MAX7219 and LED matrix

Projects Programming
1

I am new to Arduino and would like to try using a MAX 7219 to drive an 8 x 8 LED matrix as shown in Nick Gammonn's tutorial at

My question is, where do I put the "font.h" file of letters, numbers, symbols. I thought that I could paste them into a .txt file and then put them in -

"C:\Program Files\arduino-1.0.1-windows\arduino-1.0.1\libraries"
either as a .txt file or in a folder called font.h but when I tried to verify the supplied code in the Arduino IDE I got this error;

'cp437_font' was not declared in this scope

Can someone please tell me how to do this correctly. Thank you for taking the time to read this BluesBoy.

2

My question is, where do I put the "font.h" file of letters, numbers, symbols. I thought that I could paste them into a .txt file and then put them in -

You copy & paste the font data from Nick's page into a text editor and save the file as font.h (not font.h.txt) into the same folder as the sketch file. You will probably need to close the IDE and open it again so it pick up the new file and adds it as a TAB to the IDE editor.

1 Like
3

Thank you for that Riva.

BluesBoy.

4

I have been trying out the MAX 7219 controlling an 8 x 8 LED matrix as described at;

and was wondering if anyone had used a modified version of this code to generate scrolling text. I find the code to be very neat and concise with its use of storing the font file in PROGMEM, the ease of inputting the text to be generated into the code and using SPI Trying to modify the code is well above my skill level but I thought that people other than me might be interested in this concept,or have some knowledge of how this might be achieved. Thanks for reading and hoping to hear from someone

BluesBoy.

5

I have not used Nick's code but have posted sample code for font scrolling here Scrolling matrix display - #9 by Riva - LEDs and Multiplexing - Arduino Forum and this is the final product the above test code was used in Arduino WordClock - #5 by Riva - Exhibition / Gallery - Arduino Forum sorry the video from my phone is a bit poor but it will give you an idea how it looks. FYI the video was taken before I added kerning data to the font characters so does not look quite how the code works now.

6

Thanks Riva,

great clock you have made there. Ten points 8) Thanks for the link to the code,

BluesBoy