Sure Electonics 3208 Monocolor LED Dot Matrix

[qfreddie]

Hi

I am quite new here, but i underline first of all, that i did a lot of searching, and did not found what i am looking for, so i start a new Topic.

I have 2 pieces of Monocolor LED boards from Sure Electronics, with a demo board. They work fine, and the software what was sent with them, is also good - until a point. It will send messages to the displays, but only what i enter manually, and after i press Enter or Submit.
They are 32x8 points (leds) each.

What i would like is to automate the process, to read some infos like LCD Smartie (Winamp and statics).

2 ways of this: some compatible program or LCD Smartie plugin or display DLL.

Anybody knows abour LCD Smartie to drive LED boards and how?

Thanks!

[mattcro]

I think this is what you are talking about? http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=972

It looks like the controller board uses a USB virtual serial (com) port, so you might be able to use LCDSmartie's test driver to write to the display.

If you can find out the commands that are required to write to the display (usually a couple of control bytes followed by text to display) then you can set up the test driver. See http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/testdriver.html and also search the forum for "test driver" for updates and more ideas on how to use it.

[qfreddie]

Hi

Thanks for the answer. Yes, that is the board i use.

I started to test the "test driver" but there way too much things i do not know (yet) i think.

I modified the main ini file, i created a new one for testdriver, but the screen does not do anything. Maybe it would be easier if i knew what all those numbers do. Like:
"Init=4,20,24,22,255,1,50,3,12,15,50,14,50"

Also tried to search the forum for "test driver", but does not help, as it says both are too common words

So i am still stuck on this.
Any further help would be apriciated.

[qfreddie]

A little update:
1) managed to search for testdriver - without space
2) the only plugin that does anything to my led displays is the matrix.dll - it sends some strange chars to them (as i was playing spaceinvaders) / this could be a good point to start

Thanks

[qfreddie]

Nobody?

[mattcro]

Ah, the test driver page on the Smartie website is out of date. You now have to create a separate config file for the test driver, NOT a new section inside the main config file...

You need to create a file TESTDRIVER.INI in the Smartie folder, and put the config commands in that. Then select Test Driver in the Smartie config window and set the serial port parameters.

See this post and others for sample INI files and config info: http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic. ... testdriver

I got some relevant results when searching for "testdriver": http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/search.php ... testdriver

Hope that gets you started!

[qfreddie]

Hi

I created a separate ini file for testdriver from the start, but my main problem was the numbers i entered in that. There is no good explanations about what all that means. Like:
"Init=4,20,24,22,255,1,50,3,12,15,50,14,50"
So i have no ideea what and where to start with.

I will see the post you linked, hope i cna find somenthing, but till now nothing helped.

Will keep updated.

[mattcro]

The numbers after Init= are simply a list of byte values (in decimal) to send to the display. The example you quoted is to INITialise a Crystalfontz LCD.

For your display, you only need the GotoLine1= and GotoLine2= commands. A quick look at the display datasheet shows that these are the only commands it accepts anyway. See page 17 on http://www.sureelectronics.net/pdfs/DE- ... 1.0_EN.pdf

The numbers in the datasheet are hexadecimal, and translating them to Smartie's decimal format gives:

GotoLine1=254,71,1,1

Curiously enough, that's the same command as used on the Matrix Orbital displays... that probably explains why you saw lots of stuff on the LED board with the Matrix Orbital driver. That driver squirts out lots of other commands that probably confuse your display though.

GotoLine2 is very similar... you can work it out from the datasheet You can leave the other commands (Init= etc) blank.

[qfreddie]

Hi

Well this did not work. I mean did the same as the matrix: freezed the screen.
And SureElectronics is not willing to give me any details about the product.

I will try a diff. approach, with a friend, who is good in electronics.

Thanks anyways!