FlipDot-Simulator

See the simulator in action in the following videos.

Installation

The simulator relies on the pygame framework. Therefore this has to be installed before - pip can be used for this.:

$ pip install pygame

More information about this process is available on the pygame-website.

Next the source code must be downloaded from the project page at github. The archive must be extracted into an empty directory. Create a file flipdotsim_example.py with the content listed in the example section below and run it with python flipdotsim_example.py.

Example

import flipdotsim
import time

# Create a Simulator with the given dimension
display = flipdotsim.FlipDotSim(width=16, height=8)

# turn some pixels on in the top left corner
display.px(0, 0, True)
display.px(1, 0, True)
display.px(0, 1, True)
# The display will not change until the show method is invoked
display.show()
time.sleep(2)

# Lets run one dot from top left to bottom right
for y in range(display.height):
   for x in range(display.width):
       display.px(x, y, True)
       display.show()
       time.sleep(0.1)
       display.px(x, y, False)

Module Description

A package that allows for simulating the display without the need of a physical display. It relies on the pygame-package.

The simulator can be used in the following way. Creating a display with specific dimensions.

>>> import flipdotsim
>>> fds = flipdotsim.FlipDotSim(width=28, height=13)

Set two pixels at the top left to be turned on.

>>> fds.px(0,0, True)
>>> fds.px(0,1, True)

Actually turn on or off all pixels.

>>> fds.show()

class flipdotsim.FlipDotSim(width=28, height=13, fps=30)

Simulator class that shows the display in a pygame GUI.

clear(invert=False)

Set all pixels to false.

close()

Deinitialize pygame and close open windows.

led(on_off)

does nothing

px(x, y, val)

Set a pixel to on or off at (X|Y). The dot will not be displayed immediately.

reset(x, y)

set(x, y)

show()

Show the current state of all pixels on the display.

Simulator (godot version)

There is another simulator that relies on the godot game engine. A standalone version for Windows and Linux is available from the projects releases page.

After startup the simulator can be controlled by cursor keys (moving the display) and page up/down for scaling the map.

The simulator conforms to the protocol described in the Net module: send a sequence of 1s and 0s (in ASCII) to port 10101 of the server.

Simulator (pyxel version)

There is another simulator that relies on the pyxel game engine. Therefore in order to use it pyxel must be installed.:

$ pip install pyxel

class pyxel_sim.PyxelSim(width, height, resources='ressources/pyxel_sim.pyxres', fps=30)

Simulator for the flipdot display using Pyxel. The simulator will run in a separate thread listening for updates to the display buffer. The display buffer is a 2D array of booleans, where True represents a yellow pixel and False represents a black pixel.

https://github.com/kitao/pyxel

DEFAULT_PYXEL_RESOURCES = 'ressources/pyxel_sim.pyxres'

close()

close the simulator

draw()

clear the screen and draw the buffer using images in the resources file.

px(x, y, val)

update()