How to increase Arduino's memory to save Dot Matrix Library?

Question

I need to display some dynamic Chinese characters to 12864 using Arduino. What to show is transported from my web server. The character is stored as a 16x16 dot matrix, needing 16*16/8=32 byte. And I need to show some sentences, which contains more than 100 Chinese characters.

The problem is that I can't storage all the dot matrix data in Arduino because it has too small memory.

• If I get the dot matrix data from web server, I need to have 100*32B memory, but SPAM with EEPROM have only 3k. So that failed.
• If I save the dot matrix "library" in the Flash memory, I need 3500*32B (There are 3500 Chinese frequent-used characters), but there is only 32K Flash. Saving the "library" means that I should storage the dot matrix data of all the 3500 chars in Flash, then the server only need to send the Unicode of characters, and I can get the matrix of the char.

Any help is appreciated!

• 23ars: The character is stored as 16x16 dot matrix, 1 character=1 B... why don't you change the type of the character. sincer is 1 B, I assume is char/unsigned char. But you can reduce the size of the variable using bitfields. struct { type [member_name] : width ; }
• ch271828n: @23ars Yes I already use unsigned char[16*16/8] to storage a character dot matrix.

Answer 1

1. Use a different Arduino or Arduino-clone with more flash memory

2. Store the character bitmaps in external EEPROM (example)

• ch271828n: Er, how to clone with more flash memory? I can't find the solution in your first link.
• RedGrittyBrick: @Turtle: I wasn't clear enough, I meant a clone of an Arduino design not manufactured by the Italian company of that name. I'll revise the answer to clarify.
• Majenko: Option 3: Add an external SPI SRAM chip to store the incoming dot-matrix data - you can get them commonly up to 128KiB in size.
• ch271828n: @Majenko er, could you please tell me how to search for it? And what's the name of these chips?( for example, 24lc256)

Answer 2

The basic EEPROM write, each 1 byte, as is mentioned in the above answer.

http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/arduino-external-eeprom

The PAGE WRITE which is suitable for this situation. One can easily read 32 bytes for a dot matrix.

http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/eeprom-page-write