rpi-rgb-led-matrix/utils

Utilities

This contains useful utilities that might be directly useful without having to write any code.

Image Viewer

The image viewer reads all kinds of image formats, including animated gifs. To compile, you first need to install the GraphicsMagick dependencies first:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libgraphicsmagick++-dev libwebp-dev -y
make led-image-viewer

The resulting binary has a couple of flags.

usage: ./led-image-viewer [options] <image> [<image> ...]
Options:
        -C                        : Center images.
        -w<seconds>               : If multiple images given: Wait time between in seconds (default: 1.5).
        -f                        : Forever cycle through the list of files on the command line.
        -t<seconds>               : For gif animations: stop after this time.
        -l<loop-count>            : For gif animations: number of loops through a full cycle.
        -L                        : 64x64 large display made out of chain of four 32x32

General LED matrix options:
        --led-rows=<rows>         : Panel rows. 8, 16, 32 or 64. (Default: 32).
        --led-chain=<chained>     : Number of daisy-chained panels. (Default: 1).
        --led-parallel=<parallel> : For A/B+ models or RPi2,3b: parallel chains. range=1..3 (Default: 1).

   # more options for led matrix ...

Switch time between files: -w for static images; -t/-l for animations
Animated gifs: If both -l and -t are given, whatever comes first determines duration.

Then, you can run it with any common image format, including animated gifs:

Examples:

sudo ./led-image-viewer some-image.jpg       # Display an image.
sudo ./led-image-viewer animated.gif         # Show an animated gif
sudo ./led-image-viewer -t5 animated.gif     # Show an animated gif for 5 seconds
sudo ./led-image-viewer -l2 animated.gif     # Show an animated gif for 2 loops

sudo ./led-image-viewer    -w3 foo.jpg bar.png  # show two images, wait 3 seconds between. Stop.
sudo ./led-image-viewer -f -w3 foo.jpg bar.png  # show images, wait 3sec between, go back and loop forever

sudo ./led-image-viewer -f -w3 *.png *.jpg   # Loop forever through a list of images

# Show image.png and animated.gif in a loop. Show the static image for 3 seconds
# while the animation is shown for 5 seconds (-t takes precendence for animated
# images over -w)
sudo ./led-image-viewer -f -w3 -t5 image.png animated.gif

It also supports the standard options to specify the connected displays (e.g. --led-rows, --led-chain, --led-parallel and all other led-libray flags)