Screen share ANYTHING to this matrix! (Pi Pico)

today we are going to play around with the raspberry pi picow and use it to share our computer screen wirelessly to a cheap and easy to make matrix display [Music] so recently the new raspberry pi picow was released and i had to take a look at it it's a super easy beginner project and the total cost of the parts is only around 20 dollars i've already made an rp2040 board that adds ethernet and power over ethernet capabilities to this remarkable microcontroller this new development board comes with wireless capabilities and it's really affordable so i had to try micro python for the first time of my life since there were some examples released on the raspberry block i installed tony and tried the simple wifi controlled led example that worked flawlessly since micropytent comes with a neopixel library i thought why not try to use it with one of these nice matrices i used those to build a simple notification lamp before you can get them really cheap for like 13 bucks that's like 5 cents per led check out the links in the description for all the parts used in this project these matrices are quite easy to connect the female connector is for data in and the mail for data out so you need to connect the microcontroller that will generate a signal to the female connector my matrices came even with a male connector for the input side but you can disorder and use the output connector if you don't need to daisy-chain multiple matrices [Music] since one matrix has 256 leds it might require way more power than your microcontroller can supply from the usb to supply it with sufficient current we should attach a 5 volt dc source to this wire in my case black is ground and red is 5 volts the easiest way is to use one of these receptacles and screw them on they even have plus and minus markings ground is minus this is good for now but i will use one of these for the 3d printed case later you can use any 5 volt dc power supply that's capable to deliver at least 2 amps of current as mentioned before the microcontroller is connected to this side you can use simple jumper wires or the extra connector while the microcontroller is still connected to usb you should only connect ground which is wide here to any ground pin and data which is green here to your designated data pin i used 22. leave the 5 volts disconnected while you are still using the usb otherwise the different 5 volt sources might conflict once you've finalized your firmware connect it to v-bus so the microcontroller will be supplied with the 5 volts from the matrix everything plugged in i can run the first test let's run it [Music] that works sweet next i wanted to use the wifi capabilities to control the matrix this is where html5 and javascript is so beautiful no matter what operating system you're using the web browser handles everything for you you can actually grab the screen contents extract the pixels and send them to the matrix i've done that before on stream several times with serial and web sockets nothing happens okay oh we have pink leds okay board is functional [Music] websockets would be perfect for the wi-fi transfer since it doesn't have much overhead however here comes the first problem we need a websocket server and micropython to receive the data i found an implementation in the microweb server library with some struggle i made it work with the pico however there was not enough ram left for the neopixels [Music] that's quite a disadvantage compared to the esps which you can buy with external ps ram still i wanted to make it work to be successful with micro python i needed to skip all the extra code an html post request with the pixel data attached should be good enough it's not the most performant way but surely a way that skips all the extra libraries so this is the resulting sketch you need to enter your wifi credentials here and upload it while the pico is connecting the ip address is displayed in the console copy that you can also find it on your router later i will add a way to display the ip on the matrix on boot up later so we just open the screen share web page from the pc now enter the ip address select the screen to share and well enough it shares it nice [Music] the frame rate is terrible and i think it can be improved with a c plus implementation subscribe to this channel to stay updated but for now that simple implementation should do it to make it nicer i want to put it in a case so i can put it on a shelf or hang it from the wall i designed a simple back projected case in blender and printed it [Music] the clue with that one is that it doesn't need any infill it's optimized for 0.4 millimeter nozzles there is only a bottom layer with 0.3 millimeters and it's used as a back projection screen we tested a prior version of that on brian's stream where 30 millimeters depth of these channels seemed to be perfect i used the gray filament here but the outer walls needed an improvement so i printed the second version in black with only 20 millimeters of depth since the microcontroller is programmed now i can connect the 5 volts from the matrix i will use the extra connector now [Music] i also saw on this receptacle [Music] [Music] the matrix should fit perfectly in it has some passive components the case has also some gaps for that if you orient it correctly [Music] let's test it nice i adjusted the code to use only a fraction of the maximum brightness it's plenty bright and keeps the panel and the power supply cooler at full brightness it might need some proper cooling and putting it in a case probably doesn't help i linked a detailed tutorial the code and all the parts below it's a nice project to make with kids and the parts only cost about 20 dollars for a nice piece of art the case can be printed in a local maker space if you don't have a 3d printer at home if you like this project please share it with a friend thanks to all my supporters and i see you next time bye

Channel: bitluni

Views: 108,492

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Id: yzRHAdS9FLY

Length: 8min 7sec (487 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2022