AsciiWars

Simple Star Wars Asciimation Player for the ESP8266 + TFT Display

Code by F. Hellmann <www.gotohellmann.com>
Animation by S. Jansen <www.asciimation.co.nz>
Font by S. Weber <www.blogfonts.com/picopixel.font>

Youtube Build Video: https://youtu.be/Gn7KlUrOuFw

This sketch is playing back Simon Jansen's brilliant ASCII animation of Star Wars on a tiny 2.2" LCD Screen.

The animation is stored on the SPIFFS flash filesytem of the ESP8266 and runs standalone without WiFi.

If you like it please leave a ⭐!

Versions:

• AsciiWars_v04 works with the standard TFT_eSPI library, but flickers a bit
• AsciiWars_v04_patched needs a patched TFT_eSPI library to reduce flicker, see below

Platform & Hardware needed:

• This project needs the Arduino IDE 1.8.10+
• a WEMOS D1 mini Module (4MB Flash)
• an ILI9341 240x320 Pixel RGB TFT LCD Display
• and a few wires to connect everything up

Usage:

• Connect LCD to Wemos D1 mini -> see connection infos in asciiwars.ino file or below

• Start Arduino IDE

• Check you have the ESP8266 board support installed under Tools -> if not install it: ESP8266_Arduino

• check you have the ESP8266FS tool under Tools -> if not install it: ESP8266FS Plugin

• check that you have the necessary libs installed:

  • TFT_eSPI -> Don't forget to edit the libraries User_Settings.h to enable the ILI9341 display

• Uncomment SPIFFS Formatting Block in the Sketch

• Arduino Board Select: Wemos D1 mini

• Change to Flash Size: 4M (3M SPIFFS)

• Open Serial Monitor and then Upload Sketch

• Check for SPIFFS formatting progress

• Comment out the SPIFFS Formatting Block in the Sketch

• Close Serial Monitor

• Upload Data with Tools -> ESP8266FS tool. This uploads the animation into the SPIFFs.

• Upload Sketch without active SPIFFS Formatting Block 😏

-> Have fun.

Connections:

Connect the following Wemos D1 Mini pins to the ILI9341 LCD:

Wemos D1	LCD
+3V3 VCC	VCC
GND	GND
D8	CS
+3V3 VCC	RST
D3	DC / RS
D7	SDI (MOSI)
D5	SCK
+3V3 VCC	LED
D6	SDO (MISO)

Flickering:

Unfortunatly, clearing/redrawing the screen takes up a lot of time and can lead to visible flicker. To reduce this effect we can apply a patch that only clears the next character to be drawn just in time.

• To reduce flicker -> patch TFT_eSPI Library (Line 2780):

       ...   if(size > 1) {
               xo16 = xo;
               yo16 = yo;
             }
       
             // PATCH for AsciiWars:
             if (bg != color) {
               fillRect(x,y-5,6,7,bg);
             }
             
             // GFXFF rendering speed up
             uint16_t hpc = 0; // Horizontal foreground pixel count
             for(yy=0; yy<h; yy++) {
               for(xx=0; xx<w; xx++) {
       ...
  

  • ( This patched TFT_eSPI Lib is available on my github as well: TFT_eSPI_patched.zip )