Speaker Panel LEDs

This tech tip presents a collection of light shows designed for the speaker panel LEDs.

Programming LEDs is well documented in the SDK guide here file:///C:/P3/P3_SDK_V0.8/P3SampleApp/Documentation/html/_physical_features.html#LEDs

The RGB speaker kit is an option when you buy the base machine. It includes an LED strip around both speakers. Each strip is composed of 61 LEDs slightly recessed in a larger circle than the speaker grill. The light reflects on the speaker cone. To see the actual LEDs, you have to lean to the side. This arrangement is great for ambient light shows without obnoxious in-your-face lights.

See the Appendix below for the collected source code.

LED Simulator

The LED simulator is documented in the SDK Guide here: file:///C:/P3/P3_SDK_V0.8/P3SampleApp/Documentation/html/_physical_features.html#LEDSimulations

The SDK Guide describes how to add the LED simulator to your application. Luckily, the LED Simulator is already included in P3SampleApp.

By default, the LED simulator only displays the playfield LEDs. To show the speaker panel LEDs, you need to configure an option in the LED Simulator Manager script. You must do this in all scenes. For P3SampleApp, that means both the Attract and Home scenes.

In the Project window of Unity, expand Assets and select Scenes. Double-click on the Attract scene to load it in the Hierarchy window. Select LEDSimulator in the Hierarchy window. In the Inspector window, scroll to the LED Simulator Manager script and enable "Simulate Speaker LEDs":

The Cabinet and Backbox LEDs were an experimental feature on a prototype machine. They are not available on production machines. You can enable the toggles if you are curious, but there is no point in programming those LEDs in your application.

Save the Attract scene. Repeat the operation for the Home scene.

Select the Bootstrap scene and start the application. Select Display #8 in the Game window to see a simulated view of the LEDs.

For example, this is the view when the CCR module is selected in .\Configuration\AppConfig.json

Unity 5.6.7 has an annoying feature that sometimes makes the cursor disappear over the Game window. Without a cursor, it is difficult to hit the play button to stop the application. My solution is to move the cursor to the left of the Game window. That makes the cursor reappear. Don’t go directly to the Play button now, because the cursor will disappear again. Instead, move straight up to the Unity ribbon and click the ribbon background (for example, just to the left of the Pivot button). The problem is now repaired and you can easily move to the Play button with the cursor visible.

Speaker Panel LED Names

The speaker LEDs are part of the base machine definition. They do not appear in the module definition file. The LED names are:

speakerLeft0 .. speakerLeft60

speakerRight0 .. speakerRight60

You can access an individual LED definition like this p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"]

Solid Light Show

The simplest light show is a permanent solid color. On the physical machine, this looks surprisingly good.

for (int i = 0; i < 61; i++)

{

string ledName = "speakerLeft" + i;

LEDScript script = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs[ledName], this.Priority);

script.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.red, 0, 10);

p3.LEDController.AddScript(script, 0);

}

This light show sets the color red with zero fade time and 10 second duration. In the call to AddScript(), the runtime is 0 which means the script ends when all commands have executed.

When the runtime is -1, the script is run repeatedly until the script is removed.

AddScript() can take a third optional argument for the delay before the script becomes active. During the delay, the LED color is controlled by the lower priority scripts.

The loop above works, but there is no way to remove the scripts. It is better to collect all the scripts in a List and treat the list as the light show.

List<LEDScript> ledScripts = new List<LEDScript>();

for (int i = 0; i < 61; i++)

{

string ledName = "speakerLeft" + i;

LEDScript script = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs[ledName], this.Priority);

script.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.red, 0, 10);

ledScripts.Add(script);

}

foreach (LEDScript ledScript in ledScripts)

{

P3.LEDController.AddScript(ledScript, -1);

}

// later

foreach (LEDScript ledScript in ledScripts)

{

p3.LEDController.RemoveScript(ledScript);

}

LEDShowControllerMode

Let’s play this simple light show in Attract mode of P3SampleApp.

P3SAAttractMode displays light shows with the help of the LEDShowControllerMode. This class is in the file Assets\Scripts\Modes\Mechs\LightShows.cs

The purpose of LEDShowControllerMode is to maintain a static list of light shows. When the mode starts, it picks one light show to run at random. When the allocated time is over, another light show is picked at random and played. This continues until the mode is stopped. In our case, that would be when Attract mode is stopped.

In P3SampleApp, there is only one light show in the list, so Attract mode plays the RGBFadeMode light show forever.

We will remove RGBFadeMode from the list and add our light show instead. Before we can do that, we need to convert the solid light show to a Mode.

We might as well subclass the LEDShow class found at the top of LightShows.cs. This will give us the code to add the LEDScripts when the mode starts and remove the LEDScripts when the mode stops.

