BlinkBox - LEDBlinky Workaround for BigBox

[PFC-Wintergreen]

Disclaimer: I am not a very good or experienced programmer, expect problems What is this?: This is a simple program I wrote to make LEDBlinky work, in a very basic way, with BigBox. It will start BigBox.exe, wait a predetermined amount of time(which you can set), and then start LEDBlinky in it's frontend mode. BlinkBox will then wait around in the background, just so it can tell LEDBlinky when you have closed BigBox(and then turn out the lights). That's about it. If you set the delay right, the front end start animation will play at the same moment BigBox appears on screen. The delay is necessary, on my machine at least, because LEDBlinky starts up much faster than BigBox. You'll have to tweak the delay to match the speed of your own PC. Once BigBox is up and running, your "front end active" animation will play continuously(provided you have LEDBlinky set up in the right way..which is described below). When you start a game, nothing will happen sadly....with one very important exception: MAME. LEDBlinky has a mode where it can detect when you launch MAME games...and it will light up the correct buttons per game and return to the FE active animation when you exit MAME. In the future I may add the ability to play start/end/button animations for other emulators. That will require some creativity,unless I write the program to just constantly check if you have launched or terminated an emulator. On the other hand, I know LEDBlinky support is on the to-do list for LaunchBox...so the point may become moot. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5.2. It is likely that you already have this. I know this could have been a tiny C program or even a batch file...it's only in .NET because I'm trying to learn that. Sorry for the inconvenience. How to use: Part 1: Set up BlinkBox 1 - Extract the contents of BlinkBox.zip to the root of your LaunchBox folder. BlinkBox.exe and BlinkBox.ini must be in the same folder as BigBox.exe 2 - Open BlinkBox.ini in a text editor. Replace the existing path to LEDBlinky.exe to the the location of your LEDBlinky.exe 3 - Optionally, tweak the StartAnimationDelay setting to ensure that the FE start animation plays right when BigBox appears. Time is in milliseconds. Part 2: Set up LEDBlinky 1 - Make sure that LEDBlinky front end mode is set to "Other Front End". See image below. 2 - On the MAME tab, make sure you have "Use MAME to Trigger the Game Start/Stop Events" checked. You will also need to have your MAME.xml, controls.ini etc set up correctly...refer to the official LEDBlinky documentation on that. See image below for an example 3 - You'll of course need to set up your animations as you normally would with LEDBlinky. Only FE Start, FE Active, Emulator Start(MAME only), Emulator Buttons(MAME only) and game pause(MAME only) will work. Other Notes: Unfortunately this will not work with the "Switch to BigBox"/"Switch to Desktop mode" functionality built into LaunchBox. You have to run BlinkBox.exe every time. I wrote this for my own use but I hope it will help someone else out there...let me know if you have problems.

[vrpc]

Thanks a lot. It works pretty well running on Windows 8.1 64-bit. Threw it in my startup folder instead of BigBox and LEDBlinky.

[mmac1977]

Hey trying to give this a go. Keep getting the error "Could not find BigBox.exe ensure it's located in the root of Launchbox directory". What location is the software looking for bigbox in? I'm running windows 10 and launcbox is installed under "users". tried moving the lauchbox folder to several other spots but no good. Keen to get some basic LED's going whilst we wait on a LEDBlinky dev for Launchbox...without needing to rewire my cab! Thanks

[PFC-Wintergreen]

mmac1977 said Hey trying to give this a go. Keep getting the error "Could not find BigBox.exe ensure it's located in the root of Launchbox directory". What location is the software looking for bigbox in? I'm running windows 10 and launcbox is installed under "users". tried moving the lauchbox folder to several other spots but no good. Keen to get some basic LED's going whilst we wait on a LEDBlinky dev for Launchbox...without needing to rewire my cab! Thanks

Hey, I'm actually amazed anyone is using it(besides me). What you need to do is copy BlinkBox.exe and BlinkBox.ini into your launchbox folder. It doesn't matter where your launchbox folder is, the only rule is BlinkBox.exe and BlinkBox.ini must be in the same folder as BigBox.exe. Now that I read it again that error message I wrote is sort of confusing. Let me know if that helps or if I misunderstood the issue etc. Good luck with your cab.

[mmac1977]

Worked nicely! Added the shortcut to windows startup and all working as it should. Now just playing with LEDBlinky to make is stay lit up no matter what emulator I use. I'm not fussed with specific led illumination per game, simply want it to run the welcome (and shutdown) and then keep all my LED's on. That will suffice for now...until Launchbox sort out LEDblinky aupport ;) thanks again