Don't have a girlfriend ? No worries, we have your back with neo-coat, a wifi display controller. With neo-coat, you can do various tasks such as displaying pictures, drawing and playing snake. This repository is made for storing the firmware and instructions of this product. Feel free to mess with it, just remember to credit me in your version :)

What is different ?

There have been many other firmwares on controlling leds on the internet. Most can exhibit individual features like drawing, animations or playing games. However, neither of them have all of these features combined and made to such perfection like neo-coat does. Here is an overview of what are different:

No computer connection. Your Esp is the head of everything from the game to it's UI.
An all-in-one solution. Everything is here, no need for special firmware on different things.
Ease of modification. This firmware is made for hobbyist to mess with. It's functions are made into objects with careful comments on each code segment. Even a kid can mess with it thanks to the insane level of abstractions.
Great UI. None the less, the UI is amazing following the new, trendy Neomorphism style.
Speed. Fastled and Async Web Server, this is a rare combination and is unique to this firmware.

Ingridients

To make a neo-coat, you'll need:

A Neopixel matrix or any leds supported by FastLed. You can alter the software to support any Leds if you wish.
An Esp8266. Other boards would require further coding.
Power supply that can power your matrix and your esp8266. For Neopixels and esp8266, you can use a 5v charger ( any smartphone charger ) and calculate the Amps by the following formula: Numbers of Leds * 60mA = I.
A computer with PlatformIO core for the compilation and upload of this program.

Instructions

For compiling and uploading the code to your desired microcontrollers:
- First, You will need to install PlatformIO core or it's plugin on your IDE. Click here for the link: PlatformIO install. From here, you will need to use it's CLI to follow my instructions.
- Clone my repository onto your machine and open the terminal in the ./Neocoat controller directory.
- Plug in your microcontrollers.
- From the terminal, do the following command in order to get it working:

# This will install all the libraries needed for this project
platformio lib install

# This will upload the filesystem
platformio run -t uploadfs

# This will build your firmware
platformio run -t build

# This will upload your firmware 
platformio run -t upload

# Tadah you're done

For using the firmware:
- After uploading the firmware, you should see a new WIFI hotspot in your area. It should be "NeoCoat (=^･ω･^=)" (cute huh).
- Connect to this WIFI using "123456789" as the password. You can set all of this in the main.cpp.
- After that, go to your broser and type 1.1.1.1 in the search bar.
- You will be directed to the UI shortly.
For making your own implementation of neo-coat, check out the notes and compatibility section.
For making the amazing NeoCoat - The thing, a video will be provided shortly. Here is a demo picture:

Notes

If you wish to see the first version of neo-coat, switch to original branch. This branch is the first version of my firmware and it is optimal for anyone who wants to make a 6x6 matrix as well. Choose this branch if you don't need to alter the code either for your matri's dimensions or just simple interest.
Switch to compatibility branch for ease of reading and editing. This branch is made for people who want to understand the code and change it. It is optimized by splitting code from the original version to different libraries, thus reducing the complexity of main.cpp. More details in Compatibility sector.

Bonus library

These are bonus libraries that I wrote during the construction of this firmware. You can check for them in the bonus libs directory:

Falling Star library for simulating falling star effect on a NeoPixel strip.

#include "FastLED.h"
#include <fallingStar.h>

// YOu'll need to know Fastled to use this
// Init your led CRGB matrix
CRGB leds[LENGTH];

// Init you starSky
// LEDS - LEDS_NUM - DELAY 
starSky ledSky(leds, LENGTH, 50);

// Add a falling star
// POSITION - COLOR - TRAIL_LENGTH
ledSky.addStar(0, CHSV(200, 255, 255), random(3, 10));

// Render a frame on your matrix
// Put this in your loop
ledSky.render();

Compatibilty

This sector is for compatibility branch. Here are some instructions on making changes to this branch:

If you want to change the dimensions of the matrix, change the macros of HEIGHT and WIDTH at the beginning of the main.cpp. Remember that you also need to change these in index.js in the data folder.
If you want to change how pixel position is calculated or how to draw them, change the following function in drawable library in libs folder.
If you want to change animations logic or change what type of file to animate, take a look at the animation library in the libs folder.

Credit

This section is to credit and pay respect for those who contributed largely to the project:

Acrobotic - Animations API
Emanuel Knöpfel - Snake Library
me-no-dev - ESPAsyncWebServer
The authors of the FastLed library and those who contributed to it.
The authors of the standard libraries used in the project.

Copyright

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Created by Pham Tuan Binh, 11/10/2020.

pham-tuan-binh/neo-coat