Add this class after LEDShowControllerMode. Lines in bold are lines that changed.

public class SolidLightShowMode : LEDShow

{

public SolidLightShowMode(P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

for (int i = 0; i < 61; i++)

{

string ledName = "speakerLeft" + i;

LEDScript script = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs[ledName], this.Priority);

script.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.red, 0, 10);

ledScripts.Add(script);

}

Change the member variables and the constructor of LEDShowControllerMode like this:

public class LEDShowControllerMode : P3Mode

{

List<ShowData> shows;

int showIndex;

public LEDShowControllerMode (P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDShow solidLightShowMode = new SolidLightShowMode(controller, priority);

shows = new List<ShowData>();

shows.Add(new ShowData(solidLightShowMode, 5));

}

Play the application in Unity and select Display #8 in the Game window. When the Attract scene is fully loaded (this takes a while), the left speaker LEDs are red.

In a real application, the light show would take advantage of all the available LEDs. In this TechTip, we are more interested in experimenting with the speaker panel only.

Copy LEDScript

All the LEDscripts are identical in SolidLightShowMode. We can replace the loop with an operator to copy the LEDScript as many times as necessary.

We can now create the left speaker light show in 3 lines and the right speaker light show in only 1 line. Notice the LED name used in the source LEDScript is irrelevant, but the LED must exist.

Edit LightShows.cs, add these two methods to the LEDShow class:

// Copy a LEDScript, i.e. create a new LEDScript with the same LEDCommands but for another LED

// The LEDCommands can be shared because they are immutable data objects.

protected LEDScript Clone(LEDScript ledScript, string newLedName)

{

LEDScript newScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs[newLedName], ledScript.priority);

newScript.script.AddRange(ledScript.script);

newScript.autoRemove = ledScript.autoRemove;

newScript.scriptName = ledScript.scriptName;

newScript.synchronizerIndex = ledScript.synchronizerIndex;

return newScript;

}

// Copy the same LEDScript to a range of LEDs

protected List<LEDScript> Copy(LEDScript script, int start, int count, string ledPrefix)

{

List<LEDScript> lightShow = new List<LEDScript>();

int end = start + count;

for (int i = start; i < end; i++)

{

string ledName = ledPrefix + i;

lightShow.Add(Clone(script, ledName));

}

return lightShow;

}

Edit the SolidLightShowMode class like this:

public class SolidLightShowMode : LEDShow

{

public SolidLightShowMode(P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDScript ledScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.red, 0, 10);

ledScripts.AddRange(Copy(ledScript, 0, 61, "speakerLeft"));

ledScripts.AddRange(Copy(ledScript, 0, 61, "speakerRight"));

}

Play the application in Unity and select Display #8 in the Game window. When the Attract scene is fully loaded, all speaker LEDs are red.

Copy Light Show

The light shows for the left and right speakers are identical. It would be better if we copied the whole left light show to create the right light show.

Edit LightShows.cs, add this line at the top of the file:

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

Add this method to the LEDShow class:

// Copy the LEDScripts in the lightShow renaming the LEDs with the new prefix.

// newPrefix is the prefix of the LED names in the new light show.

protected List<LEDScript> Copy(List<LEDScript> lightShow, string newPrefix)

{

List<LEDScript> newScripts = new List<LEDScript>();

foreach (LEDScript ledScript in lightShow)

{

Match match = Regex.Match(ledScript.led.Name, @"(\d+)$");

if (match.Success)

{

string newLedName = newPrefix + match.Value;

LEDScript newScript = Clone(ledScript, newLedName);

newScripts.Add(newScript);

}

return newScripts;

}

Edit the SolidLightShowMode class like this:

public class SolidLightShowMode : LEDShow

{

public SolidLightShowMode(P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDScript ledScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.red, 0, 10);

List<LEDScript> leftShow = Copy(ledScript, 0, 61, "speakerLeft");

List<LEDScript> rightShow = Copy(leftShow, "speakerRight");

ledScripts.AddRange(leftShow);

ledScripts.AddRange(rightShow);

}

Play the application in Unity and we get the same result: all speaker LEDs are red.

Fade Light Show

We can make the light show more dynamic by fading gradually from one color to the next. This is the same concept as RGBFadeMode in LightShows.cs

Let’s reimplement RGBFadeMode just for the speaker panel.

