Tesseract Control Software

Version 2 of the control software for the Tesseract.

The Tesseract is an 8 x 8 x 8 monochrome array of LEDs controlled by an set of TLC LED driver chips.

It comes in two parts in Python:

• tesseract-effectbox: The numpy-based Python application that generates effect events and sends frames to display on the Tesseract.
• tesseract-simulator: The Python application that displays frames if you don't have real Tesseract hardware to display them on.

And one part in C:

• A hardware driver that displays frames on the real Tesseract hardware.

The pieces communicate using ZeroMQ.

Version 1 of the software is available at https://github.com/decoydavid/tesseract/ and was written entirely in C with an abandoned implementation in Python.

Todo

• Add f(xy, t) -> z sprite.
• Add a few animations using f(xy, t) -> t.
• Add rain animation.
• Shuffling blocks animation.
• Slow down all / some animations.

Implemented ideas

• Initial effectbox implementation.
• Simple effect for testing.
• Initial simulator.
• Cube sprite.
• Sphere sprite.
• Text animation.
• Uninvert layers.
• Fix missing corner in cube sprite.
• Never repeat the same animation straight after itself.

Discarded ideas

• Nothing yet.

Effect ideas

• Nothing yet.

Calibration

• No implemented yet.

Quickstart

Install the Tesseract control software:

$ pip install tessled[simulator]  # not yet available

Or:

$ pip install -e .[simulator]  # for development

Or:

$ pip install -e .[spidev]  # for driving the LEDs on the Raspberry Pi

Run the API, EffectBox and simulator:

$ tesseract-effectbox
$ tesseract-simulator

Or run everything together at once:

$ tesseract-runner

Or run the SPI LED driver on the Pi:

$ tesseract-spidev-driver