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Pseudonymous developer “en0b” has launched the supply code for a Matrix-inspired digital rain animation, designed to run on a Raspberry Pi Pico and linked LCD show.
“[It’s a] digital rain animation GIF with glow squeezed right into a Raspberry Pi Pico and Pimoroni Pico Show,” en0b explains of the challenge — “or the best way to really use all flash reminiscence in your Raspberry Pi Pico.”
The challenge’s hefty reminiscence requirement stems from en0b’s need to get as genuine an impact as doable: Reasonably than recreating the enduring falling-characters with phosphor glow on the machine itself, the programmer determined to create an animated GIF rendered on a extra highly effective machine — however at 8MB, it would not match on the Raspberry Pi Pico’s 2MB flash chip.
This Matrix-inspired animation is a 127-frame animated GIF, cleverly squeezed into 2MB of flash. (📹: en0b)
“As a result of I used to be too lazy to implement an current file compression,” en0b recounts, “I first simply shortened and modified the animation manually (with GIMP you’ll be able to modify every body of a GIF). Sadly, the file was nonetheless too massive with roughly 4MB, after which I made a decision to implement a primitive compression utilizing simply 16 customized colours (primarily completely different inexperienced tones and black).
“Then I used a python file to transform the GIF to a .h file of what coloration to make use of from the palette for every pixel and every body. Like that I wanted simply 4 bits per pixel, and I might squeeze all 127 frames into the 2MB flash the Raspberry Pi Pico has on board.”
Supply code for the challenge, in addition to a pre-compiled binary, is out there on en0b’s GitHub repository beneath an unspecified open supply license; a Python software for changing GIFs to change out the animation can be offered, supporting animations of as much as 127 frames.
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