Post-summit chat
- Kim: what are you top 3 tips for reducing RAM and Flash usage on an Arduino Uno?
- Nicholas: I looked in the Flick Clock source code and I can see that you are using the ILI948x library. Would you be able to remove it, and just use your own custom code so you can save a bit of memory? Or, maybe you have?
- David: I am confused by all the low-level C programming that contains references to registers etc. Where can I learn how to program like that?
- Jamie: What is #pragma, that I see at the top of your Flip Clock project files?
What is this session about?
Flipping pixels is easier than flipping plastic.
Mark created an Arduino version of the classic “Flip clock.” In place of motors and gears and split flaps, he created a plausible-looking rendering of a device on a 480×320 pixel LCD shield. The impetus for the project was the challenge of creating a reasonable animation of the flipping action.
The character information is run-length encoded scan lines; omitting some lines creates a tilted look. The LCD interface is an 8-bit parallel one. With direct port-register access and careful coding, even a lowly Uno can achieve pleasing results.
The vivid colors supported by the reasonably sized and priced LCD inspired Mark to play with some additional ways of showing the time, up to the program capacity of the Uno.
About the speaker
During his youth, Mark spent a lot of time coding with his Acorn Electron in BBC BASIC and 6502 Assembly programming languages, including the first of countless Conway’s Game of Life implementations.
Inexplicably, he completed an MSc in Physics in ’86 but was employed as a professional software developer since graduation.
Mark tinkered a little in electronics but unsatisfactorily so until he discovered the Arduino in 2011 and created the KENBAK-uino.
He enjoys coding and pushing pixels around. And horology. He has made a few clock projects.
Resources
- Flipclock on Hackaday.
- Mark’s page on Hackaday.
- The KENBAK-uino project page. And its source code on Github.