[Question] Difference between LED intensity and LED level all

[domchristie]

I'm currently working on providing Series compatibility to halvves/webmonome, and am wondering what the difference is between LED intensity and LED levels. If I understand the docs correctly:

• LED intensity controls the brightness for all LEDs (and this appears to work for my Walnut 64)
• LED level provides brightness control for either a single LED, rows or columns, an 8x8 block, or the entire grid

If so, is there a reason why the Series protocol reduces the level to a single bit:

libmonome/src/proto/series.c

Lines 263 to 266 in cd11b2f

	static int proto_series_led_level_set(monome_t *monome, uint_t x, uint_t y,
	uint_t level) {
	return proto_series_led_set(monome, x, y, reduce_level_to_bit(level));
	}

Could it just pass the level value unchanged?

Also, given that my Walnut 64 supports variable brightness for all the LEDs, could it also support varying levels for individual LEDs/row/frames?

Thanks!

[tehn]

series grids have an LED driver that supports 1-bit per LED, plus overall brightness (intensity) so there is no per-LED level addressing hence the reducing to 1 bit. it does this for backwards compatibility to ensure series grids work in some predictable way with newer level messages.

series driver is MAX7219 btw

[domchristie]

@tehn got it! thanks!