Can the ESP32 Handle 6 animated GIFs on 6 Screens ?

Let's test if the esp32 boasting 240 megahertz and 4 megabyte of ram can simultaneously play 6 animated gif on six separate screens at the same time we are going to use this stunning round screen yes they are small but they can render a palette of 65 000 colors they are amazing our game plan is straightforward we will use the animated gif Library by bitbank too to load all the sex gif into RAM and play them on the screens and how do we plan to connect our Charming round screens through the esp32 SPI bus or serial peripheral interface it's a communication protocol between the microcontroller and SPI devices like our screens every screens is linked to the SPI bus so the pins of every screen are wired to the same pins on the sp32 except for the chip select pin let's prepare our test first I have to set up the correct driver for the TFT SPI graphic library for the round screen next I specified the board that I will use in the Arduino IDE and I am using a standard esp32 Dev module finally I choose the ujap partition scheme because all the GIF will be loaded alongside the code into the memory of the sp32 now my breadboard is ready let's start the test I have already set up the wires for the connection of the first screen let's play sit on the breadboard and be ready to receive the first lines of code to play the hyperspace animation that's a very solid start I like the hyperspace animation it truly brings the screen to life now let's open the serial monitor as we are going to keep track of the frame per second for the first screen and it's now playing at around 20 frames per second and as we add more screen it's logical to expect a decrease in fps now it's time for the second screen I am wiring it to the SPI bus by reusing the connection on the first screen the second gear features a HUD interface reminiscent of those futuristic displays often seen in Sci-Fi movies and props adding a touch of fictional complexity and as we expected the FPS is lower and jumping from 9 to 15 so it's around 13 FPS or so almost half of what we had before let's continue and add a third screen to the setup on the breadboard this time let's play the Nostromo GIF inspired by the movie Alien and I have a particular fondness for both the movie and this gif the FPS is still around 12 and the animation remains visually appealing until now the esp32 is truly living up to expectations now I am concerned about the power conception of the sp32 since it is powering all the displays so far and according to the official datasheet from espressif the maximum IU output current is 1200 nbdms and for safety I aim to keep the consumption below 600 milliamps and I will monitor the current conception with a USB power meter and with three screens the esp32 is consuming 180 milliamps this means we are comfortably within the safe limit we are not going to stop there let's set a fourth screen and I have chosen a Star Wars X-Wing animation that I personally crafted using Adobe After Effects the Nuance movements and details subtly enhance its presence and then saying its overall visual appeal I like it very much the frame rate has seen a slight dip settling around 10 FPS and as for power we're looking at a consumption of 220 milliamps you know the drill let's add another screen the fifth one this one is another kind of odd interface I like the animation of this HUD very much with a TIE fighter appearing out of nowhere part of it was created with artificial intelligence using Microsoft being image creator and the FPS is now hovering at six to seven and the power consumption is 250 milliamps still within safe limits but we can now see that the animations are less fluid but still the sp-32 managed to animate all of them so far time to add the last screen and see what happens we see bb-8 running slowly everything is now slowed down the FPS is now very low at four to five and with all six round screens in action the entire setup draws only 300 milliamps I'm still astounded by the capabilities of the esp32 microcontroller and this little round screen but there is more in my Exploration with these screens I made a Fascination observation when I uploaded only one GIF and played it on the first screen only the other screens mirror the same animation and the FPS shut back up to 20. with db8 sprinting at full speed this suggests me that the SPI bus is very fast and the real Computing demand come from reading and decompressing the GIF from memory tell me what's your own explanation in the comments below now everything you've seen up to this point runs on a single core of the sp32 we have the potential to tap into the second core enhancing the processing capability for reading and decompressing the gif this might be an exciting direction for our next experiment if you enjoyed this video and want to see more like it please give a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel your comments and feedback below are valuable to me so please share your thoughts thanks for watching guys

Channel: The Last Outpost Workshop

Views: 33,559

Keywords: Arduino, electronic, DIY, code, programming

Id: 0YEKLuVf1E4

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2023