Litepix

General Information

Litepix is a lightweight software application to run a led pixel matrix build with WS2811 RGB (or similar) controllers. It can currently be compiled for Atmel AVR8 microcontrollers but could probably be ported to other architectures.

The communication with the WS2811 controllers and the whole processing (including animations and small games or other applications) is done on a single microcontroller. Currently this is an ATmega clocked with 16Mhz and at least 2048 bytes of RAM. User input (through several devices like ir remotes or bluetooth (not implemented yet)) is captured by another controller and sent to the main controller via USART.

The implementation for the main controller is located in main. The implementation for the input controller is located in input.

There is a simulator integrated which allows to test the program on a computer without any additional hardware required (gtk3 is needed).

Compile and program

• Compile and run simulation

  $ cd <repository_root>/main
  $ make ARCH=sim
  $ ./build-sim/litepix.elf
  

• Compile and program main controller (You probably have to change the values of MCU and AVRDUDE_FLAGS in arch-avr.mk according to your needs)

  $ cd <repository_root>/main
  $ make program
  

• Compile and program input controller (You probably have to change the values of MCU and AVRDUDE_FLAGS in arch-avr.mk according to your needs)

  $ cd <repository_root>/input
  $ make program