use more than 8 custom chars?

[JdGordon]

gday
i want to make a plugin that would inverse the text colour on the lcd (black dots become clear, clear become dots..)

i was thinking its not possile coz there are only 8 custom chars, but i was watching the winamp spectrum and it looks like there are more than 8.. so im wondering can it be done?

also, is it possible for lcdsmartie to draw 1 char at a time to the lcd so if we r stuck with 8 custom chars we can use more by just reusing the 1 char which will stay on the screen untill that character on the lcd is updated??? or am i way off?

[_X7JAY7X_]

You would have to "redefine" the characters every time you wanted to use them. The LCD will "hold" characters once you output characters to it.

For example, define a custom char, output it to the screen then do it all over again.

What exactly would you want to display with it?

[_X7JAY7X_]

I take that back, I just tried to write a plugin to do exactly that and the problem is that LCD Smartie "rewrites" every line to the display. It does not "hold" the characters on the display unless there is something I am missing.

When I went to rewrite the custom character it shows up for all letters that are mapped to that custom char.

[clansley]

On most displays there are only 8 custom characters - once a character is defined it may be used multiple times on the display.

When a character is re-defined the display will automatically change all instances of that custom character on the display to the new definition.

[JdGordon]

ok thanx
thats too bad

[_X7JAY7X_]

Oh, thanks clansey. I thought it was the other way around, that Smartie was rewriting the chars, not the LCD.

That is good to know though.

[clansley]

It's a real shame that it works that way

I think this happens because the display redraws the whole LCD many times a second; so changes are picked up and displayed very quickly.