michael-betz/Espirgbani

ESP32 Pinball RGB Matrix Animation Clock

ESP Pinball RGB Animation clock

A LED-matrix clock, based on ESP32 and sprite_tm's I2S DMA driver.

Note: the firmware here is outdated and will be removed in the future.

Espirgbani_pio is up to date, has more features, less bugs, higher frame-rate and is much easier to build.

Project log.

PCB

Fits inside one of the 64x32 panels.

Revisions

Changes included in Rev 1

• Change programming port from custom pogo-pins to a normal header
• Add input for ambient light level sensor
• Re-arrange the mounting holes
• Add second footprint for a uSD card

Building

Unfortunately the projects which I based this software on are either completely obsolete or they moved on a lot. Building still works (as of April 2020) but only when using exactly the versions and git commits as specified below.

install version 5.2.0 of xtensa-esp32-elf toolchain and put it in your PATH.

$ xtensa-esp32-elf-gcc --version
xtensa-esp32-elf-gcc (crosstool-NG crosstool-ng-1.22.0-80-g6c4433a) 5.2.0
Copyright (C) 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

install the esp-idf library.

git clone https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf.git
cd esp-idf
git checkout b173cf28174b17f7df96c298f83c16a00d22e312
git submodule init
git submodule update
cd components
git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:yetifrisstlama/libesphttpd.git
export IDF_PATH=<insert_path>/esp-idf

Clone Espirgbani, build and flash it ...

git clone git@github.com:yetifrisstlama/Espirgbani.git
cd Espirgbani/src
make
make flash     # program esp32 over serial port, hold the FLASH button!
make web-flash # program esp32 over wifi, set hostname in Makefile

fast-seek

For a smoother animation playback, the fast-seek option needs to be enabled in the fatfs library. Use the provided .patch file ...

cd esp-idf
patch -p1 -i ../Espirgbani/src/0001-Enable-FASTSEEK-option-in-FatFs.patch

SD card instructions

Format as FAT32, then copy the following files:

• ./settings.json
• ./runDmd.img
• ./fnt/{d}.fnt
• ./fnt/{d}_0.bmp

example settings.json

{
    "panel": {
        "test_pattern": false,
        "tp_brightness":  10,
        "is_clk_inverted": true,
        "column_swap": false,
        "latch_offset": 0,
        "extra_blank": 1,
        "clkm_div_num": 4
    },
    "power": {
        "hi": {
            "h": 9,
            "m": 0,
            "p": 50,
            "pingIp": "192.168.1.208"
        },
        "lo": {
            "h": 22,
            "m": 45,
            "p": 1
        }
    },
    "delays": {
        "font":  60,
        "color": 10,
        "ani":   15,
        "ping":  60
    },
    "log_level": "W",
    "timezone": "PST8PDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0",
    "hostname": "espirgbani",
    "wifis": {
        "<wifi-ssid>": {
            "pw": "<wifi-password>"
        }
    }
}

panel section

Not all LED panels are the same. Here the timing parameters of the I2S panel driver can be configured.

• test_pattern: if true, enters a LED panel test mode instead of normal operation
• tp_brightness: brightness of the test pattern, from 1 to 127. Current draw gets ridiculous for the higher values
• is_clk_inverted: if false, data changes on the rising clock edge. If true, data is stable on the rising clock edge (most panels need true)
• column_swap: if true, swap each pair of vertical columns
• when latch_offset = 0: latch row-data with last pixel. For positive / negative numbers the latching happens n clock cycles earlier / later. Shifts the image horizontally
• extra_blank adds N additional delay cycles after latching before enabling the LEDs to prevent ghosting artifacts from one row to another
• clkm_div_num sets the I2S clock divider from 1 to 128. Set it too high and get flicker, too low get ghost pixels. 4 (= 8 MHz pixel clock) is a good compromise for my panels

power section

controls the display brightness depending on current time.

• Switches to brightness 90 at 9:00
• But only if 192.168.1.208 responds to pings
• Switches to brightness 1 at 22:45

delays section

controls delays between random animations, color and font changes.

• Changes the clock font every 60 minutes
• Changes color of the clock font every 10 minutes
• Plays a new pinball animation every 15 seconds
• tries to ping pingIp every 60 seconds

log_level

is the logging level for the serial port and the web-console on startup. Can be one of the following letters: E = ERROR, W = WARN, I = INFO, D = DEBUG, V = VERBOSE

timezone

is the local timezone in TZ format. Look it up here.

Note that once running and connected to the wifi, the settings.json file can be edited through the web interface.

how to get runDmd.img

• Find a run-dmd image file and write it to SD card according to their instructions (HDD Raw Copy Tool and Windows required)
• In linux, dump the first few hundred megabytes of the SD card to a file:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=./runDmd.img bs=1M count=125

how to get the font .bmp and .fnt files

• Find some nice fonts which look good at small size and copy the .ttf files into the git tree at ./dev/fonts
• Use bmFont (works well with wine in linux) to generate the bitmap fonts. Good settings are provided in dev/clockFont.bmfc
  • Width: 52, Height: 2000
  • 32 bit per pixel (A = one, R = glyph, G = outline, B = zero)
  • .png texture file
  • binary .fnt descriptor file
  • Size: 30 px, Outline thickness: 1 px
• Use imagemagick to convert all image files to bmp format
• Rename them to 0_0.bmp, 0.fnt; 1_0.bmp, 1.fnt, ...
• Alternatively, run ./dev/generateFonts.sh which should automate these steps

Pre-built binaries (TLDR!)

Prebuilt firmware binaries for the ESP32 and the files for the (FAT32) SD card are here.

TODO

• rewrite .json settings