Myelin Matrix Display

http://mx.myel.in/

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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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Introduction

The Myelin Matrix Display is a 25x12 LED matrix, that I built as my project for Burning Man 2012. I installed it at my camp, Want It! (9:15 and Esplanade). It consists of 300 WS2801-controlled 5050 LEDs, mounted on a roughly 6' x 3' board.

It supports the UDP protocol used by Disorient's Art Car Wash code, allowing a Processing app, or any of the targets in the c_client folder, to control the system from anywhere on the network.

Current version (2)

A Raspberry Pi B (the original version, with 256 MB of RAM) is connected via an MX2 board (see MX2_remote_control_pcb for schematics and layout) to an nRF24L01+ radio module and to the WS2801 string.

On powerup, the ATMEGA328P on the MX2 board runs an internal animation. Once the RPi boots, it takes over, resetting the AVR and then setting /SS low, to signal it to release the LED output lines. The RPi then outputs directly to the LEDs.

The code in rpi_controller/proxy talks to the radio module and receives display frames via UDP, passing them on to the LED string.

Animation code lives in c_client. In production, this sends frames to the local UDP receiver, but it can run on another host and send frames to an RPi elsewhere on the network.

Old versions

Version 1 had a Freetronics Etherten, running the code in the arduino_matrix_driver folder -- doing everything the AVR on the MX2 board does, plus listening on UDP on its builtin ethernet port, and also listening on its serial port.

Connecting a laptop running the code in the linux_daemon folder and sending video frames via the USB serial port will override this, allowing more complex patterns.

Programming patterns

If you'd like to program patterns for the display:

Open and run matrix_simulator/matrix_simulator.pde with Processing
cd python_client; python matrix.py
Mess with the examples in python_client and c_client

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