The board arrives: the first firmware
The MatrixPortal S3 board arrived, but the LED panel is still in the mail. That was fine: most of the firmware can be built and tested with the board plugged into a computer, where its output shows up in the Arduino Serial Monitor.
What the first firmware does
- Joins Wi-Fi and sets its clock, which secure connections need.
- Connects securely to tcgmarquee.com, trusting only a short list of certificate authorities.
- Pairs with an account: it prints a code, I approve it at tcgmarquee.com/link, and it saves its device key for next time.
- Downloads every page of the wall, already drawn by the server, and shows a text sketch of a card page to prove the pixels arrived.
- Rotates through the pages on the wall's timer, and checks for new prices every minute.
The server draws each page and sends the finished pixels, so the board doesn't need fonts or image code. That keeps the firmware small, and it means the board shows exactly what the web preview shows.
It worked on the first successful build. The only surprise was a count: my collection had more pages than the board would load. That became the next fix.