I use rpi-rgb-led-matrix in my Arcade Retro Clock projects

1

I just wanted to express my great thanks for this incredible project. I have about 30 panels of different sizes all over my house, and am always working on something cool.

I have spent about 4 years building a library of python classes and functions that help me do special effects on the LED panels.

I just put up some code, an subset of what I use to program my Arcade Retro Clocks. I hope somebody out there will find it useful.

Thanks.

1 Like
2

Thanks for the library ! And how to display just a large clock in the center of the screen ? And then the little men start crawling on the numbers and bugs from below :slight_smile:

3

I have included a demo script called clock.py that shows various styles of clock to call.

You can change the python code and run it. ClockStyle1 = Big Clock. As for the animations, they are random and will be from left to right.

#--------------------------------------
#  SHOW CLOCKS                       --
#--------------------------------------

while 1==1:

    #This allows you to create a title screen with different size text
    #some scrolling text, an animation and even a nice fade to black

    LED.DisplayDigitalClock(
      ClockStyle = 1,
      CenterHoriz = True,
      v   = 5, 
      hh  = 24,
      RGB = LED.LowGreen,
      ShadowRGB     = LED.ShadowGreen,
      ZoomFactor    = 3,
      AnimationDelay=30,
      RunMinutes = 60 )
4

And how to disable animations completely and leave only the clock ?

5

For now, set AnimationDelay = 999999

6

After cloning the git repository, there were a couple of modules missing that were not mentioned in the Readme file as required.

  1. pip install unicornhathd
  2. pip install simplejson
  3. pip install pycoingecko

After performing the above pip installs, the test.py, demo.py and clock.py all run. I see the code in my ssh command line, but no output appears on the matrix display. It’s very odd.

Ex. sudo python3 test.py --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat-pwm

I’m using the adafruit RGB Matrix bonnet, a raspberry pi zero 2 w, and 64x32 RGB LED Matrix - 5mm pitch from adafruit.

Any additional tweaks I should make in the LEDarcade.py file?

7

Firstly, I apologize for this incomplete setup. I have been working with the same installation for many months and did not realize there were issues. I have removed the references to those missing modules, as they are not needed. Also there is a complete install process from Adafruit, which I forgot to link to.

They say you should eat your own dogfood, so yesterday I started with a fresh install and am going through all the steps now to get this to work. I will update the Readme when I can.

1 Like