LED - Matrix

This repo hosts Code to run my LED Matrix. Right now this documentation may lack some details to fully understand the project. Should you feel the urge to build a LED Matrix yourself and have questions or you want to skip the foolish beginner faults I did, feel free to contact me. :)

Update: Documentation isn't perfect but has improved. To use these scripts take a look at matrix.py as a start point.

Short video:

What you will need

LED Matrix with rgb LED's that are individualy addressable (I took a LED stripe with LED's each controlled by a ws2801)
Raspberry PI to control LED's color
- Apache Webserver running on the pi (allows remote controling the matrix over a website)
- Adafruit ws2801 library (communication with the LED's gets a lot easier with it)
- python 2.7.x (ws2801 library doesn't run on Python3 yet)

Patterns

Filename	Description
clock.py	shows the current time in 24:00 format with background displaying seconds
testing_effects.py	rapidly changing pattern for guarenteed eye cancer
timer.py	a simple timer

Classes

Matrix

Main object thats needed to change the state of the LED's. Remember to call matrix.show() for updating the matrix after setting pixels. Uses internal the adafruit ws2801 library.

Matrix.set(x, y, color)	set a specified pixel in the given color. Top-Left is 0, 0
x	x coordinate of the pixel
y	y coordinate of the pixel
color	r,g,b tupel containing the desired color

Matrix.get(x, y)	get a given pixels color. Top-Left is 0, 0
x	x coordinate of the pixel
y	y coordinate of the pixel

Matrix.clear()	sets all pixel black (0, 0, 0)

Matrix.show()	"push" changes to the LED's

Number

Number()
TODO: Update: in future, number needs a different structure and shouldn't be a part of the Matrix class

GIFPlayer

A simple way to display gif images with multiple frames on the LED Matrix. You can either create an instance of a GIFPlayer and use that or for simply playing a certaing gif file:

$ python gifplayer.py your_filename.gif fps repetitions

Example:

Shows the content of the file smiley.gif with 3 frames per second and that 5 times.

$ python gifplayer.py smiley.gif 3 5

Methods

GIFPlayer(matrix, file_path)
matrix	the matrix object to draw on
file_path	relative or absolute path to the .gif file

GIFPlayer.set_fps(fps)	set speed for changing frames
fps	frames per second, default = 1

GIFPlayer.play()	start playing the file

MaX-Lo/LED-Matrix