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DMD Notes (#p11804)

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PostbyBrissieboySatJan18,20147:02am

I made some notes while I was playing with the DMD and thought they might also be of some
value to others, so I tidied it up a little. I hope it is OK. Corrections, comments, additions
welcome.
UPDATE:
Corrected the information in the attached file on screen RAM index calculation by adding info
for multidimensional DMD arrays.
Attachments
DMDNotes.txt(./download/file.php?id=341)
(13.31KiB)Downloaded236times
LasteditedbyBrissieboy(./memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=13102)onMonJan
26,20153:23am,edited1timeintotal.
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Re: DMD Notes (#p11811)

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PostbystrykerSatJan18,201411:08am

Nice work. I especially read with interest your note about the OE line not having an explicit
start state. I often wonder why these DMDs fire up with random lit LEDs on them and there's
the simple explanation right there. I might hack our present controller board to provide that
pulldown resistor and will remember that for any future revisions.
Any chance you're keen on documenting how the fonts work? I've had a tilt at making some
custom typefaces (2 DMDs tall, and a full 16px high type without vertical spacing) but have so
far avoided revisiting it with equal parts procrastination, and getting distracted.

Cheers !
Geoff
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Re: DMD Notes (#p11816)

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PostbyBrissieboySunJan19,20141:06am

stryker,
You need to be a little careful here with a 16 pixel high font. If you want to have the
descenders (as used on lower case g, j, p, q, y) you need to have a couple of pixels available
below the bottom line of the other 'normal' characters. That effectively reduces the font
size. Of course you could define the characters so that they did not have descenders but they
don't look as nice.
I have made my own 16 pixel font that uses ALL the available height of the DMD, but I did not
need lower case in this font. I only defined the characters from space (0x32) to underscore
(0x5F). This was to get the largest display possible for my primary display which only needed
a very limited number of characters onscreen at a time when I need to do other things I
change fonts.
As I worked out how it all goes together, I added some details in comments to the font file
which may be helpful and I have attached a copy here. I used a very crude excel spreadsheet
to do the translation from visual display to data to minimise errors in this part of the process.
Attachments
MyBigFont.h(./download/file.php?id=283)
(14.02KiB)Downloaded410times
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Re: DMD Notes (#p11820)

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PostbystrykerSunJan19,20145:38am

Thanks for sharing this. For my purpose I only need a handful of upper case alphas and 0
through 9 so expect this will be perfect. Thanx! Geoff
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Re: DMD Notes (#p12050)

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PostbystrykerThuFeb13,201410:29am

Hi,
Small update after the real world got in the way of this project it does look great. Thanks
for the annotations in that file too.
Cheers ! Geoff
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Re: DMD Notes (#p13807)

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PostbyBrissieboyMonJan26,20153:26am

Updated the DMD notes attachment in the original post to show correct calculation of screen
RAM index for multidimensional DMD arrays. Original was only true for 1 DMD high.
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