Topics

1

Thumby / Future hardware /OLED revisions

« on: January 07, 2023, 08:09:21 AM »

Hi team TC!
I'm hoping to optimise the OLED code `ssd1306.py`.

Can I ask:
- Will you ever change the display size (/resolution) on the Thumby - or - can we assume the width and height will forever be 72x40px?
- Will the OLED module ever be changed to use an external drive voltage (`external_vcc`) rather than the built in charge pump?

Many thanks,
Andrew

2

Thumby / Scratch registers for Thumby settings

« on: December 24, 2022, 07:41:18 AM »

Currently the core files make use of the Watchdog timer's scratch register, to store and transfer data between soft-resets.
This allows `menu.py` to launch a game by soft-reseting back to `main.py` with a True `1` flag  set in the first scratch register (0), address `0x40058000+0x0C`.
(More info: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2040/rp2040-datasheet.pdf  - Section 4.7.6)

My proposal:
I'd like to store 3 other settings in this semi-persistent storage:
`0x40058010` (scratch1) - Hardware ID / HWID (0–15)
`0x40058014` (scratch2) - Brightness level (1–127)
`0x40058018` (scratch3) - Intro /skip scrolling indicator (0,1)

Although these values require less than a byte each, I don't feel it's worth the code overhead to pack them into one 4 byte long register, since we have 8 registers available in total. Update: Cannot use `mem8()` to address each of the four bytes separately, as byte access is aligned to the start address block AFAIK (tested 28-Dec).

Motivation:
- We only need to evaluate the HWID once per session (on hard reset), not on every soft-reset (faster load times).
- We only need to read Contrast once and on change (faster load times).
- Additionally, I'd like to add a 'fast boot' option that skips scrolling and uses the 'scroll indicator', after the first boot.

Would welcome any feedback from TC staff (@Jason) and the community...?


Note: I'm posting here (vs Discord) for visibility and future search/ knowledge repository.

3

Thumby / Background art resources

« on: September 28, 2022, 01:11:39 PM »

Hi!

I'm just adding Thumby support to a collection of 'retro' 8x8px fill patterns.
e.g. https://github.com/ace-dent/8x8.me#11-symbols

The idea is to make it easy to copy& paste code to get the artwork.
I've crafted the `# BITMAP...` comment to support importing into the web based IDE / bitmap editor.

I would appreciate any feedback.
Thanks :-)