8x8 RGB Dot Matrix Display as Multi-Function Display (NEWS, Emoticons, Time, etc)

8x8 RGB DOT MATRIX DISPLAY as
CLOCK, EMOTICON DISPLAY, NEWS FEED DEVICE

Would be interesting to build a multi-function RGB color display device.
Good to have display of time, images and any other chamak (custom messages, RSS Feeds,etc)
ESP has good support for RGB Led via the Fastled library.
Bought and interfaced an 8x8 RGB from an online store with an esp8266
Fabricated a casing with the face and the box from a local vendor
The FASTLED capabilites/effects are as below. FASTLED is available here
Raw images generated by gimp were used to show images as below.
Random images could be generated as an 8x8 bit field.
Could support emoticons.
An RTC DS3231 was added and a smaller 4x4 dot font was added.
This was too small to be intelligible and needed familiarity with the font.
An AWS instance was used to serve out raw images and also to cache a few RSS feeds.
This device would just access the service to either sync time/images or use a random headline from an news site like Times of India, NYT, WSJ, etc.
It could be extended to add other social media support as well.
The video below shows the usual effects with time, images and RSS. Sadly this was during the COVID-19 times and all the headlines were virus related.

Comments

Game for the blind

Have been thinking about writing a game for the blind since a long time Got an opportunity when a couple of High School Kids came up with the requirement Many options were experimented on: Scratch, Unity, etc It was decided to Keep it Simple and modding an existing game What other better than to implement in python and use python games Used an example from here PyGame Pythonprogramming.net example This is a car game where one has to avoid blocks in its path or falling on it To make it suitable for blind playing, visual representation of a block falling on the car or not and the speed of it falling were alerted to the user by means of different sounds; one tone for block not being in line with the car, one tone for slow rate of drop on the car and one tone for rapid rate of drop on the car. So hearing these sound clues, one can use the cursor keys to escape the falling blocks. This can be seen in the video. One can also play comfortably with their eyes closed. It can be impr...

Leg Brake for a Bicycle

Leg Brake on a Bicycle Growing up, there was a need to learn how to drive a geared motor cycle and also get a driver's license. There are two categories of two wheeler licenses: one for geared vehicles usually with leg brakes and one for auto/non-geared vehicles where the braking happens by hand and are simpler to operate. Driving license had already been acquired for the non-geared vehicle but due to lack of availability of a geared vehicle for practice, the acquiring of this license was taking quite some time. The main problem was adapting to braking a vehicle using the leg where one to respond differently and the conditioning takes some time. Unfortunately could not manage to get anybody/s vehicle for learning after many attempts. And at that time (1995 or so) bicycles were rather common and used for transport. So an idea was: why not add such a feature to a bicycle. A Hercules Town and Trek was also available. After some visits to the local bicycle shop and a used vehicle part...

RGB Dot Matrix Display as Multi-Function Panel Display

PxMatrix on ESP8266 connected to an 32x16 RGB DOT MATRIX 1/8 SCAN Panel It was always wonderful to see the numerous colour displays that display messages and animations on Dot Matrix Displays (DMD) in the commercial places. One useful thing would be to take an Off-the-Shelf Display and run fully controllable custom software rather than rely on some external products to do. Luckily found a display vendor who offered to give me some DMD as samples for experimentation. I was given a P10 32x16 pixel color DMD panel. I have experimented with Monochrome DMDs (maybe blog about this later) but the RGB display is another world all together. The Monochrome world does not have lot of open source software, the RGB world has PxMatrix, RGBMatrix and SmartMatrix. As I wanted the controlling entity to be super cheap which meant use of an 8266 I had to start with PxMatrix. Though there are better options than PxMatrix, the others use a more expensive controller. Its better to start with the lowest cost...

Tinker Niche

Search This Blog