Support for chaining panels to create larger matrix - Playing 64x64-pixel Animated GIFs is now possible
New Layer class and Background, Scrolling, and Indexed Layers - easily add a few independent scrolling text layers, or remove layers you don’t need
Support for configuring library in sketch - now there’s just one SmartMatrix release that is more configurable than the fixed resolution 16x32 and 32x32-pixel releases before
Please take a look at the release notes for more details. If you give it a try, please let me know if there’s anything confusing or not working properly so I can make updates before the final release.
Hi, i have tried sm3b with Aurora version 1.7 on a 32x32 and all seems to be working as good as it was before.
I have also tried running both on a 16x32 display, i know that Aurora was written mainly for the 32x32, ( but i use it mainly for the audio visualizations and some of patterns ) it works as it did before on the 32x32 settings. but when i change it to 16x32 settings i have one perfect audio pattern, the rest run better on sm2.
all supplied samples with sm3b work flawlessly on the 16x32 display
Hi Loius , The frame rate seems to be fine in both.
I tinkered a little bit more last night with the sm3 and Aurora 1.7, and reverting back to sm2 and A1.6, a few times on the 32x32. The 32x32 has a nice little spot in the living room. So the Mrs being the judge of most things lol, I gave her the job of testing it. She said they look exactly the same. The only comment was that the default menu colour is blue or seems to be. When going to settings menu the scrolling text gets washed out. And when scrolling through some of the patterns with the menu running the same happens. Both menu and pattern being same brightness and colours. Maybe something for the new aurora, that when in menu mode that the background pattern dims by 25% until selection is made and then auto adjusts to full brightness, or selected brightness.
On the 16x32. I was looking at purchasing a few of these with the sm shield as xmas presents. Quite. Few friends have made comments and how great they look, but would be better smaller. Obviously they have a Mrs like mine lol. So I purchased one to see if I could get a simple clock set up with audio Visuals. If I use the old 32x32 sm library, and the new sm3 library with 32x32 settings. I get a central scrolling menu and 40% of the patterns, audio included work, not 100% but with some form. When changing to the 16x32 sm2 library 50% of them work, but the menu scrolls off the bottom of the display, the audio patterns seem to work quite well, again not perfect. But when using the 16x32 sm3 library, I know Jason edited a Few of the audio patterns. Thanks Jason. I have one perfect audio pattern. The rest don’t. The only way I can discribe it. If I had a 4 pixel wide bar which reacts to the bass sound. Starting from zero being the bottom of the matrix it gets to 8 pixels up perfectly then seems to jump every second pixel. On sm3 from 8 pixels up seems to come in from the top and sides. So visually it’s better on sm2… I was hoping that if I used a pattern like the basic spectrum pattern that Jason wrote on the 32x32, the bottom of the matrix being zero rising to 32 being top. That if I used it on the 16x32 the bottom would still be zero, but go off the top when 16 and higher was reached.
Me Not being totally clued up on how the matrix works doesn’t help I guess… So I’ve decided they are all getting a tin of biscuits for Xmas instead. Lol. The 32x32 looks amazing still.
Yeah, Aurora was simply not designed to handle other display sizes. It was designed specifically for 32x32. There are likely lots of changes that need to be made. The menu scrolling text location is hard-coded to vertically centered on a 32 pixel high display, for example. I don’t think it will be difficult to get it working properly on a 32x16 display, it’ll just take time and one of those panels. It’s on my to-do list, unless someone else handles it first. If you’d like to send me a 32x16 panel, I can try to get to it sooner.
Hi Jason, I take it your in the US ? I’m in the little UK, otherwise I would gladly send you one. I would happily make a donation towards one. If you have any suggestions on how I can make a donation… I’m happy to send one.
The 3.0 beta Feature Demo runs well on my 32x128 setup, so you were correct that the scrolling layer code has been fixed for wider displays. Streaming works noticeably better than the last version I used as well, but that was quite a while ago.
Obviously not necessary for the 3.0 release, but it looks like the font stuff would be better by doing a charCode to index array of bytes rather than vice versa using shorts. No more search and it would save space for most fonts as well.
Hi Eli, thanks for the feedback. I don’t fully understand your suggestion for fonts, but I understand how it would be an improvement. Can you elaborate a bit more either here, on in this GitHub Issue I just created?
Done. You can email me if the new explanation still doesn’t make sense, or I’ll just do the code if I finish my project before anyone else looks at it.
, The frame rate seems to be fine in both.