About

ZeDMD is a "real" DMD designed for pinball emulations and other use cases. Originally developed by David "Zedrummer" Lafarge, the concept laid the foundation for what ZeDMD has become today. Markus Kalkbrenner, the current maintainer of ZeDMD, was inspired by the original idea and took the initiative to further develop and enhance it into the robust and versatile solution it is now.

ZeDMD is or will be supported by:

• DMDExtensions
• VPX Standalone
• PPUC
• batocera
• libdmdutil
• DOF2DMD
• VPX Mobile iOS
• VPX Mobile Android

A full tutorial of its installation is available in English and in French

Meanwhile, there are different "flavours" of the ZeDMD firmware. Because it pushes the cheap ESP32 to its limits, we can not provide a unified firmware, so you have to pick the appropriate one:

• ZeDMD 128x32: using two 64x32 panels driven by an ESP32 connected over USB or WiFi
• ZeDMD HD 256x64: using four 64x64 or two 128x64 panels driven by an ESP32 connected over USB or WiFi
• ZeDMD 128x64: using one 128x64 panel driven by an ESP32 connected over USB or WiFi, showing 128x32 content with an offset, suitable for mini cabinets
• ZeDMD S3 128x32: using two 64x32 panels driven by an ESP32 S3 N16R8 connected over USB CDC or WiFi
• ZeDMD S3 HD 256x64: using four 64x64 or two 128x64 panels driven by an ESP32 S3 N16R8 connected over USB CDC or WiFi
• ZeDMD S3 128x64: using one 128x64 panel driven by an ESP32 S3 N16R8 connected over USB CDC or WiFi, showing 128x32 content with an offset, suitable for mini cabinets
• ZeDMD S3 AMOLED: using a small OLED driven by a LilyGo AMOLED T-Display-S3 V2 connected via USB CDC
• ZeDMD S3 AMOLED WiFi: using a small OLED driven by a LilyGo AMOLED T-Display-S3 V2 connected via WiFi

Here is a short demo of ZeDMD and ZeDMD HD in parallel:

Flashing the firmware

There are different ways to flash the firmware on the ESP32.

esptool

Download the appropriate zip file from the latest release's assets section and extract it.

Install esptool

On Windows you should use esptool.exe instead of esptool. If you have different devices attached via USB or if the ESP32 is not detected you could specifiy the concrete port. For a Windows machine this could be:

esptool.exe --chip esp32 --port COM3 write_flash 0x0 ZeDMD.bin

On a unix-like system:

esptool --chip esp32 --port /dev/ttyUSB0 write_flash 0x0 ZeDMD.bin

The ESP32-S3 N16R8 is now fully supported too. To flash this device, simply modify the command seen above by appending s3 to esp32, resulting in esp32s3.

platformio ("from source")

pio run -t uploadfs -e 128x32
pio run -t upload -e 128x32

ZeDMD Updater (Windows only)

Download and install the ZeDMD_Updater and follow its instructions.

ZeDMD pinout diagram

ZeDMD utilizes HUB75 to display full-color content on your panels. To achieve this, the panels must be connected to specific GPIOs on your ESP32.

ESP32 Dev Board	ESP32-S3-N16R8	HUB75 pins
GPIO 25	GPIO 4	R1
GPIO 27	GPIO 6	B1
GPIO 14	GPIO 7	R2
GPIO 13	GPIO 16	B2
GPIO 23	GPIO 18	A
GPIO 5	GPIO 3	C
GPIO 16	GPIO 41	CLK
GPIO 15	GPIO 2	OE
GPIO 26	GPIO 5	G1
GPIO 12	GPIO 15	G2
GPIO 22	GPIO 1	E
GPIO 19	GPIO 8	B
GPIO 17	GPIO 42	D
GPIO 4	GPIO 40	LAT

To navigate the menu and adjust settings, you'll need to configure a few buttons. However, only two buttons are essential to modify values and exit the menu. These two buttons are Menu Left and Value +.

ESP32 Dev Board	ESP32-S3-N16R8	Menu Button
GPIO 0	GPIO 48	Menu Left
NOT USED	GPIO 47	Menu Right
GPIO 18	GPIO 0	Value +
NOT USED	GPIO 45	Value -

First start

After flashing the ZeDMD a settings menu will appear. Due to the variety of panels available on the market you will need to adjust the RGB values. On ZeDMD versions prior to v5.0.0, this can be done by pressing the RGB button. From v5.0.0 onwards, you can adjust the RGB values by navigating to the RGB Order: option at the top of the settings menu. Then, adjust the RGB order by rotating the colors until the following alignment is achieved:

• The top-left corner displays red as red.
• Green appears as green.
• Blue is shown as blue.

Unique TO 128x64 builds: There is an option to adjust the Y offset of the displayed content.

Versions prior to V5.0.0 let you adjust the brightness using the brightness button. From v5.0.0 onwards, this is done by navigating to the Brightness: option in the settings menu.

Starting from version 5.1.0, a configurable USB packet size: option has been introduced. While the default value works for most setups, reducing the packet size may help resolve any issues you encounter.

