displaying text and graphics on LEDs on the fly

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digity
 
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displaying text and graphics on LEDs on the fly

Post by digity »

I'm building a simple LED display using the NeoPixel 60 LEDs per 1 m strips (ws2812b chipset) and originally planned to use a simple microcontroller (T1000S) to feed it pre-set text and graphics. Now I'm thinking feeding it text and graphics on the fly would be much better (like via [Android] smartphone). I know the Raspberry Pi can't push data to it alone, so how do I set something like this up?


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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: displaying text and graphics on LEDs on the fly

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

That's a fairly complex problem, but the general idea is to use the Arduino as a peripheral to the RasPi.

Let the RasPi handle the bulk data storage and decision making, and let it send bursts of data to the Arduino (probably through a Serial connection). The Arduino will collect information from the RasPi until it has enough to configure the LED strip, then generate the signals to make the strips do what the RasPi wants.

digity
 
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Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 4:03 am

Re: displaying text and graphics on LEDs on the fly

Post by digity »

adafruit_support_mike wrote:That's a fairly complex problem, but the general idea is to use the Arduino as a peripheral to the RasPi.

Let the RasPi handle the bulk data storage and decision making, and let it send bursts of data to the Arduino (probably through a Serial connection). The Arduino will collect information from the RasPi until it has enough to configure the LED strip, then generate the signals to make the strips do what the RasPi wants.
Hmmm... I'm familiar with Raspberry Pi and can use something like RaspCTL to run commands remotely that can push the data to Arduino, but I have no experience with Arduino at all. Any pointers or articles that can get me started with interfacing Arduino with Raspberry Pi?

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Re: displaying text and graphics on LEDs on the fly

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

We have a series of Arduino tutorials here: https://learn.adafruit.com/category/learn-arduino

For talking to the RasPi, it would probably be easiest to use a Serial/UART connection. We don't have a tutorial on that, but IIRC a couple of the Learn Arduino projects read Serial data from the Arduino IDE's serial monitor. As far as the microcontroller is concerned, that's the same thing.

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