LEDBlinky - Arcade LED Control software and Animation Editor - Version 3.6

LEDBlinky - Arcade LED Control software and Animation Editor (v3.6)

New for Current Release (v3.6) - New feature to light LEDs based on the primary control (8-Way Joystick, 4-Way Joystick, Spinner, etc). New feature to speak the primary control(s). New feature to set the GP-Wiz49 or UltraStik 360 digital restriction based on the currently selected game's primary control (with emulator and game specific overrides). New feature to play animations in a "Random Montage" mode. Plus other enhancements and bug fixes - See the Readme.txt file for the complete list.

Prior Release (v3.5) - New Stand-Alone Mode for use with any front-end software. Added native support for AtomicFE and GameEx via plugin - all options are available. Additional features and bug-fixes for LEDBlinky and the Animation Editor.

Prior Release (v3.0) - Full support for the Ultimarc PAC-Drive USB Output Controller. Speak and blink game controls and/or play a LED animation when Pausing MAME. Flash start buttons when credits are available. Support for all MAME Outputs. Plus more - See the Readme.txt file for a full list of features. This is also the official release of the LEDBlinky Animation Editor.

Here's what LEDBlinky can do:
- Supports both the LED-Wiz and PAC-Drive USB output controllers. You can use multiple LED-Wiz’s, multiple PAC-Drives, or a combination of both.
- Supports MaLa, AtomicFE, and GameEx integration via plug-in OR stand-alone operation for any arcade Front-End (FE) software.
- Light active and/or inactive controls for MaLa, AtomicFE, and GameEx front end (user interface).
- Light active and/or inactive controls for MAME emulation.
- Light active and/or inactive controls for other emulators.
- Remapping controls (MAME, MaLa, AtomicFE, GameEx) will automatically remap the associated LEDs.
- With RGB LEDs, you can specify colors for individual controls or using a pre-defined colors.ini file, match the original game control panel button colors. Colors or intensities can also be customized on a game-by-game basis.
- Blink and speak controls when pausing a game and/or play a LED animation (selected, random, or random montage). This is a MAME only feature.
- Flash start buttons when credits are available - this is a MAME only game dependent feature.
- Light Start and Coin buttons based on active players for the current game.
- Full support for other MAME Outputs - light LEDs based on any output. Outputs can be linked to controls (P1_Button1, P2_Button2, etc.) or directly linked to a Device/Port.
- When starting a MAME game, LEDBlinky can play a LED animation (selected or random), speak the game name, speak each button “action” while blinking the button in its correct color, and speak a custom message. When speaking the game name or custom message, LEDs can blink in sync with the speech.
- When starting or quiting the front-end, LEDBlinky can play a LED animation (selected or random), and speak a custom message. When speaking the custom message, LEDs can blink in sync with the speech. An LED animation can also play whenever the front-end user interface is active.
- When the front-end Screen Saver is active, LEDBlinky can play a continuous LED animation (selected or random), and play random custom messages at predefined intervals. Berzerk mode is also available for the random messages.
- Other speech features are available – Choose from multiple voices (downloadable) and set the voice rate and volume.
- Run a second (independent) LED animation for cabinet lights. This animation can run when the front-end is active, when the screensaver is active, during game play, or any combination of the three. This feature requires an additional LED-Wiz or Pac-Drive for the non-control panel LEDs.
- From the front-end user interface, game controls can be lit as you scroll through the game lists.
- Designate LEDs as “Always Active” for use with coin, start, or administration controls.
- Cocktail Mode lights all player controls for multi-player alternating games.
- Use the LED-Wiz built-in blinking effects.
- Define LED intensities or colors on a game-by-game basis.
- Set the GP-Wiz49 (for 49-Way joysticks) or Ultimarc UltraStik 360 joystick digital restriction based on the currently selected game’s primary control.
- Support for pre-defined controller files (X-Arcade, SlikStik, etc).
- No Microsoft COM control dependencies.
- Use the LEDBlinky Animation Editor to create your own animations.

Here's what the Animation Editor can do:
- Quickly create and edit LED animations for the LED-Wiz and/or PAC-Drive.
- Generates optimized LWAX files supported by the LEDBlinky Arcade LED Control software.
- Other LED applications (such as the MaLa LEDWiz plugin and GameEx LEDWiz plugin) also support the LWAX format.
- Loads both LWAX and RandyT's original LWA animation formats.
- Virtual control panel designer.
- Supports both single type and RGB type LEDs.
- WYSIWYG interface. Both the virtual control panel and actual control panel will show the LED intensity/color.
- Real-time animation testing.

Speech Capability: LEDBlinky uses the "text to speech" components that come standard with Microsoft Windows. This includes a single voice - Microsoft Sam (sounds a bit like the Berzerk voice). Two additional voices are also freely downloadable from MS - Mike and Mary, but only as a merge module included with the speech SDK. I've compiled the Mike and Mary merge module (Sp5TTIntXP.msm) into an install package which can be downloaded here. After running the installation, you can select the new voices from the LEDBlinky config app.

Please refer to the Install and Config.doc file to get LEDBlinky up and running. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome. There may still be a bug or two :), so let me know.

LEDBlinky v3.6 Full Install (including Animation Editor)

LEDBlinky v3.6 Upgrade (from v3.5)
A note for upgrades: Unzip all the files into the plugins folder and overwrite any existing files. None of your profiles will be affected, but you must run the LEDBlinky Configuration app one time - it will automatically add all new settings..

LEDBlinky Animation Editor v1.6

Here are some screen shots...

Here are some videos of the LEDBlinky in action. These are the same videos from version 2.0, so they don't demonstrate any of the 3.6 features, but they still show most of the fun stuff. I'll try and get the videos updated eventually.

The first video shows Asteroids starting. I'm using three game start speech features - name, controls, and custom text.
Speak and blink the controls for Asteroids.

This next video shows NBA Jam starting. It's a four player game, but my cp only lights up the buttons for players 1 and 2.
Speak and blink the controls for NBA Jam.

Here's the screensaver attract mode. My cp uses two LED-Wiz Controllers and the wiring is rather bizarre. For reasons I won't go into here (mostly stupidity :)) I wired all the RGB blue leads to LED-Wiz ID1 and all the RGB green and red leads to LED-Wiz ID2. The animation file I created uses the same buttons and colors as NBA Jam and demonstrates the ability to address each LED-Wiz individually while keeping both in sync.
Attract Mode video.

Here's a single player game that uses TEN buttons, and the track ball!
Speak and blink the controls for Bradley Trainer.

Here's the first animation I created with the editor. It took about 5 minutes to finish!
BlueStrobe