OpenProto

Adding the "-gen" was just too much to ask for

Features

• A beautiful mobile-first (fursuit friendly!) web interface for controlling/adding your expressions, all designed to be portable and accessed through a phone hotspot
• A text animation editor for quickly creating new text-based animated expressions
• Supports png, jpg, and gif for animated expressions
• Customizable panel parameters to allow for a wide range of configurations
• Continuous, Mirrored, And Duplicated modes for chained panels
• Asynchronous loading of animations & smart swapping for a seamless experience
• Fursuit not required! (although this software was designed as protogen software)

Special thanks to Ray for all the awesome art!

Installation & Running

Note

This program was designed to be run on a raspberry pi and requires networking capabilities!

1. Clone this repository on your raspberry pi and run sudo bash first_run.sh on your first installation.
   1. Do not run this with sh! It will fail.
2. Reboot your system if you were prompted to
3. (Optional) open a screen instance to allow you to run the program in the background
   1. This is not installed by default, so make sure to run sudo apt-get install screen if you don't already have screen
4. Run sudo python3 main.py to start the program
   1. If running under screen, detach from the screen instance with ctrl+a+d, you are now free to disconnect from your pi.
5. Connect to the web interface via your raspberry pi's IP address or hostname (I recommend your hostname), adjust your settings, and go!

Warning

This server is NOT secure, nor was it designed to be!

The idea is you run this only on a local network YOU control, like a phone hotspot or your local home network!

Do NOT expose this server to the internet and be careful to whom you give access

If you want access beyond your local net, consider setting something like cloudflared up instead

Depends On:

• rpi-rgb-led-matrix
• gif.js
• Konva
• Flask

Build Guide

These instructions will show you how to get basic LED panels connected to the software.

I won't be showing you how to build a fursuit (sorry)

Parts List:

• Raspberry Pi LED Bonnet (Adafruit)
• Led Panels (Adafruit)
• Power Supply
• (Optional) Battery
• A raspberry pi with wireless capabilities (I used a Zero 2 W)

Build Steps

1. First, consult the parts list and acquire all you need. Of course, you may substitute any parts you cannot find or have found a better replacement for
2. Mount your Bonnet onto the GPIO pins with the board of the bonnet covering the raspberry pi. If you have a pi from the Zero lineup, the bonnet will cover the entire board
3. Wire up your displays. They should come with power cables as well as ribbon cables. Plug the connectors of the power cable into the back of the LED board, and wire the two exposed contact connectors into the terminal on the Bonnet
4. Connect the ribbon cable (provided) from your display to the board. It should denote on the back of the LED board which terminal to plug it into (mine say input).
   1. If you have multiple displays, pick the display you would like to be first in series and connect the ribbon cable from it's input side to the bonnet.
   2. When this is done, connect however many displays you have together through the first board's output terminal, wiring this to the next display's input terminal.

psst. If you need more help wiring check this guide!

5. Connect your raspberry pi to power through the barrel jack on the bonnet. You do not need to provide USB power to the raspberry pi, as it can fetch enough through the barrel jack.
6. Flash your raspberry pi with a LITE image.
   1. Do this either with balena etcher, or the official raspberry pi imager which has a few extra setup options
7. Install & run this software as specified here
8. Enjoy! Your hardware mapping should be set to adafruit-hat, but if it is not change that in settings (assuming you used the adafruit bonnet of course!)

Legal Stuff

This project is licensed under The GNU General Public License (GPLv3.0) License.

You can:

• Use - You are allowed to use the software for any purpose, commercial or otherwise.
• Modify - You can modify the source code.
• Distribute - You can distribute the original or the modified software.

However, there are some conditions:

• Disclose source - Source code must be made available when the software is distributed.
• Same License - Modifications must be released under the same license.
• State changes - Changes made to the code must be documented.

Please read carefully the full GPL-3.0 license for more information.