Hi there,
i would like to have a high amount of GIF files on a SD card, so that the program code could randomly display an GIF, switch to a ntp-fetched time-display now and then, switch back to GIF display after some seconds, switch to weather infos and so on. Is it possible to build a LED matrix which is capable of fetching the time via NTP, weather or other information from the internet and displaying these informations together with animated GIFs, read from an SD card? So that, for example, it displays animated water drops in rainy conditions, animated food items on lunchtime etc.?
It is planned much like the PixelTime display made by Dominic Buchstaller.
I already have build a working PixelTime-version with a 16x32 matrix and a NodeMCU ESP8266. The problem is, i am running out ouf memory, even if i use just a small amount of (hard-coded) animation frames, because the Pxmatrix library does not work flicker-free with a SPIFFS, so i have to encode the frames in the code. I would like to use the SmartMatrix library, because it sounds fast.
So I am looking for a solution to have my 16x32-matrix connected to a (maybe another) microcontroller (capable of wifi, because it should get the time via NTP, i don’t want a RTC), which reads GIF files from a SD card according to various conditions and display them together with the time and other internet-read information.
Is this possible?
Kingd regards,
Signatum