I wanted to have a BTC exchange rate ticker on my desk that I can also see when I am not using my computer and the screens went into power safe mode (of course the computer itself has to be running). I found and bought a cheap programmable USB LED display which I thought could fit the purpose, the
Dream Cheeky LED Message Board.
The default software is fun to play around with but as I needed something that is obviously not part of the default package I searched how I could use it with my own code and found an alternate driver for it written in C# that has support for plug-ins. I wrote the plug-in and use it for myself but I thought it makes sense to share it for other BTC nerds like me out there.
http://s8.postimg.org/5bpkx841t/bitcoin_ticker.jpgFeatures- Works for various fiat currencies and can easily be extended to support more (basically every ticker that Mt.Gox provides)
- Shows the last trade price in a given fiat currency, updated every 5 seconds
- A change in price is shown by an animation: the new price scrolls in from above if it is a higher price or from below of it's a lower price than the last
- Refresh rate is configurable, animations can be disabled
- Uses as much as possible of the display area, for smaller numbers more fractional digits are shown
- Automatically rounds the number so that it fits the display
PrerequisitesTo use this plug-in you need the
Dream Cheeky LED Message Board. I am not related to Dream Cheeky in anyway and won't be able to give you any support for the hardware itself or answer questions about where to buy it.
Furthermore you need this
alternative USB LED driver. Again I am not related to the developer of this software and cannot give you any support for it.
Download and usageView SourceDownloadThe proposed file extension for the download is
.txt - you need to change this to
.cs so that the resulting file name is
coynzer.BTCTicker.cs and save the file to the same folder where the
LedMatrixDriverApp.exe from the alternative driver is. Afterwards start the USB LED Driver software (or if it is already running click the "Reload" button) and you should see new BTCTicker entries for various currencies.
SupportI wrote this for myself and don't plan on doing full-time support here. But of course I might be willing to answer questions (just ask) and if you find problems and report them I probably want to fix them and provide an the updated version.
Also feel free to extend the plug-in and post your improvement here, if I like it I will link to your modified version from the main post.
