This doesn't make MAME do the attract mode or the control lighting. I use a custom version of MAME to do the control lighting and attract mode.
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MikeQ,
Can this dll be referenced directly from VB6 or VB.net or does it need a com wrapper? I'd definitely like to use it but my C skills are limited.
Thanks
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I would just use RandyT's OCX control if your are using VB.
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******************************************************************
NEW!!! LEDWiz.dll version 1.0.0.1 is now available!!!
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The new dll supports differently ID'd LED-WIZ's for multiple devices on a single machine.
Up to 16 are supported. Contact www.groovygamegear.com for the specially ID'd devices.
This dll also introduces hot swap capability so you can unplug your LED-WIZ device while in use. Upon plugging them back in they will pick up and continue their lighting sequence.
This is nice for USB control panels that can be switched out without restarting MAME.
Download the new driver, test program to show how to use the DLL and source for the test program here:
LEDWiz_DLL_Beta1.1.zip (http://home.cfl.rr.com/mikeandmiranda/LEDWiz_DLL_Beta1.1.zip)
*note, this dll is not backwardly compatible as the API has changed. You will need to recompile against the new dll.
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Nice job, MikeQ! I guess I need to order up another LEDWiz. ;)
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Nice job, MikeQ! I guess I need to order up another LEDWiz. ;)
Now that I've got two, I'm trying to figure out what to do with all the extra outputs. The second one is dedicated to the cabinet. The first one is only for the CP. Not sure where I'm going to put all the cabinet lights yet.
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I would just use RandyT's OCX control if your are using VB.
Mike,
Any chance you can do a VB wrapper? Randy's OCX does not control multiple LEDWiz's.