Build an MQTT based RGB LED panel! // Project

Dear Mick,

Thanks for your cheerful message.
I was really happy to get it!

By the way,
I would like to change the image.
How can I do that?

And now, in my LED panel, only the part of the blue guy and the clock is lightening. What do I have the change for it? I thnk that the resolution is different from Raspberry pie3 and zero.

I am keeping watching on your youtube.
Those are really Great Projects!

Sincerely
Clara

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Thanks Mick, I got the MQTT Panel running on a RPi3 using the Adafruit Hat and four 32x32 panels. I really like this project for it’s potential–but learning docker, containers and MQTT on the fly is a challange. Can you reveal the modification needed to run the application with four (4) 32x32 RGB LED panels chained together?

Mick,

I came across this project while trying to hack together exactly the same thing in Python. I use Home Assistant and wanted a way to use MQTT to to display messages around the house.

After playing with this for about 30 seconds I abandoned my plans to make my own because this is a fantastic project. Thank you very much for making it. The gifs are an added bonus that I hadn’t thought of!

I wanted to ask if you’re accepting bugs. I’m not a C person so I don’t want to start hacking around in your code!

The bug is that this sequence

mosquitto_pub -h 127.0.0.1 -t /display/date/format -m '%a %d %b'
mosquitto_pub -h 127.0.0.1 -t /display/text/format -m '10°C'

for some reason causes the 10°C to appear where the date is AND in the text location. If I then publish another date/format it goes to what I’d expect to see.

Bug 2 - probably more of a request - could you make the container time zone aware? I had to start the container with

-v /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
-e "SET_CONTAINER_TIMEZONE=true" -e "CONTAINER_TIMEZONE=Europe/London"

before it would display the time-zone adjusted time rather than UTC time.

Once again - thanks for making this. You’ve saved me at least a few weekends of doing my own coding and experimenting!

Steve

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Mick, My time zone was off also. The reading in Pacific coast of the US was off by two hours unless it’s UTC or something–not the correct time in New South Wales either. The hat has the embedded DS1307 Real Time Clock so it would be cool to get super accurate–like a studio clock accurate for my application.

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Dear Mick,
I spent a little time trouble shooting while attempting to “make build” Project-MQTTpanel from the github source for (4) 32x32 panels. As a newbie on the rpi, I get a compile time error and observed that the Dockerfile has a configuration “cd /root/rpi-rgb-led-matrix” thinking this was the source of the error. What files or settings are needed to get past this error? Could you look at the output and suggest what is going on with the “make build” error i received?
Sincerely, M

Hi stetho,
Thanks for that!
I’m actually going to rewrite the whole thing in GoLang. So good to get bugs in the current code that I can address.

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Hello, I’m very interested in this project and I have ordered all the needed parts to do it. In case of using an Adafruit bonnet, I’ve seen that for 64x64 matrix panels you need to connect in the lower side of the bonnet a couple of points (8 or 16) with a solder blob, but I have not seen this on your instructions. Could you please confirm if this is needed or not?

Thanks a lot and best regards / Fernando

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Hey Mick how are you doing
hope the storm did not do to mutch damage to your house
quick quetion how did you manage to run the clock text and the background image in one go using the rpi-rgb-matrix library

and it it possible to run your code without docker
and if so how tried running and compiling it but no luck so far

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Essentially, I’m drawing each layer on top of each other. That is: start from the lower layer and draw up. So, no sprites or any fancy graphics primitives.

It is possible to run it without Docker. Once I get a bit of bandwidth I want to revisit this project and rewrite it in GoLang. This will reduce the amount of complexity and enable a single executable to run.
Of course you could still run it in Docker as well. Either way.

If you look at the Dockerfile on GitHub it has all the build method contained within a script. You’ll just have to be careful about paths.

Hi Mike, thanks for sharing this awesome little project!
However currently the installation of Docker on the pi0 is not working. Follow the instructions in this thread: https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/38175#issuecomment-439733278 to fix the install.
Cheers
Steven

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Thanks mate! I’ll check it out.

Problem with config.txt. Where you edited config.txt in the section called “SD card changes”, this caused RPi3ModB+ to hang during boot. I’m using raspbian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch). The suggested modifications dtparam=audio=off and
dtoverlay=dwc2 caused the boot to hang. I’ll let you know more if the program doesn’t work without these changes.

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Hi Larry,
How did those changes go? Surprised it hung the Pi. They’re pretty common config options.

Hello,
I finally got the display running on my Pi Zero W . I am using all the same part indicated in the project. The problem i am having is with the graphics. They are not displaying correctly on both of of the systems i built for my nephews.
Does anyone have a corrective action for this?

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Ah, that would be a bug in the code.
I’ve been meaning to rewrite this in GoLang and have been looking at it this last week.
Hopefully I’ll have it finished by the end of next week.

Thanks Mick,
My Nephews are looking forward to getting this to work.

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I have the solution for you! look at this Adafruit page - Step 3 about 64x64 matrixes -

I had to blob signal E to GPIO Pin 8 like the picture shows and presto!!!

Good luck with your project!

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Thanks for the reply.
I will try it tonight.
Thanks Again!

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Mick, I am getting the same problem as Face_Death. Do you know where I might be able to find the updated code? Thank you for this project, I hope I can get it working!

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Did you ever get it to work for you? I am running into the same issues that you posted about.

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