Edit LightShows.cs and change the LEDShowControllerMode constructor like this:

public LEDShowControllerMode (P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDShow fadeLightShowMode = new FadeLightShowMode(controller, priority);

shows = new List<ShowData>();

shows.Add(new ShowData(fadeLightShowMode, 20));

}

Add this class below SolidLightShowMode:

public class FadeLightShowMode : LEDShow

{

public FadeLightShowMode(P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDScript ledScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.red, 1, 1.25);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.green, 1, 1.25);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.blue, 1, 1.25);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.yellow, 1, 1.25);

List<LEDScript> leftShow = Copy(ledScript, 0, 61, "speakerLeft");

List<LEDScript> rightShow = Copy(leftShow, "speakerRight");

ledScripts.AddRange(leftShow);

ledScripts.AddRange(rightShow);

}

Play the application in Unity and select Display #8 in the Game window. The speaker panel LEDs change color gradually.

Flash

A flashing pattern is just a variant of FadeLightShowMode with short fading time and bright colors. With the LEDs hidden behind the speaker grill, this is not as impressive as regular flasher lights. It gives more of a blinking effect.

Edit LightShows.cs and change the LEDShowControllerMode constructor like this:

public LEDShowControllerMode (P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDShow flashLightShowMode = new FlashLightShowMode(controller, priority);

shows = new List<ShowData>();

shows.Add(new ShowData(flashLightShowMode, 6));

}

Add this class below FadeLightShowMode:

public class FlashLightShowMode : LEDShow

{

public FlashLightShowMode(P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDScript ledScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.white, 0, 0.2);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.barelywhite, 0.05, 0.2);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.white, 0, 0.2);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.barelywhite, 0.05, 0.2);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.white, 0, 0.2);

ledScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.barelywhite, 0.05, 2);

List<LEDScript> leftShow = Copy(ledScript, 0, 61, "speakerLeft");

List<LEDScript> rightShow = Copy(leftShow, "speakerRight");

ledScripts.AddRange(leftShow);

ledScripts.AddRange(rightShow);

}

Play the application in Unity and select Display #8 in the Game window. The speaker panel LEDs flash white 3 times, pause for short period and the cycle repeats.

Origin

Let’s create a light show using 4 solid colors like the Simon toy. On the physical machine, this looks surprisingly bad! Bear with me because it exposes a very important issue.

Edit LightShows.cs and change the LEDShowControllerMode constructor like this:

public LEDShowControllerMode (P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDShow quadrantsLightShowMode = new QuadrantsLightShowMode(controller, priority);

shows = new List<ShowData>();

shows.Add(new ShowData(quadrantsLightShowMode, 5));

}

Add this class below FlashLightShowMode:

public class QuadrantsLightShowMode : LEDShow

{

public QuadrantsLightShowMode(P3Controller controller, int priority)

: base(controller, priority)

{

LEDScript redScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

redScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.red, 0, 10);

LEDScript greenScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

greenScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.green, 0, 10);

LEDScript blueScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

blueScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.blue, 0, 10);

LEDScript yellowScript = new LEDScript(p3.LEDs["speakerLeft0"], this.Priority);

yellowScript.AddCommand(Multimorphic.P3.Colors.Color.yellow, 0, 10);

List<LEDScript> leftShow = new List<LEDScript>();

leftShow.AddRange(Copy(redScript, 0, 15, "speakerLeft"));

leftShow.AddRange(Copy(greenScript, 15, 15, "speakerLeft"));

leftShow.AddRange(Copy(blueScript, 30, 15, "speakerLeft"));

leftShow.AddRange(Copy(yellowScript, 45, 16, "speakerLeft"));

List<LEDScript> rightShow = Copy(leftShow, "speakerRight");

ledScripts.AddRange(leftShow);

ledScripts.AddRange(rightShow);

}

Play the application in Unity and select Display #8 in the Game window. This is what you get:

The strip origins are not aligned. This is not a bug in the LED simulator. The physical machine has the same layout. Here is a diagram of the LED numbers for the left and right speakers:

Fun fact: There is a 1 LED gap at the origin for the electrical connection. Because of the recess, this is not apparent from the player’s perspective. When programming, you can safely ignore that little gap. It makes no difference.

Rotate

To align the left and right speaker light shows, we could update the indices when calling Copy. The two light shows would no longer be identical.

We will try a more general approach and create a rotation operator for light shows.

Edit LightShows.cs and add this method to the LEDShow class:

// Rotate a light show by having each LEDScript be reassigned count LEDs further down the LED string.

// This is particularly useful to align the left speaker movement against the right speaker movement.

// count is the offset to add to the LED number, range is from -60 to + 60

protected void Rotate(List<LEDScript> lightShow, int count)

{

foreach (LEDScript ledScript in lightShow)

{

Match match = Regex.Match(ledScript.led.Name, @"^(.*?)(\d+)$");

if (match.Success)

{

string namePrefix = match.Groups[1].Value;

int ledNumber = int.Parse(match.Groups[2].Value);

string newLedName = namePrefix + ((ledNumber + count + 61) % 61);

ledScript.led = p3.LEDs[newLedName];

}

Change QuadrantsLightShowMode like this: