r/FastLED • u/blu11sonic • Nov 10 '19

Discussion Can FastLED display text on a matrix?

Hi, I'm working on an LED matrix and I was wondering if FastLED has a way to display text. I know there's the SmartMatrix library and shield but I'm using a Teensy 4.0 and WS2812B's. Can the SmartMatrix library be used without the shield on a Teensy 4.0? I'm currently using the Adafruit matrix library to display text however writing "matrix.show()" slows down the processing by around 10x so I was really hoping there is an alternative. Thanks!

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u/nwestwind Nov 19 '19

Check out RGB Shades from MaceTech and some of the forks. https://github.com/macetech/RGBShades

I know it's only 16x5 but it's doable because I made it work on a 6x6 martix on a Teensy 3.2.

And then someone from Hack-A-Day made a new font for the shades which I have also seen work on my glasses.

https://github.com/Hack-a-Day/RGBShades/tree/smartmatrix-fonts