Freetronics DMD2 - Attempted Port of Library - Success!
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 11:05 amHello,
I've tried porting the DMD2 Library for the Freetronics DMD, which is an LED Dot Matrix Display, I thought it would be cool to make wifi enabled dot matrix displays with minimal parts count and cost, hence my attraction to the ESP8266.
It uses a number of gpio pins and the spi bus's MOSI and clock signal to control a number of 7400 series shift registers, which are connected to an array of LEDs in a 32 x 16 matrix.
Unfortunately I'm not experienced enough to do this code port successfully, I've tried a lot of fiddling around with this over the last few days but I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do now, I've hit a wall, it's giving me a headache, I'm just not knowledgeable enough.
I'll post link to code, please feel free to do as you please with this, I'm not getting anywhere with this any time soon:
https://github.com/h4rm0n1c/DMD2
I'm not even sure if the pins I'm using are able to be used as I wish, I fear that I may be causing some kind of conflict by using the "wrong" pins, is it ok to use only half of the HSPI pins as actual SPI pins whilst using the ones I don't need as GPIO?
a = GPIO16 (row selector a)
b = gpio12 (row selector b)
sck = gpio15 (latches the shift registers to display)
clk = gpio14 (HSPICLK)
r = gpio13 (MOSI)
noe = gpio0 (screen on or off, can be pwmed for brightness control)
These pins are all connected to a level shifter, with some slightly stronger pullups/pulldowns on the ESP8266's startup mode gpios to counter the level shifter's allegedly "smart" pullup/pulldown resistors. (the shifter is a TXS0108E).
I was hoping to avoid using gpio4 and 5 so I can use i2c at some point.
I have a mega that I've rigged as a cheap logic analyser, all I seem to be getting from this code at the moment is a square wave on either gpio12 or gpio0 and nothing else, this results in garbage on the display.
I've gotten this working now, leaving this here for posterity. Scroll down for updates.
I've tried porting the DMD2 Library for the Freetronics DMD, which is an LED Dot Matrix Display, I thought it would be cool to make wifi enabled dot matrix displays with minimal parts count and cost, hence my attraction to the ESP8266.
It uses a number of gpio pins and the spi bus's MOSI and clock signal to control a number of 7400 series shift registers, which are connected to an array of LEDs in a 32 x 16 matrix.
Unfortunately I'm not experienced enough to do this code port successfully, I've tried a lot of fiddling around with this over the last few days but I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do now, I've hit a wall, it's giving me a headache, I'm just not knowledgeable enough.
I'll post link to code, please feel free to do as you please with this, I'm not getting anywhere with this any time soon:
https://github.com/h4rm0n1c/DMD2
I'm not even sure if the pins I'm using are able to be used as I wish, I fear that I may be causing some kind of conflict by using the "wrong" pins, is it ok to use only half of the HSPI pins as actual SPI pins whilst using the ones I don't need as GPIO?
a = GPIO16 (row selector a)
b = gpio12 (row selector b)
sck = gpio15 (latches the shift registers to display)
clk = gpio14 (HSPICLK)
r = gpio13 (MOSI)
noe = gpio0 (screen on or off, can be pwmed for brightness control)
These pins are all connected to a level shifter, with some slightly stronger pullups/pulldowns on the ESP8266's startup mode gpios to counter the level shifter's allegedly "smart" pullup/pulldown resistors. (the shifter is a TXS0108E).
I was hoping to avoid using gpio4 and 5 so I can use i2c at some point.
I have a mega that I've rigged as a cheap logic analyser, all I seem to be getting from this code at the moment is a square wave on either gpio12 or gpio0 and nothing else, this results in garbage on the display.
I've gotten this working now, leaving this here for posterity. Scroll down for updates.
