Uploading new images

To upload images, make sure the switch is OFF and connect the staff to a computer. It should appear as an external USB drive - as if you had plugged in a USB flash drive. Just drag the images to the staff to upload. All images must be saved to the root directory of the staff drive - please do not create subdirectories.

Technical requirements for images:

  • Images must be in bitmap (BMP) format, with 24 bit color depth. Use any software you like to convert images in other formats to bmp - e.g. you can use Microsoft Paint 3D.

  • The images are shown one horizontal line at a time; thus, it is recommended to use images with width of 72 pixels - to match the number of LEDs on the staff. Maximal image size is 72x288 pixels.

  • Image filenames must be at most 30 symbols long and can only contain letters, numbers, dashes and underscores. No spaces or special symbols!

You can create your own images or search for existing ones. A good source for POV image patterns is Visual POI Zone. When downloading images from there, make sure to choose Visual poi V4 mini (72px) option. You will also need to rotate images 90 degrees.

Please note that the same color (i.e. the same RGB values) can look quite different on the screen of your computer and on LED strip. Experiment with colors to get some feel for it.

Once you have uploaded the images, you need to create a list showing in which order these images should be played during the show. Create the file imagelist.txt in the root directory of the POV staff (or open the file if it already exists) and put there the list of image files in the order you want to use them in your show, one filename per line, including .bmp extension. Optionally, you can also add how long the image should be shown, in seconds (whole numbers only!), separated from filename by one or more spaces

image1.bmp 20
image2.bmp 41
image5.bmp 10
image1.bmp

You can include some image file more than once, or not at all - it is your choice. The name of your image list must be imagelist.txt, all lower case.

Once you have saved the image list, eject the POV staff as you would normally do a USB flash drive, and unplug the cable.

To help you figure out correct rotation and orientation of images, the pictures below show the same image in BMP file and how it will look when using the POV staff.

Image in file
Image on staff

Directory images in the GitHub repository https://github.com/shurik179/povstaff contains some sample images and imagelist.txt file; to get started, you can just copy the contents of that directory to root directory of your staff.