Aurora v1.6

Built with Arduino 1.6.4 and Teensyduino 1.23.

This release better supports both SmartMatrix Kickstarter and SmartMatrix Shield hardware.

New Features

• Pong clock face
• Countdown clock face
  • Only available if target date/time is set in /aurora/countdwn.txt file.
  • Uses the format yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss
  • For example: 2015-06-24 21:00:00
  • Hidden/disabled if target isn't set, or it's already past.

New Features for Kickstarter Hardware

• Turn off display when on USB and not external power.
• Sleep on reset button press.
• Status LED pulses while Aurora is running.

Improvements

• Moved simple messages.txt file to SD card root.
• If messages.txt file doesn't exist in the SD card root, it's now created with two sample messages.
• Changed default look of simple messages: color=white, top=11, left=0, font=gohufont11b, speed=50, mode=wrapForward.
• Disabled demo mode, only really useful for shows, can easily be re-enabled in source code.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed last message file not being played.
• Fixed last character of messages in messages.txt file not showing.

Aurora v1.5

Updated to support Arduino 1.6.4 and Teensyduino 1.23.

New Features

• Audio Patterns! Uses an MSGEQ7 chip to provide music visualization.
• New and improved patterns!
• New clock faces!
• Update files via USB MSD (mass storage device) mode, without removing the SD card!
• Support for Teensy RTC, in addition to DS1307. Requires 32 kHz crystal, this one from Adafruit will work but is a little large.

Improvements

• Support for simple, single messages file, with one message per line, using default font, color, location, speed, and scroll mode.
• Random playback mode no longer changes to a random palette each time it switches patterns.
• New Random palette changes to a randomly chosen palette from the list (Rainbow, Ice, Fire, etc) each time the current pattern is changed (manually or automatically).
• Improved remote control interaction (better handling of held buttons, buttons only enabled where they make sense, etc).
• Improved menu interaction (modes and settings only enabled if optional hardware available, etc).
• A single press of the PlayMode or Palette button now shows the current selection. Another press while the indicator is shown moves to the next. Left and Right buttons move backwards and forwards, respectively, as long as the indicator is shown. The Select button hides the indicator.
• Patterns and Audio Patterns modes now use a shuffled list for random playback mode, allowing forward and backward navigation.
• Improved text clock (use "five past two" instead of "two oh five").
• Autoplay duration settings menu item now has a seconds label, number wraps from 999 to 1 and back.
• Held overlay button now shows and hides overlay.
• Brightness Up/Down buttons now exit power save (off) mode, in addition to Power and Cycle Brightness buttons.
• Brightness no longer 'wraps' when changed via brightness up/down buttons.
• Animations will now finish playing (no matter how long they are) before autoplay and random playback modes move to the next animation.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed overlay button not always cycling through clocks and messages correctly.
• Fixed clock not always being available.

Aurora v1.4

Updated to support Arduino 1.6.3 and Teensyduino 1.22.

Features

• Added palette smearing patterns.
• Added two "Incremental Drift" patterns.
• Maze, NoiseSmearing, and Swirl patterns now use selected palette instead of hard-coded colors.
• Removed streaming mode menu, now switches to streaming mode automatically when TPM2 data is received.
• Text clock now uses selected clock color.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed compiler warnings.
• Fixed crash when exiting brightness and background brightness settings.
• Fixed flashing text in clock color settings.
• Fixed menu color setting text.

Aurora v1.3

Features

• Added streaming mode with support for TPM2 protocol. (See details in the Wiki)
• Added new patterns (analog clock, electric mandala, swirl).
• Added Swirl pattern by Mark Kriegsman: https://gist.github.com/kriegsman/5adca44e14ad025e6d3b
• Added Stefan Petrick's "Electric Mandala" pattern from FunkyNoise: https://github.com/StefanPetrick/FunkyNoise
• Added Stefan Petrick's noise smearing patterns. (Details in SmartMatrix Community Post)
• Added text clock (like the Pebble text watch face: twelve o'clock, four nineteen, nine oh one, etc).
• Added blending between palette changes, courtesy of FastLED 3.1's new nblendPaletteTowardPalette function.
• Added 'munching squares' pattern. Thanks @jblang
• Made the Life pattern (Conway's Game of Life) more colorful. Thanks @jblang
• Changed Attract pattern to use beatsin8 to periodically and gradually change the dim (blur) amount.
• Added Eclipse IDE compatibility. Thanks @kigster
• Added palette name indicator when switching palettes.
• Added mappings for new IR remotes (some overlap and cannot be used without code changes).
• Switched menu font to gohufont11b, default menu color to blue, and added menu color setting.
• Swapped out some unused kaleidoscope effects for the newer ones from FunkyNoise.
• Pendulum Wave pattern: now with 100% less floating point math, thanks to FastLED 3.1!
• Added Autoplay Duration saved setting and menu item.
• Switched indicators (brightness, audio scale, palette) to use menu color instead of white.
• Added version checks for backwards compatibility with FastLED 3.0 and 3.1.
• Made ElectricMandala backwards compatible with older FastLED versions.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed palette name indicator never being hidden.
• Fixed crash in brightness settings.

Aurora v1.2.1

• Added new PendulumWave pattern.
• Fixed clock time not changing/updating until a button is pressed.
• Fixed pause between animation cycles.
• Increased the default delay before button hold event.

Aurora v1.2

• Updated to support new FastLED v3.0 release.
• Added support for scrolling text messages by adding txt and/or js files to a messages directory on the sd card, with a readme.md file explaining the format.
• Held C button now hides the clock or message. Another press will show the current message, and subsequent presses will cycle to the next.
• Added a spinning "particle accelerator" pattern.
• Added FlowField pattern.
• The Back button now does nothing in the main menu.
• Changed minimum brightness from 1% to 10% (from 1 to 16).
• Fixed Spiral pattern freezing for 10 seconds or more after being inactive for long periods of time.
• Fixed Settings menu not looping when pressing the Up button.
• Fixed bug where pressing the select button with a scrolling text message visible would not display the menu text.
• Fixed settings main menu item crashing if SD card isn't present.
• Fixed crash if the gifs or messages directories on the SD card do not exist.

Aurora v1.1

Refactored Effects, added several new effects.

Added a 'splash' on startup, shows the Pixelmatix logo and scrolls "Aurora by Pixelmatix".
Added a BitmapPlayer for displaying 24bpp bitmaps, and an example pattern.
Fixed a crash in PatterRainbowSmoke caused by a call to randomSeed, need to investigate further...