LEDBlinky Support

[Jason Carr]

@arzoo I did change the controller mappings code for the latest releases; I'm sorry I didn't give you any warning for that. I hadn't considered it, since my controller board uses keyboard mappings instead of controller mappings. Anyways, for existing users the mappings will stay in the previous settings file, but they unfortunately won't be updated when changes are made, and won't be used for new users.

There's a new InputBindings.xml file that shows up with the latest version of LaunchBox and Big Box. The syntax of it should be fairly obvious. Basically, in order to support both new and old versions of LaunchBox, LEDBlinky should look for that InputBindings.xml file, and if it exists, use it. Otherwise, it should use the existing logic inside of the Settings.xml (for LaunchBox) and BigBoxSettings.xml (for Big Box) files.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll help with whatever is needed. Again, sorry for the late notice on that.

[Richakev]

I wasn't sure if i should create a new topic for this, but is there an option for all the single player games for the console systems (NES, Genesis) to only have the player 1 side light up by default?  I'm currently going through and setting up each game 1 at a time, but it seems like being able to pass in the play mode (single player, coop, multiplayer) would be possible.

[Headrush69]

2 hours ago, Richakev said:

I wasn't sure if i should create a new topic for this, but is there an option for all the single player games for the console systems (NES, Genesis) to only have the player 1 side light up by default?  I'm currently going through and setting up each game 1 at a time, but it seems like being able to pass in the play mode (single player, coop, multiplayer) would be possible.

I think you would have to create specific platforms for each type and create a default lighting for each for this to be automated. (eg Genesis  - Single, Genesis - multiplayer) If you turn on debug in LEDBlinky, you can see the information passed from LB to LEDBlinky is fairly simple.

[donkbaca]

On 10/2/2019 at 10:13 PM, Line said:

Player1 FE buttons bound to A, B, X, Y, RB, LB, Left Stick, Right Stick, Back and Start will illuminate. 
 

The Left Trigger, Right Trigger, Guide button, joysticks (or d-pad) and trackball (mouse) will not illuminate. Nothing from P2 and higher will illuminate from FE controls.

I was able to get the other joysticks / buttons / trackballs illuminated like normal in MAME, Emulators and PC games by modifying the xmls.

How did you get them to light up in name by modifying the Xmls? I am still trying to figure out how to light roads and triggers.

 

thanks!

[SteveB69]

Hi, I'm pulling my hair out trying to get ledblinky to work in Mame 0.214.

If I run it through Launchbox all loads & the buttons light up as should. Then for some reason once the animation has stopped it leaves 4 lights lit up?

Then when I launch Mame I get no lit buttons at all.

Could someone take a look at the attached files & give me a clue as to what i am doing wrong? I'm trying to get this working on just one game to start, asteroids, so I want my 3 buttons, fire, thrust & hyperspace to light up as well as my Start button. Really have no idea what's going on here...

The below is my asteroids.cfg located within my Mame64\cfg\

<mameconfig version="10">
    <system name="asteroid">
        <counters>
            <coins index="0" number="47" />
        </counters>
        <input>
            <port tag=":IN0" type="P1_BUTTON5" mask="8" defvalue="0">
                <newseq type="standard">
                    JOYCODE_1_BUTTON3
                </newseq>
            </port>
            <port tag=":IN0" type="P1_BUTTON3" mask="16" defvalue="0">
                <newseq type="standard">
                    JOYCODE_1_BUTTON12
                </newseq>
            </port>
            <port tag=":IN1" type="P1_BUTTON4" mask="32" defvalue="0">
                <newseq type="standard">
                    JOYCODE_1_BUTTON2
                </newseq>
            </port>
            <port tag=":IN1" type="P1_BUTTON2" mask="64" defvalue="0">
                <newseq type="standard">
                    JOYCODE_1_XAXIS_RIGHT_SWITCH
                </newseq>
            </port>
            <port tag=":IN1" type="P1_BUTTON1" mask="128" defvalue="0">
                <newseq type="standard">
                    JOYCODE_1_XAXIS_LEFT_SWITCH
                </newseq>
            </port>
        </input>
    </system>
</mameconfig>

[SteveB69]

On Mavaeriks brill youtube videos I saw his coin & start lights flash the coin button first & then Start would flash & coin would go out & then game would begin & his Start light would go out. On my games my coins & Start & staying lit. Any ideas?

