arzoo

It would seem like BB is not sending LEDBlinky the Game Selected command from the recently played list. I'm thinking this will have to be fixed by the FE dev.

If you turn on the LEDBlinky Debug Log option, run BB and a few games that aren't working, then email me the debug.zip file, I'll take a look. But I can't really provide any support on your LB/BB config.

This would most likely be an issue with your BB config. LEDBlinky is only as accurate as the data/parameters passed from the front-end.

LEDBlinky starts speaking the controls as soon as it receives the "Game Start" command (or after the Game Start Delay if specified). It does not monitor or wait for any other process.

This may be an issue with the front-end determining that the future pinball exe has quit (immediately after starting) due to losing focus?

Have you tried using the Troubleshooting app? If that doesn't help, email me the debug.zip file and I'll take a look.

I believe the LEDs should be connected to the UIO RGB ports. You might want to get help with this from Ultimarc support.

I'm not sure how Maverick has his system configured but there's a few LEDBlinky options that control how the Start and Coin buttons light up; you can have LEDBlinky flash and speak the start/coin buttons at game start and you can have them remain lit during game play. Both options are on the Game Options tab. You can also have mame control the start and coin buttons via mame outputs, such as blinking the start button when credits are available. But mame outputs are game dependent and it's mostly the older classic games (Asteroids, Dig Dug, etc) that do this.

LEDBlinky uses the BigBox settings.ini to determine the keyboard codes for the FE controls and also if joysticks and trackball are enabled as FE controls. It's possible there have been changes to the format of that settings file since I last worked on the LB integration which is why some of the buttons are not lighting up. Please email me your BigBox setting.ini file and I'll look into this. I recall looking over your debug log back in May to see what's going on with the button flicker when using a single frame animation to light the FE controls. Could you email me a more recent debug.zip and I'll give it another look. Thanks.

Thanks for the clarification. So just to confirm, the issue is only with lighting the FE buttons?

I guess I'm confused here, if you're using an xbox controller with LB or mame, what buttons are trying to light up?

Let me clarify, LEDBlinky can't light any buttons on the xbox controllers.

LEDBlinky does not support direct control of Xbox controllers.

LEDBlinky doesn't care which version of mame.xml you're using - so you can generate the file with the standard mame.exe. One thing I will mention is later versions of mame will generate very large mame.xml files which can slow down the LEDBlinky startup. The next release of LEDBlinky will address this issue by minifying the mame.xml (just for LEDBlinky's use).

My guess is you have the Demo Scroll Delay set to 0. Try setting it to a value like 2 - that will prevent LEDBlinky from lighting the demo LEDs until you have stopped scrolling for 2 seconds.

LEDBlinky receives the game start/stop commands from LaunchBox, so it knows nothing about what emulator is actually running beyond the data it receives from the front-end. Hyperspin has a similar issue - sending a false game quit command when the emulator loses focus (but is still running). But since HS uses a secondary app (HyperLauncher) to actually run the emulators, I was able to add a work-around in the LEDBlinky code to check memory for the HyperLauncher app and ignore the false game quit commands. I'm wondering why this issue hasn't come up in the past with LB? Are other users having the same issue with Steam?

It was a feature I added early on to quickly flash any FE button as it's pressed. But quite often it causes issues because the LED hardware can't keep up with the rapid commands (although your symptoms seemed different). I've considered removing it because it causes so many problems. Anyway, glad you got things working!

If you turn on the Debug Log, run through the same scenario as in the video, then email the the debug.ZIP file I'll take a look. You can set the Launchbox colors from the Controls Editor; click the FE button (in the middle) and edit each control to set the colors.

@johnstewart LEDBlinky reads the mame cfg files (default and individual roms) to determine the inputs used for each game, so I'm not sure why it's not working for your configuration. You could try using the Troubleshooting app to see if it helps with an answer. But if not, please turn on the Debug Log (Misc Options tab), run LaunchBox with a few games (Robotron, Smash TV, etc), then email me the debug.ZIP file and I'll take a look.

Try this; using the GenLEDBlinkyInputMap app, assign DOUBLEJOY8WAY to the port(s) for both the left and right joystick LEDs. Assuming you're using the standard controls.ini file, ROBOTRON should have "P1Controls=Dual 8-way Joysticks+doublejoy8way" which is the Primary Control that LEDBlinky will light up. This support link may also help. Let me know if that works.

If nothing shows up for DK (and other games) in the mame output test, this would indicate that mame isn't sending any messages (including Pause) for those games. What version of MAME are you using?

LEDBlinky uses the MAME Output System to respond to the 'Pause' message (from MAME). I'm not sure why MAME would send the message for some games and not others? Try using the LEDBlinky MAMEOutputTest app and see if the games (that aren't working) are sending the Pause message. Get back to me with the results.

I'm not sure how other FEs handle Steam and I don't use it so I can't really help much - sorry. But not sending the Game Quit command to LEDBlinky (for Steam) should be a suitable workaround.

That's correct, if LEDBlinky doesn't receive the Game Quit command it will assume the game is over as soon as another command is received. Not a perfect solution but it should work.

Hey Jason. @Fursphere emailed me his latest log and everything is working as expected except when he starts a Windows games in which case LEDBlinky never receives a Game Start (3) event from BB. The log shows the Emulator Selected event for [Windows] and the Game Selected event for a windows game, but the next event after that is Game Quit? I looked over my code to make sure I'm not ignoring "Windows" as an emulator name but there's nothing like that. So I think this must be an issue on the BB side. Let me know if there's anything more I can do to help.