Matricks

"Teach an old matrix new tricks..."

Matricks is a WASM-based extensible LED matrix control tool intended for use on Raspberry Pi devices. LED matrix functionality is defined by user-developed plugins, or "tricks", which can be developed in any language that is supported by the Extism PDK. To simulate plugins while you're developing them, check out Simtricks!

Run Matricks

Installation on Raspberry Pi

• Install 64-bit Raspbian¹ on your Raspberry Pi²
• Install Rust and Cargo from the Rust website
• Run apt install libclang-dev libssl-dev
• Run cargo install matricks
• Configure your Raspberry Pi and reboot

Use a pre-compiled binary

For convenience, pre-compiled binaries are available in the releases tab.

• Configure your Raspberry Pi and reboot
• Run the following command to download and run Matricks:

MATRICKS_VERSION=0.3.1 && \
wget https://github.com/wymcg/matricks/releases/download/v$MATRICKS_VERSION/matricks_$MATRICKS_VERSION && \ 
chmod +x matricks_$MATRICKS_VERSION && \
./matricks_$MATRICKS_VERSION 

Cross-compilation

• On another device,
  • Install Rust and Cargo from the Rust website
  • Run rustup target add aarch64-unknown-linux-musl
  • Run cargo install cross
  • Clone this repository and build with cross build --release --target aarch64-unknown-linux-musl
  • Transfer the produced executable to your Raspberry Pi
• On your Raspberry Pi,
  • Install 64-bit Raspbian¹
  • Configure your Raspberry Pi and reboot
  • Run the executable

Usage

This section describes basic usage of Matricks. For general usage information, run matricks help. For a list of plugins to try, there are several example plugins listed in the examples README.

Manual configuration

You may manually provide a configuration to Matricks using matricks manual. To run a plugin (or a set of plugins in a directory), Matricks can be invoked as follows:

matricks manual [OPTIONS] --path <PLUGIN_PATH> --width <WIDTH> --height <HEIGHT>

This will run the plugin(s) at the given path on the connected matrix. Other matrix and plugin configuration options are also available; See matricks help manual for more information.

Saving a configuration

Once you have confirmed that everything is working with matricks manual, you can save your configuration to a file using the matricks save command. To save your configuration, Matricks can be invoked as follows:

matricks save <NEW_CONFIG_PATH> [OPTIONS] --path <PLUGIN_PATH> --width <WIDTH> --height <HEIGHT>

This is similar to matricks manual, but instead of running the plugin, Matricks will save the configuration information to a new TOML file at the given path. matricks save has the same matrix and plugin configuration options as matricks manual. See matricks help save for more information.

Automatic configuration

If you have a TOML configuration file (created either by hand or by running matricks save), you can use it using matricks auto. To run Matricks with a configuration file, Matricks can be invoked as follows:

matricks auto <CONFIG_PATH>

This command will use the configuration information in the given file to drive the matrix. See matricks help auto for more information.

Clearing the matrix

If for any reason you need to clear all LEDs on the matrix, Matricks can be invoked as follows:

matricks clear --width <WIDTH> --height <HEIGHT>

See matricks help clear for more information.

View Logs

To see logs from Matricks, prepend your command with RUST_LOG=matricks=info. For example:

RUST_LOG=matricks=info matricks auto your_config.toml

Raspberry Pi Configuration

Matricks requires some configuration before it can be used to drive a LED matrix. If these instructions are not followed, Matricks may not work as expected. This section paraphrases the instructions from the rpi_ws281x README.

Enable SPI

The easiest way to enable SPI on Raspberry Pi is with the raspi-config command line tool. Run sudo raspi-config and navigate to the SPI activation dialog by selecting Interface Options > SPI.

Change GPU Core Frequency

Add the following lines to /boot/config.txt:

Device	Lines to Add
Raspberry Pi 3	core_freq=250
Raspberry Pi 4	core_freq=500 core_freq_min=500

Change SPI Buffer Size (optional)

On some distributions, it may be necessary to increase the maximum SPI transfer size by editing /boot/cmdline.txt and adding the following line:

spidev.bufsiz=32768

Footnotes

1. At this time, Matricks can only be installed and run on 64-bit operating systems. ↩ ↩²

2. If you are using a Raspberry Pi with less than 1GB of RAM, installation using this method is not recommended. ↩