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How to setup and use the virtual segment display emulator

This guide explains the basic steps to setup the virtual segment display emulator for your machine. Support for the visual component of the virtual segment display emulator is part of the MPF media controller and only available if you're using MPF-MC for your media controller.

1. Add your main display to your MPF config

Add the segment display to your list of displays in your machine-wide config file:

displays:
  window:
    width: 600
    height: 200
##! test
#! post show_slide_event
#! advance_time_and_run .1

The example above contains a single display named "window" and has a size of 600x200. This will be the display that shows up on the computer screen.

2. Add your window configuration

The window: section of the machine-wide config holds the settings for the on-screen display window. If you don't have this section, add it now.

You can make the width and height anything you want. In this case we're just configuring it to be 600x200 with a window title of "Mission Pinball Framework".

window:
  width: 600
  height: 200
  title: Mission Pinball Framework
##! test
#! post show_slide_event
#! advance_time_and_run .1

3. Configure a window slide to show the on screen segment display

Now we have a working on-screen window, but if you run mpf both now, your on screen window will be blank because we haven't built any slides to show up.

So in this step, we're going to build a slide for the on-screen window that will be shown when MPF starts. We'll add some widgets to that slide to make it look like a segment display.

First, create a slides: section in your machine config (if you don't have one already), and then create an entry for the slide that we want to show. In this case, we've decided to name that slide "window_slide_1". (Of course you can call this slide whatever you want.)

slides:
  window_slide_1:
##! test
#! post show_slide_event
#! advance_time_and_run .1

Next we have to add some widgets to that slide. (Refer to the documentation on widgets if you're not familiar with widgets yet.)

The first widget will be a segment display emulator widget with a glow effect which is a widget which renders a emulation of a segment display:

#! displays:
#!   window:
#!     width: 600
#!     height: 200
slides:
  window_slide_1:
    widgets:
      - type: segment_display_emulator
        name: display1
        character_count: 7
        character_slant_angle: 0
        character_spacing: 20
        segment_width: 0.11
        segment_interval: 0.04
        segment_off_color: 4b4c4a30
        segment_on_color: fe961bff
        side_bevel_enabled: true
        dot_enabled: true
        comma_enabled: true
        text: HELLO
        width: 600
        height: 150
        y: 100

#! slide_player:
#!   show_slide_event:
#!     window_slide_1:
#!       target: window
##! test
#! post show_slide_event
#! advance_time_and_run .1
#! assert_slide_on_top window_slide_1 window

As you can see there are a lot of configuration options to modify the rendering of the segment display segments/characters. This leads to a lot of very different looks for the resulting characters. One important item to note is the name parameter of the segment display emulator must match the name of the hardware segment display in MPF that we wish to connect to.

4. Configure the slide to show when MPF starts

Now we have a nice slide with the virtual segment display on it, but if you run MPF, you still won't see it because we didn't tell MPF to show that slide in the window. So that's what we're doing here:

#! displays:
#!   window:
#!     width: 600
#!     height: 200
#! slides:
#!   window_slide_1:
#!     widgets:
#!       - type: segment_display_emulator
#!         name: display1
#!         character_count: 7
#!         character_slant_angle: 0
#!         character_spacing: 20
#!         segment_width: 0.11
#!         segment_interval: 0.04
#!         segment_off_color: 4b4c4a30
#!         segment_on_color: fe961bff
#!         side_bevel_enabled: true
#!         dot_enabled: true
#!         comma_enabled: true
#!         text: HELLO
#!         width: 600
#!         height: 150
#!         y: 100
slide_player:
  init_done:
    window_slide_1:
      target: window
##! test
#! advance_time_and_run .1
#! assert_slide_on_top window_slide_1 window

If you don't have a slide_player: entry in your machine-wide config, go ahead and add it now. Then create an entry for the init_done event. This is the event that the media controller posts when it's ready to be used, so it's a good event for our use case.

Then under that event, create an entry to show the slide you just created in the previous step.

5. Configure your virtual segment display "hardware"

At this point you have a simple display configured, and you have default content showing up (the text "HELLO"). The final step is to add the configuration for your virtual segment display "hardware" so that MPF can control your segment display emulator as if it were a hardware display.

MPF contains a virtual hardware platform to allow it to run without physical hardware connected (Using MPF without physical hardware). This virtual platform contains code to allow it to communicate with segment display emulator widgets as if it were a real hardware display (in fact, you can develop your game using the virtual segment display and easily migrate it to actual hardware later with few configuration changes).

The first step is to create a segment_displays: entry in your machine wide config and add an entry for each segment display emulator widget (in this example we created a single widget so we will only need one entry).

segment_displays:
  display1:
    number: 1

A couple of things to note in the above configuration. display1 is the name we are assigning to the segment display. This parameter value must match the one we assigned to thename parameter of the segment_display_emulator widget when it was created on the slide previously (we used a value of display1). Be sure these values match or the communications between MPF and MPF-MC will not update the segment display widget properly.

Repeat this process for each segment display emulator widget you configure.

Now we need to let MPF know to send changes to the segment displays to the virtual segment display emulator in MPF-MC. This is accomplished using the virtual_segment_display_connector: plugin.

virtual_segment_display_connector:
  segment_displays: display1

The segment_displays parameter contains a list of all the segment display names you want to use in the connector to communicate with the segment display emulator widgets in MPF-MC.

6. Update your virtual segment display using the segment_display_player

Now that the virtual segment display is configured in the hardware section, it is time to configure the mechanism to update the text in the display. To do this, we use the Segment Display player (see also segment_display_player:).

segment_display_player:
  update_segment_display_hello:
    display1:
      text: "HELLO"
  update_segment_display_red:
    display1:
      action: set_color
      color: "FF0000"
  update_segment_display_score:
    display1:
      text: "{players[0].score:d}"

The segment display player establishes segment display updates that are triggered by events. In the above example, the update_segment_display_hello event sets the segment display text for display1 to HELLO. The update_segment_display_red event sets the segment display color to red for display1. Finally, the update_segment_display_score event sets the text to the score for player 1 (this will update automatically as the score changes using Text Templates).

Your virtual segment display should now be fully functional and ready for you to customize further for your specific project.

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