alevecchio / dmd2

Beta release of a new Dot Matrix Display Arduino library

DMD2 is an Arduino library designed as an updated replacement for the original DMD library. Both libraries are designed for use with the Freetronics Dot Matrix Display.

This library is currently in BETA release meaning the documentation is incomplete, and the implementation may contain bugs. If you want the stable version, please use the original DMD library for now not DMD2.

If you find any bugs, please use the Issues feature in github to report them or post on the Freetronics Dot Matrix Display forum.

Changes from DMD library

The DMD2 library includes the following new features:

• Supports Arduino Due (IDE 1.5.6 or newer), as well as AVR-based Arduinos.
• Adds new "SoftDMD" support, which allows the standard DMDCon board connections to be used on all standard Arduino compatible models - including Arduino Mega/EtherMega, Arduino Due/EtherDue or Arduino Leonardo.
• Integrated timer management for simpler sketches.
• Improved performance, on an AVR-based Arduino a single DMD panel uses approximately 5-6% CPU overhead to update (including when using the SoftDMD mode rather than hardware SPI.)
• New drawString() methods accept flash strings, or the Arduino String type, directly. See the "AllDrawingOperations" example.
• New DMD_TextBox class supports automatic scrolling, and automatic print() interface for writing out numbers, variables, etc. See "Countdown" and "ScrollingAlphabet" examples.
• New dmd.setBrightness() call allows changing DMD brightness (no more blindingly bright displays!)
• New DMDFrame base class allows direct swapping of the DMD framebuffer, supporting double buffering operations and similar (see "GameOfLife" example.)

Not Yet Implemented

• Test patterns

Getting Started

The easiest way to install the DMD2 library is to use the Arduino IDE's Library Manager:

• Install Arduino IDE 1.6.5 or newer.
• Under the Sketch menu, choose Include Library -> Manage Libraries.
• After the list finishes updating, type "DMD2" in the search field at the top. The DMD2 library should appear.
• Select the latest DMD2 version from the dropdown and click "Install"

Otherwise, you can manually install the Arduino library using the steps described here.

After the library is installed, you will find some example sketches under File -> Examples -> DMD2.

More documentation will be produced before the library reaches final release rather than Beta status. Many of the DMD2 concepts are borrowed from FTOLED library so the FTOLED wiki may be of use.

Feel free to ask questions on the forum if things don't work.

ESP8266 Support

Thanks to @h4rm0n1c there is support for DMD2 on ESP8266 using the Arduino environment. See this comment for an explanation of using DMD2 on ESP8266.

Freetronics is unable to guarantee support for DMD2 on ESP8266, but we will try and help if we can.

About the Makefiles

You'll notice the examples directory contains some files named Makefile. You can ignore these if you are using the Arduino IDE.

However, if you want to use other development tools with the DMD library, the Makefiles work with with the arduino-mk package, version 1.3.1. They may need updating to work with newer versions.