/Matrix-Fonts

Fonts For Use with LED Matrix Clocks

MIT LicenseMIT

Matrix Fonts

Fonts to be used with LED Matrix Clocks and other LED Matrix projects

About These Fonts

These fonts are designed with LED Matrix Clocks in mind, especially a unit that uses EspHoMaTriXv2 or EspHome-Led-PixelClock. They are BDF and TTF Fonts, so they can be directly implemented with ESPHome (and perhaps Arduino).

Because these are bitmap fonts, the size of these fonts is pixel-fixed. They are not resizable. This is a good thing.

Most characters will be 3 pixels wide, but certain characters like G and M and & are wider. Punctuation characters are generally 1 or 2 pixels wide. All characters have 1 empty column on the right side, except the space which is exactly 2 pixels, certain unicode hyphens, and perhaps some ognok-accented latin characters.

I will continue adding characters to fonts as I have time. If you wish your language to be a priority or if you need some certain characters added, open an issue and I'll see what I can do.

8-Series Fonts

Suitable when using the full height of an 8-row matrix

MatrixChunky8

Everything big and blocky - looks great as a time screen

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

MatrixChunky8X

Below the baseline is usually reserved for tails but with the 'X' fonts, there is no baseline - everything takes up the full 8 rows of pixels

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

MatrixLight8

Most characters have been lightened and stylized

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

MatrixLight8X

Lightened and stylized in 8 full rows - this one looks really good on info screens!

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

6-Series Fonts

Suitable when using a weekday band underneath the time on an 8-row matrix

Please note a lot of accented characters in the non-X fonts were pushed below the baseline to make them look slightly less terrible.

MatrixChunky6

Everything big and blocky

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

MatrixChunky6X

Big and blocky in 6 full rows

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

MatrixLight6

Lightened and stylized

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

MatrixLight6X

Lightened and stylized in 6 full rows

image

[ BDF Download | TTF Download ]

Using These Fonts

In ESPHome

To reduce the space that the font takes up during the compile please use code as such:

font: 
  - file: fonts/MatrixLight6.bdf
    id: special_font
    glyphs:  |
      ! "#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz°

If using a TTF file, you must specify the font size:

font: 
  - file: fonts/MatrixLight8.ttf
    id: default_font
    glyphs:  |
      ! "#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz°
    size: 8

Characters Included

Latin-1

Basic Latin

! "#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

Latin Extended-A

¡¢£¤¦§©ª«®°±²³´µ¶¥·¹º»¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ
Character Substitutions in Latin Extended-A

Because of the BDF-Pillow flaw (see below), I made a few "useless" characters in the Latin Extended-A look like something else. You can still use a BDF file if you use these special characters in the glyphs list and in Home Assistant.

¨¬¯¸¼½¾
Character Appears As
¨ ₿ Bitcoin
¸ Ξ Ethereum
¬ ℃ Degree C
¯ ℉ Degree F
¼ € Euro
½ ₩ Won
¾ ₴ Hryvnia

Unicode

Latin-1 Supplement

ĀāĂ㥹ĆćĈĉĊċČčĎďĐđĒēĔĕĖėĘęĚěĜĝĞğĠġĢģĤĥĦħĨĩĪīĬĭĮįİıIJijĴĵĶķĸĹĺĻļĽľĿŀŁłŃńŅņŇňʼnŊŋŌōŎŏŐőŒœŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšŢţŤťŦŧŨũŪūŬŭŮůŰűŲųŴŵŶŷŸŹźŻżŽžſ

Cyrillic

АаБбВвГ㥴ДдЕеЄєЖжЗзИиІіЇїЙйКкЛлМмНнОоПпРрСсТтУуФфХхЦцЧчШшЩщЬьЮюЯя

Korean (only useful for time, date display) * Only in 8-series Fonts

오후전일월화수목금토

General Punctuation

Spaces

The regular space (as available on most keyboards) is 2 pixels wide. Here are some other available spaces.

   
Space Name Unicode Width
Thin Space U+2009 1 pixel
En Space U+2002 3 pixels
Em Space U+2003 4 pixels
Pixel Spaces (that can be used as characters)

In case those spaces are no use to you (they're invisible and ESPHome will likely treat them as spaces), here are some other available spaces using the Unicode encircled number set.

⓪①②③④⑤⑥⑦⑧⑨⑩
Space Name Unicode Space Width
Circled 0 U+24EA 0 pixels
Circled 1 U+2460 1 pixel
Circled 2 U+2461 2 pixels
Circled 3 U+2462 3 pixels
Circled 4 U+2463 4 pixels
Circled 5 U+2464 5 pixels
Circled 6 U+2465 6 pixels
Circled 7 U+2466 7 pixels
Circled 8 U+2467 8 pixels
Circled 9 U+2468 9 pixels
Circled 10 U+2469 10 pixels
Other Punctuation Marks

The regular hypen-minus (as available on most keyboards) is 3 pixels wide plus a space. Here are some other available punctuations.

‐–—―•
Mark Name Unicode Width
Hypen U+2010 1 pixel wide, no space
En Hypen U+2013 2 pixels wide + space
Em Hyphen U+2014 4 pixels wide + space
Horizontal Bar U+2015 4 pixels wide, no space
Bullet U+2022 1 pixel wide + space

Currency Symbols

₡₢₦₩₪₫€₭₮₱₲₴₵₸₹₺₼₽₾₿

Letterlike Symbols

℃℉

ESPHome Notes

Any characters included in the glyphs list that are not actually in the font will cause ESPHome to error when compiling. Any character requested not included in the glyphs list should result in an error and/or a block or blank being displayed by your clock.

Also note that there is a limit of 256 characters that can be used. This is a hard limit set by Pillow, a python dependency that converts fonts to bitmaps usable by ESPHome. If your glyphs list is longer, any characters beyond that limit will simply not be displayed.

Unicode Character Error

UnicodeEncodeError: 'latin-1' codec can't encode character '\u0416' in position 0: ordinal not in range(256)

This error has to do with the way that Pillow interprets a BDF font file as being in the Latin-1 codepage if the character list doesn't match what it expects. Since that part of Pillow is quite old, there seems to be no interest in fixing it to match UTF standards. So, if you wish to use Unicode characters (anything outside of Latin Basic and Extended-A), you must use a TTF file instead.

These TTF files are not usable by Windows, since they include only bitmaps. They are also not very useful when editing the font. So the BDF files will always be considered as master files.

EspHoMaTriXv2

When using EspHoMaTriX, check that this is in your yaml (edit as needed):

ehmtxv2:
  default_font_id: default_font
  default_font_yoffset: 6
  special_font_id: special_font
  special_font_yoffset: 8

Please note that yoffset can be tricky. You should use a number that corresponds with the baseline of the font. For these fonts, there is actually nothing below the font baseline; I've designed the fonts so the non-X fonts are actually raised 1 pixel above the baseline so the tails appear correctly.

Editing or Contributing

If you wish a character set to be added, open an issue, make a request! Please keep your communication lines open because I'm not likely familiar with your language and I'll have questions!

Check out FontForge: https://fontforge.org/en-US/

Thanks to...

Andrew J.Swan for huge help with Cyrillic characters.

Inspiration

Originally, I used Tom Thumb as a base. There may be still be some resemblance but that's just because there's only so much you can do with such limited pixels. Nevertheless, if you're interested in a 4x6 (3x5 useable) monospaced font you can click here.

Also, some inspiration for the Korean characters was borrowed from Dalmoori Font, a very nice Hangul pixel font.