#+TITLE: bad-apple-embedded-rs

[[assets/bad_apple.jpg]]

Why? Because I wanted to and because Rust rocks!

* Demo
[[assets/bad_apple.gif]]

A full demo can be found [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn2qinh5Zyo][here]].

* Features
This project was built using an =STM32F303ZE= with a simple =ssd1306= OLED display.
On my chip it can draw 21x10 characters (83x60 pixels) with stable 8 frames per second and
was designed and built to play Bad Apple, but anything else would also work.
Frame timings and length of the video can be adjusted, too high frames per second can lead to slowed down playback due to the render time being larger than the desired one.
Faster render times (lower fps) are being adjusted for.

* How to use
1. Convert a video to an ASCII file, using =video-to-ascii.py=
2. Adjust frame timing in the main program (draw time per picture, width, height, total frames)
3. Flash and enjoy!

Don't forget to adjust the HAL and I2C pins in the code.
The lastest =ascii.txt= I used is also present in this repository.

* Input format
The screen renders video through ASCII characters. It takes in a long text file, containing all the images in a contiguous stream, which is then read in =IMAGE_LEN=-sized (height * width + newline chars) chunks in the main program.
If these parameters don't match up, the end result won't either.

* Dependencies
The =video-to-ascii.py= conversion script uses [[https://github.com/ivanl-exe/image-to-ascii/][image-to-ascii]] for the conversion in the background.
It is assumed to be located on the same height as this project and that it is build in release-mode (due to performance).

* TODO
- [X] Fix timing in draw (still a tiny bit off, but it's fine)
- [ ] Rewrite ASCII conversion in Rust or Haskell (with an own implementation of =ascii-to-text=)