8×8 Matrix – Squix – TechBlog https://blog.squix.org Thu, 09 Dec 2021 08:13:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 121913304 ESP8266: Flight-O-Matic https://blog.squix.org/2015/05/esp8266-flight-o-matic.html https://blog.squix.org/2015/05/esp8266-flight-o-matic.html#comments Sun, 10 May 2015 10:53:00 +0000 http://blog.squix.org/2015/05/10/esp8266-flight-o-matic/ Read More

]]> Preview for my augmented reality project: A RaspberryPi with SDR-RTL dongle picks up signals from airplanes in my relative neighbourhood. When an airplane becomes visible from by living room window it sends detailed flight information to 6 modules of 8×8 Led Matrix elements such as connection details, airplane type, airline, etc. I hope to deliver a detailed documentation soon, the video is just a teaser;-)
]]> https://blog.squix.org/2015/05/esp8266-flight-o-matic.html/feed 1 55 ESP8266/Arduino: MAX7219 8×8 Led Matrix Library https://blog.squix.org/2015/04/esp8266arduino-max7219-8x8-led-matrix.html https://blog.squix.org/2015/04/esp8266arduino-max7219-8x8-led-matrix.html#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2015 17:05:00 +0000 http://blog.squix.org/2015/04/16/esp8266arduino-max7219-8x8-led-matrix/ Read More

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Twice a year the company I work for (Netcetera) organizes a retreat for programmers, usually in the mountains. In the Spring issue this year we went to a resort in a beautiful mountain region. Inspired by the wonderful landscape I managed to write a library for the recently published Arduino IDE for ESP8266 which allows you to manipulate pixels and write animated text on 8×8 led matrices with a MAX7219 driver.These boards (affiliate link) only cost a bit more than $2/piece and you can connect several of them by daisy chaining one with the next. This allows you to create wonderful led bar on the cheap: lets say you buy 10 of them plus an ESP8266 and mount them on a piece of card board you’ll have a wonderful remote programmable eye catcher for shop display for less than $30!

Not being fluent anymore in C/C++ I had to get used again to the hard work of managing memory, dealing with a weird String object (yes, even weirder than the String object in Java;-)) and some other pitfalls for a 10+ years Java programmer.

But I finally managed it and here you can see the result:

Connect the Modules like this:

Led Matrix ESP8266
VCC +3.3V
GND GND
DIN GPIO13 (HSPID)
CS Choose free GPIO, e.g. GPIO2
CLK GPIO14 (HSPICLK)

Here you’ll find the library:
https://github.com/squix78/MAX7219LedMatrix

Please note:

  • this library is made for the ESP8266 and might or might not work for “normal” Arduino boards.
  • I had to patch the Mac OS X release with the SPI folder from Github. In other words there wasn’t an up-to-date release for Mac OS X (and maybe for the other platforms as well) and the SPI.h/SPI.cpp wouldn’t compile

 

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