Esp8266 wemos mini d1 trying to build the tiny word clock by espruino

Issue I am having is I would like the esp8266 board to connect to the 8x8 led matrix via the module max7219 ??

Any help or pointers to tutorials that will help end goal much appreciated.

Thanks I am very much a noob at this and thought I throw myself in the deep end with lockdown as Normally build drones.

No reason why it should not work. Get display flicker free could be a challenge, since the ESP8266 reserves some bandwidth for its Wifi stack and when not given back the control, it resets by itself.

Espruino's Soft(ware)-SPI should work. I used so far Espruino boards that do not have that limitation and pair it with a plain ESP8266 for Wifi connectivity.

Take a look at my posts with displays... not exactly geared towards the max7219, but shifting bits into registers to drive columns (source/sink) and other bits to drive the rows (sink/source).

Here some links:

• Driving LED matrix with shift registers such as 74HC595
  
• use a led matrix 5x7 without driver chip?
  
• Retro Bubble Displays driven with 74HC595
  
• ...
  
  

They all follow the same concept. Using a dedicated chip - like the max7219 - cut down on the coding, decoding and as well on the wiring...

Hi - there's already a driver for MAX7219, so it should be pretty much copy & paste: http://www.espruino.com/MAX7219#graphics-library

Just use software SPI if you're beginning so you don't have to care about the pins used:

var spi = new SPI();
spi.setup({mosi:B15, sck:B13});  //<-------------- change to the p;in names you use here
var disp = require("MAX7219").connect(spi, B14); //<------- and here

var g = Graphics.createArrayBuffer(8,8,1); // Create graphics
g.flip = function() { disp.raw(g.buffer); }; // To send to the display

g.drawString("Hi");
g.flip(); // update what's on the display

The MAX7219 actually does the scanning itself, so in this case I don't believe flicker will be a problem for you

Cheers guys, i will and Gordon that will be epic.

Well watch a few videos on flash in the boards no one seems to have done it on the mini d1 so hopefully it works same as the original esp8266