And, I made a Pip-Boy! Look at it here, it's pretty great!
- +
@@ -267,10 +267,10 @@
from the terminal and seeing it display the results in real
time.
-
+
@@ -279,10 +279,10 @@
the terminal and, instead of being binary and unreadable, it's
in regular-ass javascript. Holy shit!
-
+
@@ -302,6 +302,188 @@
Anyway, I think that's where I'm leaving it for tonight. It's
11pm, after all. More tomorrow.
+ + OK, it's 6pm, there's 3 hours until the Apprentice is on, let's + get hacking. The first thing I need to do is, uh... take the + thing apart. +
+ +
+
+ + That's an micro-sd extender cable stringing out of it, there. + Nearly everything that makes up the pip-boy is stored on an sd + card which is, conveniently, not bolted into the board. +
++ You can open up the thing and take it out, you can copy all of + its files over to a folder and, most usefully for us, you can + copy those same files over to another, bigger sd card (the one + installed is only 250MB) and it works, as long as the card is + fat32 formatted. +
++ I've put a 32GB one in there, which is overkill, but I had it + lying around. It also means I can put the entirety of the + FO3/4/NV soundtracks on there, if I want. Which, maybe, I do in + future! Who knows. +
++ More importantly, however, that SD card has a USER/ folder where + we can drop our own custom javascript files and it'll display + them in a nice 'APPS' menu in the INV menu. +
++ We're gonna start with the the helloWorld and graphicsTest files + that are currently in the repo. Some file wiggling and inserting + and removal of SD cards and bang, there they are! +
+ +
+
+ + So we want tio draw something to screen that isn't just text, + next. So I need to dive into some docs. More updates in a bit... +
+ Code Updated. Check the github link to keep up. ++ OK, first thing I want to do is draw a square. Which means we + need to understand how the graphics buffer is working. See, + right here, in the dump of the buffer of the main portion of the + screen, is some interesting evidence. +
+ +
+
+ + The interesting thing here is 'UInt8.' This is an array of 8bit + integers. This could mean the pixels are rendered as 3-byte RGB + values, with the r and b just ignored, or it could mean each bit + in the byte is a pixel, and the different tones is achieved + using dithering. Right now, I'm not sure! +
+So, to find out, we're gonna draw three squares.
+ +
+
+ + And there we have it! Three squares. Now if we look at the code + I've written, and note that the middle square is the dimmest of + the three, we can deduce... +
+ +
+
+ + That I was completely wrong and the screen is compeltely + monochrome, and any dimming is done by dithering. I'm so glad + I'm liveblogging this so everyone can see how stupid I am. +
++ That's ok though! We're here to learn, and this actually makes + things relatively nice and easy. I'm sure there are monochrome + image -> uint arrays somewhere out there one the web already, + thisn is a very common format on embedded platforms, so I just + need to find one and run the icons for various perks etc through + them, and we can get one displaying. +
+In fact, maybe that's what we do next. BRB...
+ Code Updated. Check the github link to keep up. ++ Excellent, here's one, first hit on google. + image2cpp + Let's run the Cherchez La Femme image through it and upload it + to the machine aaaand... +
+ +
+
+ + So, that's not good. In fairness, I am loading a 167x167 bitmap + into memory here, I suppose it makes sense that that wouldn't + exactly work. But it is going to make this more difficult. +
++ Next question then. What is a reasonable maximum array size we + can use here? Time to experiment. We'll start with half the + resolution, 83x83. +
+ +
+
+ + OK, it's displaying, but that's clearly not right. Here's what + it's supposed to look like: +
+ +
+
+ + That's ok though, there's options on the converter for just this + predicament. This was the default (Horizontal - 1bpp), and + Vertical - 1bpp landed similar results, so let's move on from + that converter and use the one hosted on + Espruino's website + instead. Man I'm really proving myself soooo smart today. +
++ Using the right tool for the job gives us this! And it's even + full resolution! Huzzah! +
+ +
+
+ + OK, that's real, genuine progress. We can encode images and + display them, which we need for the perks screen. They are + pretty big though, so I think next order of business is going to + be keeping those strings in text files and loading them in when + we need to. Back to the docs... Although I might leave it there + tonight, my back hurts. No wonder Zuck had to be 19 to do this + live. +