[arzoo]

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.

[Gimpy]

@arzoo I am having a weird problem with my LEDBlinky setup and was hoping you might have encountered something like this before - I am using the Ultimarc Ultimate I/O, and most buttons are connected via the RGB pins and operate fine. However, I have 2 heliogem Credit buttons that I got from GGG which are connected via the screwdown ports.

I originally had my colour scheme set up, and it was fine for the first couple of days, but now every time I turn on the unit, it will automatically power on these credit buttons to white, and then when I get into bigbox and my custom scheme loads, the buttons default to green, when they should be purple - if I go into the controls editor or the input map generator, the buttons function perfectly when scrolling through the R/G/B settings, and if I set them back to how they were, they'll survive a reboot, but not a complete power down. Any ideas?

Also, while I am here, my custom loading animation has also started randomly adding in randomly coloured buttons during the animation - is this me not setting enough frames and it just lighting something randomly? Again, it never did this for the first couple of days.

edit: as an update, I've realised that the buttons act independently of LEDBlinky now - if I try and change their colour or add them to an animation, nothing happens at all. The only way I can get them to change colour through LED Blinky is if I open them up in the input map generator, which seems to shake them free of whatever is making them turn. It's like something else is overriding LED Blinky, but I don't know what that would be. I did have PacLED64 on the machine at one point (although I never used it) so I deleted that, but it made no diffence. 

I do wonder if PACLed64 is interfering, because if I turn off all the lights in PACLed, my LEDBlinky setup goes back to working perfectly - all lights assign correctly, and there is also no random colours lighting up. If I reboot this remains the same, but if I completely shut down the machine, it just returns on next boot. I've tried uninstalling PACLed, but it made no difference

Cheers!

Edited October 28, 2019 by Gimpy

[arzoo]

55 minutes ago, Gimpy said:

I am having a weird problem with my LEDBlinky setup - I am using the Ultimarc Ultimate I/O, and most buttons are connected via the RGB pins and operate fine. However, I have 2 heliogem Credit buttons that I got from GGG which are connected via the screwdown ports.

I originally had my colour scheme set up, and it was fine for the first couple of days, but now every time I turn on the unit, it will automatically power on these credit buttons to white, and then when I get into bigbox and my custom scheme loads, the buttons default to green, when they should be purple - if I go into the controls editor or the input map generator, the buttons function perfectly when scrolling through the R/G/B settings, and if I set them back to how they were, they'll survive a reboot, but not a complete power down. Any ideas?

Also, while I am here, my custom loading animation has also started randomly adding in randomly coloured buttons during the animation - is this me not setting enough frames and it just lighting something randomly? Again, it never did this for the first couple of days.

edit: as an update, I've realised that the buttons act independently of LEDBlinky now - if I try and change their colour or add them to an animation, nothing happens at all. The only way I can get them to change colour through LED Blinky is if I open them up in the input map generator, which seems to shake them free of whatever is making them turn. It's like something else is overriding LED Blinky, but I don't know what that would be. I did have PacLED64 on the machine at one point (although I never used it) so I deleted that, but it made no diffence

Cheers!

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

Edited October 28, 2019 by arzoo

[Gimpy]

Thanks, I did wonder if it was because those ports automatically sent power, I'll get some clips and see if they function correctly when attached the traditional way. Just weird it only started doing it after a week or so. Thanks for the help!

 

[SteveB69]

I'm having a weird problem with Launchbox & Ledblinky, when LB starts up it reads out & lights the buttons but it's lighting buttons that I don't have mapped in my controllers mapping. So I have Page Up & Page down empty in my mapping but when I load LB ledblinky reads out Page Up & Page Down. Doesn't matter what I do in the LB mapping nothing changes what ledblinky lights up. Any ideas please?

[arzoo]

57 minutes ago, SteveB69 said:

I'm having a weird problem with Launchbox & Ledblinky, when LB starts up it reads out & lights the buttons but it's lighting buttons that I don't have mapped in my controllers mapping. So I have Page Up & Page down empty in my mapping but when I load LB ledblinky reads out Page Up & Page Down. Doesn't matter what I do in the LB mapping nothing changes what ledblinky lights up. Any ideas please?

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

[Richakev]

Has anyone had any luck with having future pinball and buttons staying lit?  When i launch a game, the pinball buttons light up correctly, but then immediately change back to the front end buttons.   I've tried searching elsewhere on the forums but haven't had much luck to other people having this issue.

