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Project Notes

#307 TheMatrix/KeypadControl

Use a 20-button keypad to write a scrolling message on the Boldport Matrix.

Here’s a quick video showing it in action..

Build

Notes

So… ways to get arbitrary messages onto the Boldport Matrix?

I happen to have a LEAP#302 KeyboardMatrixModule that is coincidentally 5 keys high by 4 wide .. a number that neatly fits into the 24x5 display port of the Matrix.

So I’ve wired it up and enabled a couple of commands in the KeypadControl.ino sketch:

  • pressing any single button toggles the state of the corresponding LED
  • at first, it is operating on the left-most 4 columns of LEDs
  • pressing S3+S4 together shift the working window 4 LEDs right
  • pressing S1+S2 together shift the working window 4 LEDs left
  • pressing S2+S3 together toggle the message scrolling..

Interesting … but not very practical! Maybe good for a gadget that you can let random bystanders fiddle with your matrix display..

I had a problem getting the scrolling to stop started, but a little help from the BoldportClub Community on Slack goes a long way! Problem sorted: it seems you must let the movie finish by switching it out of infinite loop first e.g.:

ledDriver.setMovieLoopCount(AS1130::MovieLoop1);
ledDriver.setFrameDelayMs(0);

A recent update to the LuckyResistor/LRAS1130 library (v0.9.5) fixed some issues with LED brightness control. Now everything is looking so much brighter!

bright_matrix

Construction

Breadboard

Schematic

Build

Credits and References

About LEAP#307 BoldportLEDAS1130

This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

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About LEAP

LEAP is my personal collection of electronics projects - usually involving an Arduino or other microprocessor in one way or another. Some are full-blown projects, while many are trivial breadboard experiments, intended to learn and explore something interesting.

Projects are often inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the many great electronics podcasts and YouTube channels. Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know or send a pull-request.

NOTE: For a while I included various scale modelling projects here too, but I've now split them off into a new repository: check out LittleModelArt if you are looking for these projects.

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