img2pcd8544

This utility converts images to to a format suitable for the PCD8544 LCD controller. It currently supports 3 modes:

• Font mode. ex: img2pcd8544 --font /path/to/font.png C_CONST_NAME 6 8
• Bitmap mode. ex: img2pcd8544 --bmp /path/to/input.png C_CONST_NAME
• Preview mode. ex: img2pcd8544 --fmt /path/to/input.png /path/to/output.png

Note: This utility was made in support of the libsangster_avr convenience library, but it should be simple enough to adapt for other uses.

Font mode

This mode converts an image file to a C header file which can be used as a font with sangster/pcd8544/text.h from libsangster_avr.

Usage: img2pcd8544 --font INPUT_IMG FONT_NAME CHAR_W CHAR_H

Argument	Description
INPUT_IMG	The image file to convert to a font. The width must be a multiple of CHAR_W and the height must be a multiple of CHAR_H. The filetype can be any supported by ImageMagick. The image itself must contain a grid of CHAR_W x CHAR_H glyphs.
FONT_NAME	The C identifier that will be used to name this font in the genrated header file.
CHAR_W	The width of every character in the font, in pixels.
CHAR_H	The height of every character in the font, in pixels. Currently, this must be exactly 8.

docs/example-font.png contains an exaple input file, containing a square (8x8 px) font. To convert this to a font header, use this command:

img2pcd8544 --font docs/example-font.png EXAMPLE 8 8 > example_font.h

Example input image

Example output header file

The Arduino Pong project has an example output file: logo.h. This file was created using the same input file as example-font.png, but to save space on the Arduino every non-digit character was removed.

Bitmap mode

This mode converts an image file to a C header file which can be used as a bitmap image with sangster/pcd8544/bmp.h from libsangster_avr.

Usage: img2pcd8544 --bmp INPUT_IMG CONST_NAME

Argument	Description
INPUT_IMG	The image file to convert to a bipmap header. The filetype can be any supported by ImageMagick.
CONST_NAME	The C identifier that will be used to name this image in the genrated header file.

Although the image can be essentially anything supported by ImageMagick, it will be shrunk down to fit within a 48x84 px frame, and converted to 1-bit "color," so you may need to massage your input file to get decent results.

Example output header file

The Arduino Pong project has an example output file: logo.h.

Preview mode

This mode is really just a tool to help you create decent input images for img2pcd8544 --bmp. It outputs a new image file showing approximately what the bitmap will look like on the LCD screen.

Usage: img2pcd8544 --fmt INPUT_IMG OUTPUT_IMG

Argument	Description
INPUT_IMG	The image file to convert to a bipmap. The filetype can be any supported by ImageMagick.
OUTPUT_IMG	The path to write the new image to.

Installation

git clone git@github.com:sangster/img2pcd8544.git
cd img2pcd8544
make && sudo make install

Depndencies

• libmagick: The ImageMagick C library.

License

This project is licensed under the GPL License - see the LICENSE file for details