According to the debug log, it starts up and then immediately quits

[10/30/2019 22:46:16] Event Completed: GAME_START
[10/30/2019 22:46:16] Received Event - Queue:[1] Msg:[4].
[10/30/2019 22:46:16] Event Started: GAME_QUIT

I followed this post in setting up future pinball and having the command line.

 

[arzoo]

10 hours ago, Richakev said:

Has anyone had any luck with having future pinball and buttons staying lit?  When i launch a game, the pinball buttons light up correctly, but then immediately change back to the front end buttons.   I've tried searching elsewhere on the forums but haven't had much luck to other people having this issue.

According to the debug log, it starts up and then immediately quits

[10/30/2019 22:46:16] Event Completed: GAME_START
[10/30/2019 22:46:16] Received Event - Queue:[1] Msg:[4].
[10/30/2019 22:46:16] Event Started: GAME_QUIT

 

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

[Headrush69]

On 10/31/2019 at 9:46 AM, arzoo said:

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

The issue is FPLoader.exe runs and than starts Future Pinball.exe, so since LB is set to run FPLoader.exe, it indeed has ended.

I use a simple compiled AHK script and use it for launching FP tables. The script waits for Future Pinball screen to close before returning control to LB.

Quote

#Persistent
#NoEnv
#SingleInstance force
SetTitleMatchMode 2

Run, "C:\Users\ARCADEPC\LaunchBox\Emulators\Future Pinball\BAM\FPLoader.exe" /open "%1%" /play /exit, "C:\Users\ARCADEPC\LaunchBox\Emulators\Future Pinball\BAM\"

WinWaitActive, Future Pinball ahk_class FuturePinballOpenGL, , 90
if ErrorLevel {
    MsgBox, FPLoader failed to open table.
    return
}

WinWaitClose

ExitApp

If you can't compile the AHK you can just as easy make a BAT file that calls the uncompiled script as well.

Quote

@echo off

START /WAIT "" "C:\Users\ARCADEPC\LaunchBox\AutoHotKey\AutoHotKey.exe" "C:\Users\ARCADEPC\LaunchBox\AutoHotKey\Scripts\FP.ahk" %1%

exit 0

 

[silverfox114]

@Headrush69 Apologies for the noob questions, but can you go into more details about how you are launching your compiled code? are you using it as the Launcher or under Additional Apps? How do you have Future Pinball set up as your Emulator? Just like the poster above set his up or any differently? Appreciate your help on this!

[Headrush69]

Yes, you just set the executable for Future Pinball to either the compiled AHK or your BAT file. (So as a Launcher, no extra apps)

One thing I forgot to mention is that to compile the AHK you will need need to download the full AutoHotKey. (It’s small and free)

just make sure you set the paths correctly in the script to the locations on your system.

i prefer the compiled AHK since it’s one less layer or redirection, but the BAT works just as well.

[silverfox114]

@Headrush69 Appreciate the response! Yeah, I did compile it using the application and set the .exe as the launcher last night, but was still running into issues with the lights turning on and then immediately off. I will keep fiddling around with it tonight, but by chance can you share any screenshots of how you have it set up? I feel like I am missing a small step somewhere. If not, no worries. Trial and error will win out one day

[Headrush69]

3 minutes ago, silverfox114 said:

@Headrush69 Appreciate the response! Yeah, I did compile it using the application and set the .exe as the launcher last night, but was still running into issues with the lights turning on and then immediately off. I will keep fiddling around with it tonight, but by chance can you share any screenshots of how you have it set up? I feel like I am missing a small step somewhere. If not, no worries. Trial and error will win out one day

I would suggest starting FPLoader.exe manually and in video preferences set for Windowed mode.

Close FPLoader.exe and try launching from LB again. Now right click on the Windows takbar and start Task Manager and see if your compiled AHK is still running.

[blurt92]

Is there anyway to have LedBlinky announce the controls during the Big Box game startup screen? I used to use RocketLauncher's fade in and that worked great but trying to get away from RL if at all possible. Right now, it starts to announce it as soon as the game starts in Mame and tends to get muffled by the game's own sound.

Also, anyone have any ideas on how to get LedBlinky to announce the controls when using Big Box pause screens with Mame? 

Edited January 21, 2020 by blurt92