PixelSharp

Hardware

1. A Raspberry Pi
2. A Pixel Display. I used this display
3. A way to connect the display to the Raspberry Pi. I used the rainbow cable to jumper wires that came with the display and follow this mapping. The colors of the columns are the colors of the rainbow cable.

Software

1. Install .NET 7 with the following command

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pjgpetecodes/dotnet7pi/main/install.sh | sudo bash

2. Clone this project in the folder you want
3. Run the following command to build an run the project from [Your chosen folder]/src

sudo dotnet run --urls="http://*:5000"

Troubleshooting

If you get the following error

Follow these steps:

cd ../..
cd /etc/modprobe.d
sudo nano raspi-blacklist.conf

And type the following in the editor

blacklist snd_bcm2835

Exit and save changes. Now you will need to reboot the pi and it should be working for you.

Usage

I've added Swagger to this project for easy API exploration.

The endpoint is : http://[Raspberry PI]:5000/swagger

Render image on display

http://[Raspberry PI]:5000/matrix/image?imageUrl=[URL to image]

Render gif on display

http://[Raspberry PI]:5000/matrix/gif?imageUrl=[URL to image]

Render text on display

http://[Raspberry PI]:5000/matrix/text?text=hello

Full pixel control

http://[Raspberry PI]:5000/matrix/render

With POST body:

{
    "Width": 64,
    "Height": 64,
    "Sections": [
        {
            "Start": {
                "X": 1,
                "Y": 10
            },
            "End": {
                "X": 64,
                "Y": 20
            },
            "Graphic": {
                "Type": 0,
                "Content": "Itsa me"
            }
        },
        {
            "Start": {
                "X": 1,
                "Y": 18
            },
            "End": {
                "X": 64,
                "Y": 18
            },
            "Graphic": {
                "Type": 0,
                "Content": "MARIEKE!!"
            }
        },
        {
            "Start": {
                "X": 1,
                "Y": 28
            },
            "End": {
                "X": 32,
                "Y": 64
            },
            "Graphic": {
                "Type": 1,
                "Content": "https://i.gifer.com/origin/dd/dd77ec648bca7d408dc59a1984f533cf_w200.webp"
            }
        },
        {
            "Start": {
                "X": 33,
                "Y": 28
            },
            "End": {
                "X": 64,
                "Y": 64
            },
            "Graphic": {
                "Type": 1,
                "Content": "https://mario.wiki.gallery/images/3/3e/MPSS_Mario.png"
            }
        }
    ]
}

TODO

• Support for gif
• Support for text
• Boot screen
• App in MAUI
• Clock
• Weather
• Pass pixels in a render section
• Gif support for render section
• Add image/gif base64 support for render and image endpoint
• Back to default state
• Fire and forget
• MQTT