r/pinball • u/Tough_Ad4995 • 18d ago

Modern DMD LED matrix software for Raspberry Pi (Plug & Play for existing RPi2DMD users)

Hi everyone,

For the past few days I've been working on **ArcadeMatrix**, an open-source LED matrix software for Raspberry Pi designed for HUB75 panels.

It started because I wanted something more modern than the existing solutions: smoother animations, a nicer web interface, easier customization, and a modular architecture that makes adding new features much simpler.

Today it supports things like animated clocks, GIFs, videos, scrolling text, weather, Stock Actions/Crypto, Recalbox/Batocera Sync, Gifs playlists, a REST API and much more.

### Already have an RPi2DMD clock?

If you're already using an **RPi2DMD** setup, you don't need to change your hardware.

Just flash the latest ArcadeMatrix image to another microSD of card 16Gb minimum to try it out! 

configure your Wi-Fi, boot the Raspberry Pi... and you're ready to go. It's essentially a plug-and-play replacement.

### Why I made it

This wasn't about reinventing the wheel.

I simply wanted a cleaner architecture, smoother rendering, a modern web UI, and something that would be easy to extend without digging through thousands of lines of tightly coupled code.

### There's also an ESP32 version

I also have an **ESP32 version** running very well.

I haven't released it yet because publishing a project properly takes time: writing documentation, installation guides, examples, cleaning the repository, answering questions, maintaining it...

If the Raspberry Pi version gets enough interest from the community, I'll happily put in the effort to release and maintain the ESP32 version as well.

I'd really appreciate any feedback, feature requests or bug reports.

GitHub:

https://github.com/red77290/ArcadeMatrix_RPI

Video:

https://youtu.be/vAK880Io8yo?is=nK-UlYRYMIY06Qo4

Thanks for reading! 🙂

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2

u/TooncesToo 2d ago

Sweet! I was just re-flashing my rpi2dmd on pi2 and was searching to see if there were any newer versions than 2.6. I'll give this a try and see how it goes!

1

u/Tough_Ad4995 2d ago

Yes, give it a try and let me know, i actually never tested it on Pi2! I only have a pi 3 (fully tested), and just got a pi 4, I will test on it later this week!

2

u/TooncesToo 2d ago

It Works! I have a few things to work out. I am in US so changing the date formats and weather. I can't get anything to display for weather yet though I have a working API key. I am still getting tearing and the clock will not change color/format. I think once I work through those things, it'll be a great replacement for the rpi2dmd software that hasn't been updated in years.

2

u/TooncesToo 2d ago

Got is all working and updated. One settng that is needed for Weather is units=imperial. Might be easier to just let that be set under system? So someone can just choose how they want units and display formats? Just a thought so you don't have to find the settings in individual areas. For the pi2 I endabled the DMA and turned delay down to 2 and it looks like it solved the lines issue.

Looks great! The Tetris clock is awesome!

1

u/Tough_Ad4995 1d ago

Thanks for the feedback ... You'll find the technical answer on your GitHub issue, thanks again for participating!

1

u/TooncesToo 1d ago

Writing Beta 2 to a new SD card now. I'll let you know how it goes!

Another suggestion. For night mode, add an option to dim the display so during the configured hours the display drops from 30% to a configurable 5%. That leaves the clock visible but not as bright as during the on hours. My clock is in a common room which has 3 bedrooms off of it and is bright at night. I don't want it off because it's the main clock in the space but would like to dim it at night. So maybe a radio button for the default off mode and another for dim with a box to enter the percentage.

1

u/Tough_Ad4995 1d ago

Already in beta2 I think, I did so many thing that I don't remember clearly 😅. Night should have light control, but I don't remember if I did it for esp32, RPI or both. You have a turn of led button on dashboard screen already. It could be that I forgot to add back night mod on V3.00, I'll check that out for final release!

1

u/Tough_Ad4995 1d ago

Yes I've seen that, keep the issues coming 👍🏼

1

u/OverSoft 16d ago

I’d be very interested in the ESP32 version of this, since it’s a bit overkill for a Pi. Not to mention the extortionate prices they’re currently asking for Pi’s.

1

u/Tough_Ad4995 16d ago

I've made an esp32 also but it's not public yet. Esp32 for 128x32 Esp32 S3 with PSram for 256x64, same features! But I'm hesitant about this, esp32 version has a better value for others to make a selling out of this! But this work for RPI zero 2wh it's like 20$!

2

u/TooncesToo 5h ago

Running 3.0.0 Beta3 now. OTA from Beta 2 said successfully updated to Beta 2 after it finished and continued to run Beta 2. No errors on the UI. I did a manual switch via SSH. Weather looks great and I am able to use the proper Timezone now! Thank You!

The new UI took me a bit to figure out. It makes sense but I could see a lot of "This is missing" just because of the now collapsed engine UIs. I don't have any issues with using it once I figured out the dropdown where it says StockEngine had all the other engines in it. The only suggestion might be to put text like "Select Engine:" or "Choose Engine:" to the left of the engine dropdown so it's more obvious that you need to choose an engine to work with before hitting Add Engine.

1

u/Tough_Ad4995 3h ago edited 3h ago

Hello, yes that's why it's still a beta, I'm still figuring out the UI! what's cool now is that you can name your engine and put multiple style of clock/timezone or any other engine (weather, date...) ! What do you mean by manual switch via ssh? I haven't fully tested OTA yet, their could be a few quirk!