Questions about led matrices and libraries (MD_MAX72xx)

Hi there forum, here I am once again to ask a couple of question.

I'm having trouble with the MD_Parola, and MD_max72xx libraries.
Since I'm working on a project with Led matrices I needed a suitable library and these seemed to be my best option, and they absolutely have been so far, shout out to Marco for putting so much effort into the whole thing!
The thing I'm having trouble with is importing a font into my own sketch, I can't figure out the syntax, I will be hooking up some hardware to work with the matrices and the library but I can't figure the matrix libraries out myself and with help of Google and the forums.
I have uploaded the sketches bellow and my font as well*, by the way the same font can be found in the Parola_Fonts_data.h font file in which I pasted it (also included of course).*
(I program in C mainly so I might not understand C++ as good as I do C, I'm not that good at programming in the first place)

I'm also experiencing a rather strange thing, in my sketch I have changed the characters "A" and "B" into being part of a logo I want to display on the displays, but the newly created characters when displayed are shifted one pixel to the left. The characters separated from each other interpret the row of missing pixels from the character next to it. (examples to elaborate are included).
Since i thought this might be a bug or at least could be fixed by importing a custom font into the sketch I though it wouldn't be big deal.
So therefor my primary questing remains being about importing the font.

Thank you all who have read this and I'll thank everyone who responds in advance :stuck_out_tongue:

  • Maarten

Integer_Matrix_test.ino (1.66 KB)

Parola_Fonts_data.h (26.5 KB)

If you print a 2 character string the library will insert the number of columns currently set for inter character spacing, so to get AB squished together you need to specify 0 columns between characters, OR define a character AB that is a special one by itself.

delChar() and addChar() are to replace individual characters. delChar() only deletes characters you defined using addChar(), not the original character in the font. This seems what you are trying to do. You just need to addChar() to overwrite the font character with your own user character.

I see, thanks for the response Marco!
I will mess around some more to figure it out with this information.
I will try to get the character replacement to work but I still want to import the font I made, because I think it would be easier to change the font around, I will look on the website, on google and in the source code some more to try to figure it out.
Maybe though it would be nice if someone who knows how to do it could explain, and maybe I just need to look a bit harder on Google or something.

I assume that you have looked at the documentation for MD_MAX72xx that is in the docs folder?

Also, there is probably more info on this related to the Parola library documentation and in the "Parola A to Z" articles on my blog site.

This (MD_MAX72XX / MD_Parola Font Editor - Exhibition / Gallery - Arduino Forum) is also a good tool to help you design fonts if you cannot use the Excel or command line tools that come with MD_MAX72xx.

Thanks for the additional link to the editor, works better than the previous one I used.
And yeah I have seen some of the documentation but maybe not enough.
I will definitely read through it all, and I think I will find the answers I'm looking for! :slight_smile: