Using custom images as wallpapers

[jmi2k]

One of the first mods I've done to the firmware was adding support for adding a wallpaper to your ATS-mini. I followed a fairly hackish pragmatic approach:

1. Apply Avoid drawing background color when drawing text #239 onto your working tree to prevent text from drawing on top of your background. This step will not be needed once the PR is merged. The PR was merged so this step is not needed anymore.

2. Transform the desired 320x170 image into a C array of uncompressed pixel data. For that purpose, I used this "File to C style array converter" online tool with the following settings.

   1. Palette mod set to 16bit RRRRRGGGGGGBBBBB (2byte/pixel).
   2. Data type set to uint16_t.
   3. PROGMEM unchecked.

   
   

3. Copy the contents somewhere in the source code and make the symbol accessible from your layout draw function. I just pasted it before said function, but if you want to be smarter you can, for example, define it somewhere else and have an extern declaration (this may be useful if you plan to set the same wallpaper for both UI layouts).

4. On your layout draw function, right at the very beginning, push the image to your screen with pushImage. In my case, that's drawLayoutDefault inside Layout-Default.cpp.

   // [...]
   
   void drawLayoutDefault(const char *statusLine1, const char *statusLine2)
   {
     spr.pushImage(0, 0, IMAGE_WIDTH, IMAGE_HEIGHT, &image);   // <--- add this line here
   
     // [...]

   Note that IMAGE_WIDTH, IMAGE_HEIGHT and image must be the same names the tool generated for your particular image, so pay attention there.

5. Compile the firmware and upload it to your device according to the documentation.

In my case, the result is actually very subtle on purpose (although it is more noticeable on real HW than on my display). The image was cropped from this image of the Tsushima Omega Tower I found while reading about VLF on Wikipedia, then heavily processed until I found it pleasing to the eye.

However, nothing prevents you from going the opposite route :)

Have fun! Some good ideas that could turn this into a real feature:

1. Properly integrate the wallpaper pixel data somewhere into the code, so it can be accessed by many layouts and loaded programmatically.

2. Support color palettes to reduce the amount of memory needed to store the image.

   1. Expose theme colors as palette colors for backgrounds that adapt to the current theme.

3. Support loading images via serial, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

[max-arnold]

ATS Mini is like a Labubu - you never know for sure what hardware revision you'll get when you order it.

[EmEiBee]

... what is a "Labubu" ?

[max-arnold]

Google it :)

[EmEiBee]

Uhhh ^^ WTF!
I think Monchhichis are okay; my wife collects them. But those "things" are horrible; who buys that crap?

[jmi2k]

I see you have made the menu transparent as well :D