4Digit Shield is getting smooth scrolling.

Below is smooth column scrolling on the 4-digit shield.  This is not a native mode of the MAX6953 driver but one can use the “User Defined Font” character address space to fake smooth scrolling is some way.

Below is the default character scroll.  It is quite use-able but not as smooth as column scrolling.

Column scroll vs. Character scroll:

Pros:

• Column scroll on 4 digits looks nicer than scrolling one character at a time.

Cons :

• Column scroll uses much more code space since we cannot use the built-in character map to generate user fonts.
• Column scroll is CPU intensive – shifting in column by column and the writing to user fonts is intensive.  How much I don’t know yet,  but it should use quite a bit more resources than character scroll.

Tags: 4-Digit, 5x7 shield, arduino, Arduino led matrix, Arduino shield, display shield, led matrix, MAX6953