DMA-friendly framebuffer implementations for driving HUB75 RGB LED matrix
panels with Rust. The crate focuses on performance, correct timing,
and ergonomic drawing by integrating tightly with the embedded-graphics
ecosystem.
A HUB75 panel behaves like a long daisy-chained shift-register:
- Color data for one pair of rows is shifted in serially on every cycle of
CLK
. - After the last pixel of the row pair has been clocked, the controller blanks
the LEDs (
OE
HIGH), sets the address lines A–E, and produces a short pulse onLAT
to latch the freshly-shifted data into the LED drivers. OE
goes LOW again and the row pair lights up while the next one is already being shifted.
Color depth is achieved with Binary/Bit-Angle Code Modulation (BCM): lower bit-planes are shown for shorter times, higher ones for longer, yielding 2^n intensity levels per channel while keeping peak currents low.
If you want a deeper explanation, have a look inside src/lib.rs
— the crate
documentation contains an extensive primer.
Module | Extra hardware | Word size | Memory use | Pros / Cons |
---|---|---|---|---|
plain |
none | 16 bit (14 used) | high | Simplest, wires exactly like a standard HUB75 matrix. |
latched |
external latch gate (see below) | 8 bit | ×½ of plain |
Lower memory footprint, but needs a tiny glue-logic board. |
The latched implementation assumes a small external circuit that holds the row address while gating the pixel clock. A typical solution uses a 74xx373 latch along with a few NAND gates:
The latch IC stores the address bits whilst one NAND gate blocks the CLK
signal during the latch interval. The remaining spare gate can be employed
to combine a global PWM signal with OE
for fine-grained brightness control
as shown.
Add the dependency to your Cargo.toml
:
[dependencies]
hub75-framebuffer = "0.3.0"
use hub75_framebuffer::{compute_frame_count, compute_rows};
use hub75_framebuffer::latched::DmaFrameBuffer;
// or ::plain::DmaFrameBuffer
const ROWS: usize = 32; // panel height
const COLS: usize = 64; // panel width
const BITS: u8 = 3; // colour depth ⇒ 7 BCM frames
const NROWS: usize = compute_rows(ROWS); // 16
const FRAME_COUNT:usize = compute_frame_count(BITS); // (1<<BITS)-1 = 7
// Create a framebuffer (already initialized/cleared)
let mut framebuffer = DmaFrameBuffer::<ROWS, COLS, NROWS, BITS, FRAME_COUNT>
::new();
You can now draw using any embedded-graphics
primitive:
use embedded_graphics::prelude::*;
use embedded_graphics::primitives::{Circle, Rectangle, PrimitiveStyle};
use hub75_framebuffer::Color;
Rectangle::new(Point::new(0, 0), Size::new(COLS as u32, ROWS as u32))
.into_styled(PrimitiveStyle::with_fill(Color::BLACK))
.draw(&mut framebuffer)
.unwrap();
Circle::new(Point::new(20, 10), 8)
.into_styled(PrimitiveStyle::with_fill(Color::GREEN))
.draw(&mut framebuffer)
.unwrap();
Finally hand the raw DMA buffer off to your MCU's parallel peripheral.
Required when using the esp-hal
crate for ESP32 development. This
feature switches the ReadBuffer
trait implementation from embedded-dma
to esp-hal::dma
. If you're targeting ESP32 devices with esp-hal
, you
must enable this feature for DMA compatibility.
[dependencies]
hub75-framebuffer = { version = "0.3.0", features = ["esp-hal-dma"] }
Required when targeting the original ESP32 chip (not ESP32-S3 or other variants). This feature adjusts byte ordering to accommodate the quirky requirements of the ESP32's I²S peripheral in 8-bit and 16-bit modes. Other ESP32 variants (S2, S3, C3, etc.) do not need this feature.
[dependencies]
hub75-framebuffer = { version = "0.3.0", features = ["esp32-ordering"] }
Skip drawing black pixels for performance boost in UI applications. When
enabled, calls to set_pixel()
with Color::BLACK
return early without
writing to the framebuffer, assuming the framebuffer was already cleared.
Implement the defmt::Format
trait so framebuffer types can be logged with
the defmt
ecosystem.
Embed documentation images when building docs on docs.rs. Not needed for normal usage.
Enable features in your Cargo.toml
:
[dependencies]
hub75-framebuffer = { version = "0.3.0",
features = ["esp-hal-dma", "esp32-ordering"] }
cargo test
All logic including bitfields, address mapping, brightness modulation and
the embedded-graphics
integration is covered by a comprehensive test-suite
(≈ 300 tests).
Licensed under either of
- Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
- MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.