DMD Extender Update

[mwong168]

The DMD Extender allows you to connect an HDMI/DVI/Composite screen or projector to a DMD pinball machine and mirror the dots on the connected screen. You have full control over the colour of the dot shades that apply across all frames, addition of bespoke background images (still and animated), there are a couple of dot effects that can be used, and the types of application include...

Big screen dots for tournaments.
Adding a small screen into the playfield or apron area.
Replacing the plasma screen with a laptop LCD panel.

Machine Support
We now support all of the following machines:
Bally / Williams
Data East / Sega
Sega 192 X 64
Stern / Sega White Star
Stern SAM

Application Notes
The website, http://www.drpinball.co.uk, now includes an Application Notes section under Documentation. At the moment there are 2 documents describing how to replace plasma screens with LCD panels for Sega 192X64 and Bally/Williams. I just uploaded an Application Note for replacing Stern SAM system screens with an LCD panel - have a look at the document... http://www.drpinball.co.uk/docs/ApplicationNote3.pdf

Future Direction
The DMD Extender has always appealed to do-it-yourself types who don't mind a bit of effort to get good results at a reasonable price. The Application Notes have been created to support this group of people, although the Extender itself is very easy to install and includes a Windows application to make setup extremely simple.

The Extender lends itself well to be used for building replacement screen systems. I have considered pursuing a product along this line but have decided not to embark on this. I would, however, be very pleased to support anybody who feels inclined to put together a product for sale in the USA. I can't imagine shipping LCD panels from the UK to the States without a lot of breakages occurring - perhaps an enterprise or an individual in the USA could manage a product like this with a small amount of design and effort. Certainly the appeal is strong for a product to support the Sega large screen formats. I'm happy to supply the Extender boards and software, and make any changes requested by people e.g. supporting other pinball manufacturers (Capcom, Gottlieb, P-ROC), adding an upscaling feature etc, etc.

As always, the Facebook page has loads of pictures, videos and links, please drop by:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Pinba ... 2141672693

Cheers
David.

Sample White Palette SAM Application for Spiderman
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5kgzpgUjaFA[/youtube]

 

[Monkeybug]

Very neat.

Crappy video.

Is this the beginning of a crowd sourced/open sourced colour DMD variant?

 

[websherpa]

The board exists now to purchase but it also requires a Raspberry Pi as the brains ( and an LED monitor) which brings the price up closer to replacement DMD, and likely more trouble than a video camera and monitor for projecting a score for a tournament. So I can see the move towards promoting some combo product.

 

[mwong168]

The board exists now to purchase but it also requires a Raspberry Pi as the brains ( and an LED monitor) which brings the price up closer to replacement DMD, and likely more trouble than a video camera and monitor for projecting a score for a tournament. So I can see the move towards promoting some combo product.

A Raspberry Pi can be had for as low as $35 and you can use any type of LCD/LED monitor you wish. Here are some pics of another pinside user named softwaretroll playing around with color schemes and sharing his DMD Extender settings.

Lord of the Rings

Bram Stoker's Dracula - Note that the first few screen shots are using a special effect in the DMD Extender software called "ZX Speccy" which gives a more solid, blended graphics look.

I might just pick one up to experiment with my games and I think it would certainly open up the community with others contributing their color config or combinations for others to use.