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Configuring your machine for OPP

Related Config File Sections:

1. Configure the Hardware platform for OPP

To use MPF with OPP, you need to configure your platform as opp, like this:

hardware:
  platform: opp

2. Configure the OPP-specific hardware settings

When you use OPP hardware with MPF, you also need to add an opp: section to your machine-wide config which contains some OPP-specific hardware settings. MPF's default config file (mpfconfig.yaml) contains enough default settings to get you up and running. The only thing you absolutely have to configure is your ports.

Understanding OPP hardware ports

Even though OPP controllers are USB devices, they use "virtual" COM ports to communicate with the host computer running MPF. On your computer, if you look at your list of ports and then plug-in your OPP controller, you will see a new port appear. The exact names and numbers of these ports will vary depending on your computer and what else you've plugged in in the past.

Note: USB to serial converters add latency when communicating between the host computer, and the target device. It probably will not matter, but if given the choice between a "real" serial port, and a USB-serial port converter, the "real" serial port will have less latency. The real serial port must use 5V signal levels when talking to OPP hardware.

Adding the port to your config file

If you're using an OPP controller, you need to add the serial port to your MPF config. So if you plug in the OPP controller and see a port such as COM7 appear, you'd set your config like this:

opp:
  ports: COM7

Full details of the port options as well as the other options available here are in the opp: section of the configuration file reference. Note that if you're using Windows and you have COM port numbers greater than 9, you may have to enter the port names like this: \\.\COM10 \\.\COM11 \\.\COM12, etc. (It's a Windows thing. Google it for details.) That said, it seems that Windows 10 can just use the port names like normal: com10, com11, com12, so try that first and then try the alternate format if it doesn't work. On Linux, the port usually is /dev/ttyACM0 or /dev/ttyACM1. On Mac, look for some /dev/cu.modemXXXX device.

What if it did not work?

Have a look at our OPP troubleshooting guide.

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