The option above USB packet size: allows switching between USB, WiFi UDP and WiFi TCP. The USB option is self-explanatory. When wanting to use WiFi, it is recommended to start with WiFi UDP, as it provides seamless frame streaming if your WiFi connection is fast. However, if your connection is average, switching to WiFi TCP can eliminate artifacts in the frame stream, though it will slow down the data transmission.

The Debug: option can be set to Debug: 1 if requested by a ZeDMD developer to enable error tracking during testing. For regular use, this setting should always remain at 0.

Important

From version 5.0.0 onwards: once you’ve finished changing values, you must navigate to the 'Exit' button. This step is required to enable the ZeDMD to enter handshake mode.

ZeDMD-WiFi

After activating either WiFi UDP or WiFi TCP in the settings menu, connect your mobile device or laptop to the ZeDMD-WiFi network. Then, open your web browser and navigate to http://ZeDMD-WiFi.local (IP: 192.168.4.1) to access the configuration settings.

IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICES:

ZeDMD's firmware is open source and licensed as GPLv2 or later and can be ditributed under these terms.

For manufacturers or resellers of any shield, frame, ready-to-use devices or whatever linked to the ZeDMD, our only request is that the device is called as "ZeDMD something" or powered by ZeDMD. "ZeDMD" should be what you see first when you look at the device. Also, a link to this project must be provided with the device.

ZeDMD uses

• ESP32-HUB75-MatrixPanel-DMA
• Bounce2
• miniz
• Tiny 4x6 Pixel Font
• ESPAsyncWebServer
• JPEGDEC
• TFT_eSPI
• RM67162 with fixes from Nikthefix

FAQ

"Where can I buy a ZeDMD?"

The intention of ZeDMD is to provide a cheap DIY DMD solution. The maintainers of this project don't run any shop to sell ready-to-use hardware!

Nevertheless, there are are some shops we are aware of who designed their own shields to build a ZeDMD. And as this might ease the task to use a ZeDMD for some users, we agreed to add some links here:

• https://shop.arnoz.com/en/dmd/87-esp-dmd-shield.html
• https://benfactory.fr/produit/zedmd-shield/
• https://www.smallcab.net/shield-zedmd-p-2697.html

There are also ready-to-use devices:

• https://benfactory.fr/produit/zedmd/
• https://www.smallcab.net/pack-zedmd-p-2698.html
• https://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=283

My LED panels do not work; ghosting, wrong pixels, missing lines

The ZeDMD firmware supports a wide range of LED panels with different driver chips ... in theory. In general, some driver chips require adjustments in the configuration, timings and the clock phase. That can't be done with ZeDMD updater, but within the source code of the firmware. Here os some background information:

• https://github.com/mrcodetastic/ESP32-HUB75-MatrixPanel-DMA?tab=readme-ov-file#supported-panel-can-types
• https://github.com/mrcodetastic/ESP32-HUB75-MatrixPanel-DMA?tab=readme-ov-file#latch-blanking

These are the available config options: https://github.com/mrcodetastic/ESP32-HUB75-MatrixPanel-DMA/blob/54ef6071663325e7b8f3a9e1e0db89b0b0b7398d/src/ESP32-HUB75-MatrixPanel-I2S-DMA.h#L235-L309

The pre-built firmware uses the default config which is suitable for the most common LED panels. Obviously we can't provide a menu on the device to adjust these settings as you won't see them ;-)

But we consider to add support for these driver settings to libzedmd and the ini file of dmdserver so that these values could be adjusted and sent to ZeDMD before the panels get initialized.

We could also offer firmeware builds for specific panels. But that would require that somone sends such panels to us to find out the correct config.

If you find out what config adjustment gets a specific panel to work, you should open an issue here and provide that information so that we could include it in the README and probably add a specific automated build for the bext releases.

ZeDMD S3 crashes when connected via USB to a Windows machine

This is a known issue. ZeDMD S3 works perfectly well with Linux and macOS. But if you're using Windows you should use the WiFi mode.

I have installed all of the latest files, but I still get crashes on a Windows machine

A few users have reported that VPX and ZeDMD consistently crash if the latest Visual C++ Redistributable Runtime packages are not installed. To resolve this issue, ensure you have the most up-to-date runtime packages installed. If the latest version doesn’t resolve the issue, it may be necessary to install all available versions of the Visual C++ Redistributable Runtime packages.

Another potential issue could be outdated USB drivers. For the ESP32-S3-N16R8, refer to the following link for more details:

• https://www.wch-ic.com/downloads/CH343SER_EXE.html

And for the older ESP32 Development Board:

• https://www.silabs.com/developer-tools/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers?tab=downloads

ZeDMD S3 crashed, how can I help to fix the issue

If you discover a crash, there's a good chance that a coredump has been written to flash. If you flashed the device using pio, you can extract and interpret the coredump:

python ~/esp/v5.3.2/esp-idf/components/espcoredump/espcoredump.py info_corefile .pio/build/S3-N16R8_128x32/firmware.elf