ESP32-HUB75-MatrixPanel-DMA/examples/ChainedPanels/README.md

## Chained Panels example - Chaining individual LED matrix panels to make a larger panel ##

This is the PatternPlasma Demo adopted for use with multiple
displays arranged in a non standard order

### What is a non standard order? ###

When you connect multiple panels together, the library treats the
multiple panels as one big panel arranged horizontally. Arranging
the displays like this would be a standard order.
```
[ 4 ][ 3 ][ 2 ][ 1 ]  (ESP32 is connected to 1)
```

If you wanted to arrange the displays vertically, or in rows and 
columns this example might be able to help.
```
[ 4 ][ 3 ]
[ 2 ][ 1 ]
```

It creates a virtual screen that you draw to in the same way you would
the matrix, but it will look after mapping it back to the displays.

![Nothing better than a PowerPoint slide to explain](VirtualDisplay.png)

### Steps to Use ###

1) In ESP32-RGB64x32MatrixPanel-I2S-DMA.h:

- Set the MATRIX_HEIGHT to be the y resolution of the physical chained panels in a line (if the panels are 32 x 16, set it to be 16)
- Set the MATRIX_WIDTH to be the sum of the x resolution of all the physical chained panels (i.e. If you have 4 x (32px w x 16px h) panels, 32x4 = 128) 

2) In the sketch:

- Set values for NUM_ROWS, NUM_COLS, PANEL_RES_X, PANEL_RES_Y. There are comments beside them
explaining what they are in more detail.
- Other than where the matrix is defined and matrix.begin in the setup, you should now be using the virtual display
for everything (drawing pixels, writing text etc). You can do a find and replace of all calls if it's an existing sketch
(just make sure you don't replace the definition and the matrix.begin)
- If the sketch makes use of MATRIX_HEIGHT or MATRIX_WIDTH, these will need to be replaced with the width and height
of your virtual screen. Either make new defines and use that, or you can use virtualDisp.width() or .height()

#### Contributor ####
Written by Brian Lough
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