Monday, July 6, 2009

Simmons LED Display Part 3: Software Implementation

This is part 3 of my series of posts on the Simmons LED Display. I'm going to discuss my implementation of the control software used to operate the display.

The software stack is comprised of four parts: a web service used to input messages, a cron-type service used to keep checking for new messages to display, a driver service used to convert the message strings into synchronized pin timings and the microcontroller code used to actually turn on and off the LEDs.

Even though the C/C++ environment of the Arduino is super-easy as far as microcontrollers go, I chose to keep most of the logic on the computer running the web service. This meant I could implement the hard code in Python, making my life much easier.

An overview of the software stack is shown to the left. It might look like a mess: that's because it is one. I'll attach all of the source code files soon, as well as instructions on how to use them.

Coming Next: Django App Sources

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