LED Matrix Tetris (Gif Player)

Components:

• Raspberry Pi Zero: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero/
• 64x32 LED Matrix: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2278
• Adafruit RGB Matrix Bonnet for Raspberry Pi: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3211

To get the matrix up and running there are two main parts:

1. Prepare your content, and
2. Getting the sign up and running

There are also some Assets provided in assets/:

1. 5x5.ttf: which is a 5 pixel tall font and looks great on the LED matrix
2. game-over.psd: which is a game over screen used in the tetris example
3. tetris-game: A small node.js server for generatinng tetris images and saving them as pngs, based on this tetris game and this png-to-gif saver
4. make-frames-into-gif.sh: A short script using ffmpeg to make separate PNGs into a GIF for the sign

Instructions to prepare your content

The sign accepts animated gifs in the resolution 64x32 (widescreen) where the actual bottom of the display is to the right edge. Example: (4k.gif)

Limitations:

• A maximum of about 4000 frames seems to work, if your animation is longer, simply split it up into separate gifs, like part1.gif, part2.gif and so on...

Instructions to get your sign up and running

1. Install Pi OS Lite

2. Boot into pi using keyboard and screen

3. Install the script for the LED Matrix

Tutorial can be found here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-rgb-matrix-bonnet-for-raspberry-pi/driving-matrices

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-Scripts/main/rgb-matrix.sh >rgb-matrix.sh
sudo bash rgb-matrix.sh

4. Compile the image viewer

Tutorial here: https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/tree/master/utils#image-viewer

cd ~/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/utils
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libgraphicsmagick++-dev libwebp-dev -y
make led-image-viewer

5. Transfer all your gifs to the pi and save them to the ~/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/utils folder (same as "led-image-viewer")

All the tetris files I've used are in the final-gifs folder

6. Create empty streamfiles for each of your gifs and give the script permission

Let's say you have the files 1.gif and 2.gif. Then you need to create 1.stream and 2.stream like this:

touch 1.stream 2.stream
chmod 666 *.stream

7. Pre-process the gifs into streamfiles

-D500 represents a delay of 500ms per frame, see the specs for details 1.gif and 1.stream should of course be replaced with the name of your gifs

sudo ./led-image-viewer --led-rows=32 --led-cols=64 --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat -D500 16k.gif -O16k.stream

8. Create the run file

Now everything is prepped and we can create the file that will run the display when you plug in the cable

Use the command nano run.sh to open the editor and add:

date '+%m-%d-%y %H:%M:%S - Started' >> ./log.txt

sudo ./led-image-viewer --led-rows=32 --led-cols=64 --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat -f -D500 4k.stream 8k.stream 12k.stream 16k.stream 20k.stream 24k.stream -D-1 game-over.stream 

date '+%m-%d-%y %H:%M:%S - Stopped' >> ./log.txt

9. Add the script to ccrontab to run on startup

CMD: crontab -e Add:

@reboot cd /home/USERNAME/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/utils && bash ./run.sh

10. All done! Restart and the display should start automatically

Other links

LINKS:

• https://mrcoles.com/tetris/
• https://macr.ae/article/canvas-to-gif
• https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/tree/master/utils
• https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-rgb-matrix-bonnet-for-raspberry-pi/driving-matrices