Having the multiplexing taken out of the software does make the programming a little easier, allows the hardware design to be more compact, probably brings the build cost down, and with fewer components increases reliability also.
Here's my program to run the board so far, and the fonts I created for it (couple a punctuation things added also).
Could probably do the serial input to font mapping a little cleaner, will see how it works when I actually get it built up.
Could probably do with some functionizing also. I like to see clearly what the program is doing and I'm going for speed/responsiveness. Not going to run out of flash, so am not particularly concerned about program length.
5x8fonts.xlsx (20.6 KB)
eightx32display.ino (17.6 KB)