This Screen-Casting Software Turns an WS2812B LED Matrix Into a Mirror of Your Windows Desktop
Released under a public domain license, the tool is designed to be as close to plug-and-play as possible.
Pseudonymous maker "fabe1999" has been hard at work improving a tool originally designed to turn a custom-built low-resolution LED matrix into a mirror image of a host computer's display — extending it with support for matrices of any size.
"I reworked my program so it can screen share your PC to every WS2812B matrix no matter the size," fabe1999 explains of his updated software and companion Arduino sketch. "I tried to make it as plug and play as possible. I tried a 8×8, 16×16, and 14×17 [matrix]."
The original version of the tool was written as a screen-casting utility for a custom-built LED string display, which fabe1999 showed off earlier this year. "The screen capture essentially takes a screenshot of the whole desktop and uses the coordinates of the window to reframe the image so it matches the transparent part of the application," they explained at the time.
"This screenshot is than downscaled to a picture with 14×16 pixels. From the rescaled [image] you can simply request the RGB value of each pixel and send it to the matrix."
The new version of the tool is broader in its compatibility: It's still designed for use with an LED matrix running on an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller and connected to a Wi-Fi network, but should now support almost any type and size of matrix based on the popular WS2812B addressable RGB LED.
Source code, the companion Arduino sketch, and a pre-built binary for Windows are all available on the project's GitHub repository under a highly permissive public-domain license; more details are available on fabe1999's Reddit thread.