Peer Into The Matrix with an ESP8266 or ESP32 and Eric Nam's "Digital Rain" Project

from hackster.io

That Project's Eric Nam has been getting into the mood for the upcoming new entry in the Matrix franchise with a little "digital rain" project — letting you have your own scrolling Matrix-like displays on an ESP32 or ESP2866 with any TFT_eSPI-compatible display.

Building on an earlier project but introducing TFT_eSPI support, allowing it to work with any display supported by the popular library, Nam's digital rain animator is designed to mimic the simplified view of the Matrix as seen from the real world: An iconic stream of glowing and fading characters falling from the top to the bottom like rain.

Nam has been working on the project for a while, but has recently added some new customization features — including the ability to alter the colors of the background, text, and header characters, giving the user the choice of a Matrix-like green-on-black or any custom color scheme of their choice.

"It needs more updates," says Nam, who was inspired into the project by the announcement of a fourth — fifth, if you count the excellent Animatrix shorts — entry in the Matrix franchise, "but I hope you can enjoy this one."

The software, which is compatible with Espressif ESP32 and ESP8266 microcontrollers and which comes with a range of demos to get you started, is available through the Arduino IDE Library manager or on GitHub under the permissive MIT license.