I've posted another video on youtube of my marquee with all the effects in place. I think I have it about ready to finalize for display.

Youtube Link

All the code updates for this is available in the Microcontroller Programming section of the forum.

Let me know what you think.

Rick

I love it! It looks great and the different text effects you put in really add to it. Beautiful.

Fantastic Job Rick!

Thanks for all the kind comments. I've pretty much got it doing everything I wanted. Maybe after the holidays I'll try to work on some other effects but for now I'm satisfied.

Any ideas for other effects? One I'd like to work on is full word drop down or up.

Heck, I may even build another display just to experiment with while this one is on display. :)

Just some ideas off the top of my head:

A wipe effect: a word is on the screen, then all the lights come on from the left side over to the right, kind of like it is wiping over the word, and then it comes back and reveals the next word.

Split wipe: similar to above, all the lights are on, then they split apart kind of like curtains and reveal the word(s)

Push up/down: a word is on the marquee, then the next word "pushes" up from the bottom and pushes the first word out of the top. Kind of like a vertical scroll?

I like all those. They'll take a bit more work. But I'm up for the challenge. All the text is currently displayed one character at a time. In order to display a word at a time, the fonts would have to all be (added together) prior to display.

Those are great Ideas. I think once I figure out how to display an entire word at a time, they should all be doable.

Thanks,

Rick

Hmm heres an idea to make your life easier... Why not first create a separate program to compile the individual frames you want to display, then create a separate script that reads the 'movie' file and displays the frames?

this would effectively give you unlimited effects and would be a nice development gap to separate two systems.

That would either require a permanent connection between the display and a PC, or a large amount of storage space. I've thought of the possibility of storing array data in the eeprom. This could open quite a few possibilities. With work and the holidays, I've been on a bit of a programming hiatus. Plus, I haven't decided yet if I want to go to the next level display. Or, even if I do go to another level of display, if I want to use the new nerdkit design or try one of my own....

I do like your idea of animation, my goal with my display is to have it self standing with a pc only used for initial programming.

I think your idea is similar what the NK guys did with the slave mcu's in the large display. Where the main MCU is sending the data for a full display to the slaves and then the slave is swapping the display from the old data to the new.

BTW, I haven't seen your name on the board before. (I may have just missed it) but if you're new, welcome aboard!! :)