Change Request / Roadmap Proposal - Native Hub75 Support

[wompslab]

Currently

Product supports Hub75 panels via a PanelCard driver module that makes use of 5A-75b/e cards, this is highly performant when driven by a MM host with sufficient resources - (e.g. a Rockchip based NanoPi R28S will run complex power fx at around 15-20fps on a 256x256 panel, with 8x virtual layer) - similar performance can be achieved via desktop, however performance on other devices, (ESP32-S31 being the reference device) is around 10-20x lower. In addition the capability to allow an ESP32-P4 device to make use of an additional USB GB Ethernet interface is non-trivial, which is a significant blocker as it will prevent it working as a network receiver, which was a key use case - this case is now met (in terms of parity of cost, and exceptional performance of small, cheap rockchip devices).

The colorlight panel cards require configuration via LEDvision and are only really beneficial when running panels greater 16384 pixels, which leaves a gap in the features that is currently met by WLED (both main and Moon Modules.

Native Support for Hub75 Phase 1 - Parity with WLED-MM / MoonModules

• New driver for 'Direct Panel Driver' (name tbc)
• Driver will allow users select the pin mapping with the UI
• 1x Hub75 output port capable of directly driving a range of 'Normal' panels (i.e. not PWM, but inclusive of sPWM panels -e.g those referenced below)
• User will need UI features to set panel dimensions and arrangement (WLED-main does this in sensible manner)

Important

The ESP32-P4-Nano should be a great candidate for driving panels directly given it's extensive GPIO and PPA functions (see Espressif reference solution below)

Other considerations:

• It would be beneficial if a reasonable range of common ESP32 build environments (as per WLED/WLED-MM) could be pre-configured - this would help with adoption and wider acceptance. Suggested board configs: Adafruit S3 Portal, Waveshare RGB Matrix, Lilygo ESP32-S3 (Moonhub75 pin config), ESP32-S3-16MB-PSRAM (all currently supported by WLED).

Summary:

The main delta here is that ProjectMM will need to learn how to drive hub75n panels rather than generate colorlight packets - this will require user input to provide more detail about panel type, layout and configuration - FPP is another pre-extant product that could be used as inspiration.

The goal is to make use of the sigificant performance gains that we have seen ProjectMM give to older, well established MCUs when driving non-Hub75 layouts with large quantities of pixels and apply that to smaller panel count/pixel layous w

Reference and Inspiration:

https://github.com/wled/WLED/releases/tag/v16.0.1 (v 16.0.0 onwards has native Hub75 support)

https://github.com/esphome-libs/esp-hub75/tree/main/components/hub75/src (ESPHome hub75 compent)

MoonModules/WLED-MM@778ae55#diff-bd8d5165aa932055149d4e0db7571029b97f2a860f275ddd079bc591da35bf19 (change to support sPWM panel)

https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/tree/c712a0dde385d659a1470a136251980d31a70bc1/examples/peripherals/parlio/parlio_tx/advanced_rgb_led_matrix (Espressif reference for ESP32-P4 PARLIO Hub75 implementation)

Native Support for Hub75 Phase 2 - Support for a wider range of PWM panels

Full support (as much as is possible) for PWM panels

• This type of panel can provide increased performance for lower cost and are increasingly available
• Traditionally support for this panels has not been available without using commercial equipment, however there are some libraries that offer support to an extent:

Reference and Inspiration:

https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix (most mature and highly performant, is based on driving panels via extensive Raspberrr pi style GPIO.

https://github.com/mrcodetastic/ESP32-PWM-MatrixPanel-DMA (extension / branch of Codetastic library to drive PWM panels.