RE: DMX diagnostics tool - running out of time

Andrew J — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 08:49:08 GMT

This has been some great work Gene.

Apologies if you know the following already, but two things you could do with the strings is

Store them in the Nano's EEPROM rather than memory and read them out when needed (data in the EEPROM is indexed in line with your idea of indexing them in an array) - depends on the speed of operation required whether this would be useful or not; and/or
Use char arrays instead of String (or String arrays) which uses less memory and helps prevent heap fragmentation.

A little while ago, I tried to see what the compile difference between #defines and CONST and couldn't find any, at least not in terms of memory consumption. I actually spent some time jotting down compile sizes, making changes, recompiling and checking sizes again in order to try and get memory consumption down. Char arrays made a big difference; being strict with other types also made a big difference (i.e. don't use an Int type when a uint_8 would do.) Rationalising functions helped as well, even if it required a bit of shonky code to do it which you would normally make you throw up if you saw it, e.g. passing in a flag to the function and using if-then-else to drive the bit of code in the function was executed.

RE: DMX diagnostics tool - running out of time

davedarko — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 19:13:54 GMT

No matter all the other achievements, I applaud you for how you designed the display cutout for the case. I get angry at designs that let the metal case of the LCD show [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-a6d6b7fa-732b-40ff-b052-c7113e3841ac/contentimage_5F00_2516.png:16:16]

RE: DMX diagnostics tool - running out of time

three-phase — Fri, 15 May 2020 19:41:53 GMT

This is a nice update, you have achieved a lot over the course of this project.

Kind regards