First Impressions on the three Rainbowduino codes

Products & Technology Arduino & Seeeduino
#1

I’m trying to get standard drawing capabilities on my rainbowduino, so I tried the three main code systems out there:

Official Version 2.0 from Seeestudio
-Uploads/works fine
-Limited displays

  • only shows characters and numbers, no lines, dots, etc etc. Little control over displays.

Unofficial version 3.0h
-Uploads fine
-Advanced displays with fill, circles, squares, lines, pixel control
-Error in addressing, one pixel to the right always gets filled.
-Can’t access bottom and right rows due to addressing problem
-Creators say there are lots of bugs

Neorainbowduino
-Absolutely crazy software for PC side using a combination of Processing and Eclipse for Java, very difficult to replicate on different computer systems.

Does anyone have their opinions on other code that works well for basic drawing pixels, lines, etc? The unofficial version 3.0h had the most promise to me, but I encountered an error where all pixels one space to the right of the lit pixel would be lit.

#2

The x/y coordinates range from 0…7

I have been modifying the source for v3.0h firmware (mostly name cleanup, adding volatiles, pointer math instead of array indexing, etc.) … I’d say it has promise. Haven’t encountered your off-by-one bug though.

#3

The issue with the off-by-one is that if I turn on pixel (3,5), it will light up, but pixel (4,5) will also be about halfway lit. If I try turning on any pixel on the very far right column (x = 7), the code won’t run. No idea what is going on, maybe I’ll try it again…

#4

First, your quote “using a combination of Processing and Eclipse for Java” is wrong - I created a lib for processing, which can be also used in each regular java app, this includes projects using the eclipse ide.

what do you mean with “very difficult to replicate on different computer systems”? whats the problem?

#5

Here’s what I did:

Download neorainbow-0.8
Follow the instructions for the rainbowduino and arduino host, code compiles and downloads fine, all good to go there
Open the “processinglib” folder, and see a bunch of files not particular to processing?
Read the readme file, from the readme it instructs on using eclipse… and in there I get the problems.

So you are saying there is a way to use it without eclipse and only using processing?

#6

yes, the main purpose is to use it as processing lib. unpack the neorainbowduno-1.5.zip file - there you’ll find a readme.txt.

so copy the neorainbowduino and its subdirs to your sketch directory OR into your home processing dir. check wiki.processing.org/w/How_to_Ins … ed_Library if you still have troubles. and there are some examples which might help you getting started.

#7

Oh, that was just a little hard to find :laughing:

If anyone else wants to know where the processing-1.5 is, it is buried in these subdirectories:

neorainbow-0.8\processingLib\distribution\neorainbowduino-1.5\download

#8

well thanks for the input - however thats the default processing 3rd party lib layout… so did it work for you now?