Custom Character Generator

[Darrel Taylor]

The latest vBulletin update has really messed up the Custom Character Generator.
Please use this off forum version. Bookmark it for later use.
http://www.darreltaylor.com/files/CustChar.htm



For more information about Custom Characters, see the thread...
http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=1489

[sean-h]

Excellent!

[NavMicroSystems]

Good job, Darrel!

[Art]

Excellent job, and thanx for sharing
I would never have bothered with custom characters before this.
Cheers, Art.

[Dave]

Darrel Taylor, Is there any chance you could make your character generator program available as an executable for me to put onto my PBP directory for further reference?

Dave Purola,
N8NTA

[Luciano]

LCD Character Generator: (Freeware)
http://www.parallax.com/dl/sw/lcdcc.zip
* * *

Luciano

[Darrel Taylor]

Yikes!, I'm falling behind here. Not enough hours in a day.

Sean, Ralph and Art,

Thank you!

This was actually a side product of what I was working on, (more on that later). But it worked so good I thought I'd Post it. Could use a little more speed. And then there's that "FireFox problem'....uuugh. Fortunately, the main project is working much better,(more on that later). Is there an echo in here?? Hmmm.

Luciano:
Thanks for that, well not really. I've actually used that program before(back when I was using "Stamps", yuck!). So i guess you could say that the thought wasn't very original. However, the LCDCC.EXE program isn't very PicBasic Pro freindly.   While it does a good job of creating data for the characters, it doesn't address how to send them to the LCD, or what address you need to send them to.

I think this version overcomes those deficiencies and allows you to just Cut&Paste the results into your "PicBasic Pro" program.

But then, it doesn't answer Dave's request.  Kinda screws up my defensive posturing,...(more on that later)...there it is again, who said that?

Dave:
It's written in Javascript for browsers. I don't know if it can be turned into a stand alone program or not. ???

However, if you don't want to enter the forum to use it. You can bookmark this page, and use it anytime you like.
http://www.DarrelTaylor.com/files/CustChar.htm

Or, go to that page and use (File | Save As) and you'll have an OFF-line copy.

[Luciano]

Hi Darrel,

My computers were manufactured in the last century.

Below you can find the performances of your javascript on my machines.

During the test I have generated only one character. (Letter T).
I have no Antivirus installed on the computers.
Only IE6.0 is open. In the W2K task manager, IEXPLORE.EXE gets
98% of the CPU when the javascript is executed and goes back
to 0% when the javascript is over.

===============================================

Generated character: (Letter T)
LCDOUT 254,64,31,4,4,4,4,4,4,0 ' Cust Char #0

Results:

(I click the eleven boxes with the mouse and wait).

Pentium 166 MHz, 128MB, W98SE, IE6.0:
105 seconds

Pentium II 300 MHz, 256MB, W2K SP4, IE6.0:
27 seconds

===============================================

I like and appreciate your support in this forum.
This is only a problem report.

Best regards,


Luciano

[Darrel Taylor]

That's good to know, thanks Luciano.

I knew it was a little sluggish, but it didn't seem that bad on my 3ghz, Hyperthreading laptop.

I'll have to see what I can do.

[Acetronics2]

I'll have to see what I can do.

Hi, Darrel

The best you could do is a Downloadable version ...

Alain

[Darrel Taylor]

That would definately be the fastest way, but by now, most people have learned not to just download executable code written by a nobody. Many of them/us, found out the hard way. Even if they're not an intentionaly malicious program, inexperienced programmers can cause just as many problems, if not more. So, from everyone else's perspective, I would NOT download an executable file from Darrel Taylor.

At least with Javascript, you don't have to worry about that (As long as you have your browser security set somewhere above "low"). And, hopefully, it will give easy access to more people.

I now know why this program is moving so slow. And because of the same reason it's getting slower with every additional post in this thread.

I'm sure I can make it quite a bit zippier.   Just a matter of getting it done. Although I don't know if it will ever be sufficient at 166mhz.

[mytekcontrols]

I sure hope you aren't using it with Win2000 or XP

My slowest machine is a 350Mhz AMD K2 with about 512 Megs of RAM onboard. It has Win2000 on it, and I barely find it tolerable for web surfing (plus it takes forever to fully boot-up, and this is a fresh install). In fact to tell you the truth, I rarely ever use it, and instead use my 2 Ghz Pentium 4 machine.

If I didn't have a faster machine already, I would probably look into buying either a new motherboard for the AMD box, or just buy a new Wintergreen (or similar) unit if I was on a tight budget. It is sad that computers go obsolete so fast, which I think is largely brought on by bloated operating systems. Heck even Linux which was once heralded as being so much faster then Windows, now also requires a pretty healthy machine if you want to run it with a full graphical interface, and the newest apps.

Back to the LCD character generator:

Would using some other web friendly language help improve the speed?

[Darrel Taylor]

OK, well it took almost a complete re-write, but I think it did the trick.

And, it works with FireFox now too.

It's almost instantaneous on my machine (3ghz), but I guess that doesn't mean much.
I don't have any slow computers to try it on.

Luciano, can you give me another Speed Test??

[Luciano]

Hi Darrel,

Pentium 166 MHz, 128MB, W98SE, IE6.0:
Test results: No delay, almost instantaneous.

Pentium II 300 MHz, 256MB, W2K SP4, IE6.0:
Test results: No delay, almost instantaneous.

Thank you!

Luciano

[Acetronics2]

Thanks a lot Darrel,

I saved the web page on my disk ... and it works perfecty at home.

No more speed problems !!!

Alain

[Darrel Taylor]

Thanks Luciano!

Wasn't expecting the results to be quite that good. But hey, I'll take it!

Best part is, it means that the next part of this project should work just as good, since it uses the same concepts in Javascript. (more on that later)

Alain

Thanks for the update on the off-line version. I'm glad I remembered to update that page.
I see some new features for the Cust Char gen script on the horizon. So you may need to download it again in the future.

---

For one, I'd like it to do "Animated" characters too. Shouldn't be too hard right?

[T.Jackson]

That's excellent Darrel!

I know how time consuming Java can be. Not difficult, but time-consuming. To give everyone an idea of just how time consuming, I've spent about the past fortnight doing my final Java assignment for UNI. If I did it in Visual Basic, it would have taken a few days! The assignment is a complete application - Short Course Management System. It's graphically-based and utilizes many Swing components, this is the real time-consuming part - designing & programming the user interface (UI). A total of 20 classes make up the project. When I say it's object orientated I mean it's nothing but OOP. This is Java's ultimate strength!

[Acetronics2]

Hi, Darrel

As I widely use the generator to show different kinds of signals and graphics on LCD ... I use to store the 8 characters groups as include files.

BUT ... what is missing a bit is how to MEMORIZE a "character vs code" picture.

Could you add a feature like "print screen" .... ???

Thanks for your help

Alain

[mister_e]

The day i found energy, time and cash, i'll update the PicMultiCalc in such way that you'll be able to store them in a personnal "Library" Like icons... sort of.