Anyone who runs DOF2DMD on BigBox and also plays Visual Pinball using DMDext?

[sic79]

I have a issue when starting Visual Pinball when using DOFLinx-DOFDMD in BigBox. DMDext can´t use the screen for the pinball table. If i kill DOFlinx when starting the table it works fine. Sure I can automate it to be killed when starting a table, but wondering if anyone else have a similar setup and maybe a better solution?

I am very new to this DOF/DMD stuff (this week) so please go easy on me if i have missunderstood something ;)

Also, thanks for making DOFDMD, it makes my Arcade Cabinet with BigBox look so much better :)

[ojacques]

Hi, and thank you for the nice words!
As I only use my Launchbox setup without vpinball, I haven't encountered the issue.
I have read on Discord that there can only be one connexion.

https://discord.com/channels/759478464733642814/1239629856816496660/1285570394329452656

"Only one client can be connected.

This is already an issue for dmdext with VPX and frontends.
Dmdserver is supposed to solve that issue as it will connect the DMD and others shoukd connect the server. But dmdext doesn't support dmdserver yet."

Now, trying to think what can be done:

• Shutdown DOF2DMD when about to launch vpinball - launchbox can do that with its emulators before and after settings
• port DOF2DMD to not use dmdext but dmdserver (not sure about that)

Any other idea you can think of?

[ojacques]

Yeah, I don't see an alternative. There is an http://<host:port>/v1/exit API endpoint which you can use at least to quit cleanly.

[sic79]

Yeah, I don't see an alternative. There is an http://<host:port>/v1/exit API endpoint which you can use at least to quit cleanly.

Ok will try that instead, thank for the suggestion. Really don't like to force kill process approach.

[sic79]

Found something interesting in DOFlinx 8.11 changelog that might actually seem to adress this issue.

• New real-time command of STOP_DOF2DMD to neatly shutdown DOF2DMD. Likely used from a front end menu after a MAME game before returning to s front end that has MAME and pinball stuff that also uses the DMD

Wonder how to use it though....

[sic79]

@ojacques I actually found the solution now, DOFLinx has support to stop and start DOF2DMD through commandline.. Maybe this should be in the README for DOF2DMD?

So here is the solution , just send these commands:
DOFLinxMsg START_DOF2DMD
DOFLinxMsg STOP_DOF2DMD

Command explaination:
START_DOF2DMD
Starts up DOF2DMD. You may want this if you didn't start it when DOFLinx started, often because you've got a mixture of pinball and Mame.

STOP_DOF2DMD
Sends the shutdown command to DOF2DMD. This is far preferable to trying to kill the process. Likely used if you have a mixed arcade and pinball cabinet and want to stop DOF2DMD after you've played a MAME game.

[ojacques]

Good find. If indeed you use a script to start vpin, you can - before the line that starts vpin - stop dof2dmd via doflinx or via the v1/exit API command. For example, if the script is using powershell:
`Invoke-RestMethod -Uri http://localhost/v1/exit -Method Get;ˋ

Then restarting dof2dmd is much faster now since few releases.

Feel free to submit pull requests to make the README more useful for everyone.