LCD Gateway

A split-flap display with no split flaps.

This is the SplitFlap Gateway firmware ported to the Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-POE-ETH board, driving a 10.1" MIPI-DSI touch LCD (JD9365, 1280×800). It is the newest member of the family and shares the Matrix Gateway's trick: the RS-485 wire is gone, and in its place is a wall of virtual split-flap modules, each one receiving the same protocol frames a real module would and rendering itself as a flapping character card on the LCD.

Repo: github.com/avandeputte/SplitFlapGatewayLCD. The firmware runs on the Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-POE-ETH board and speaks the gateway REST API natively (ESP-IDF esp_http_server), plus GET /api/events — a Server-Sent Events stream that pushes display state and status the instant the wall changes. OTA and file uploads take the raw file as the request body: curl --data-binary @firmware.bin http://<board>/api/ota/upload. Panel efficiency comes standard: delta frames (PUT /api/canvas/rects), a named sprite-atlas library (PUT /api/canvas/atlas/<name>, optionally persisted), and a persistent draw channel (PUT /api/canvas/stream — records over one connection, no per-frame round trip). The board plays sound and listens (the ES8311 codec's microphone drives the spectrum/scope/spectro/soundwall effects and the "audio":true option on fire/matrix/plasma — all on-device, nothing recorded), mounts a microSD card (/api/sd/*, the dashboard Files tab), and reads a capacitive touchscreen. Ops text is full UTF-8 → CP1252, and the canvas adds scalable anti-aliased text. Like the Matrix Gateway it has no MQTT and no Home Assistant surface — the companion is pure REST and the dashboard is SSE-pushed. The REST contract is openapi.yaml, served live at GET /openapi.yaml.

Where the Matrix Gateway lights up an external LED panel, the LCD Gateway drives a single integrated 10.1" IPS touchscreen — and the board it runs on brings three things the S3 boards don't: a capacitive touchscreen, Ethernet with PoE (one cable powers and networks it), and WiFi 6 (remoted through an onboard ESP32-C6). Two things it drops: there is no battery-backed RTC (the clock comes from NTP) and no IMU — the touchscreen replaces tap gestures.

Everything above the protocol seam is the unmodified gateway — the same web UI, REST API, OTA and command log — so the Companion drives it without any changes and cannot tell the difference, while still unlocking the extras a drawn wall adds: mixed-case text, pictographs, named colours, and the canvas it can draw on.

Why use it

• A big, bright display with no mechanical build — 1280×800 of IPS panel, and the whole stack (web UI, companion, canvas, effects) on one board. No modules, no RS-485, no steppers, no calibration.
• One cable does everything — Power-over-Ethernet carries power and network to a wall-mounted panel over a single run: no barrel jack, no WiFi setup.
• A pixel surface in its own right — full colour, real accented characters, lowercase, the colour flaps, and an animated flip with a physical-looking seam, plus on-device effects, animations and a scalable-text ticker on a proper HD panel.
• A faithful test target — like the Matrix Gateway it emulates at the protocol level, so it exercises the same code paths a real gateway does.

What you need

Part	Notes
Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-POE-ETH board	The controller — an ESP32-P4 (dual RISC-V) with PSRAM for the framebuffer, WiFi 6 via an onboard ESP32-C6, Ethernet with PoE, USB-C, a microSD (TF) slot, and an ES8311 audio codec.
A 10.1" MIPI-DSI touch LCD	The Waveshare JD9365 panel — 1280×800 IPS with GT911 capacitive touch — on the board's MIPI-DSI FPC connector.
Power	PoE (an 802.3af switch or injector) or USB-C.

No external LED panel, no HUB75 chain, no separate 5 V panel supply — the display is the panel.

Flash & set up

pio run -t upload        # build + flash over USB-C
pio device monitor       # 115200 baud, native USB CDC

Later updates go over the air from the web updater at /ota (or curl --data-binary @firmware.bin http://<board>/api/ota/upload). There is no UF2 bootloader — if the board ever won't program, hold BOOT while plugging in USB and flash again.

Networking is Ethernet-first. Plug it into your LAN or a PoE switch and it comes up on DHCP with zero configuration — no setup page, no access point. Reach it at http://\<hostname>.local, or by the IP in your router's DHCP client list. While Ethernet is connected the WiFi radio stays off by design.

For a WiFi-only install it behaves like the other gateways: on first boot with no network it raises a setup access point; join it, save your SSID and password, and it joins your LAN. See the SplitFlap Gateway's WiFi steps. The same mDNS caveats apply — if .local doesn't resolve, use the board's IP.

Unlike the Matrix board there is no RTC chip, so the clock is invalid from power-on until the first NTP sync. Every caller already handles that state, and frame timestamps show uptime until time is real.

What's emulated — and the reel

This is the same emulation model as the Matrix Gateway, byte for byte:

• Emulated: the display commands the gateway sends — show a character (-), a flap by index (+) and home (h), addressed to one module or broadcast. Frames flow one way and nothing replies; the command log (GET /api/log) records the outbound traffic.
• Not emulated: the mechanism. There is no stepper, Hall sensor or EEPROM, so calibration, diagnostics and provisioning are no-ops — the modules are "born" provisioned. You won't use the Calibration or Provision tabs.
• The reel is the full 237 flaps — every Windows-1252 glyph, the seven colour flaps, the 60 lowercase letters and 14 pictographs. Mixed case, named colours and pictographs are reachable through the index-addressed POST /api/display/cells, while the legacy one-byte protocol (m5-r sets red, hello renders HELLO) is untouched. The Matrix Gateway page explains the two ways in in full; it applies here unchanged.

The default wall is 15 × 5 (75 modules); any grid from 10 × 1 up to 32 × 10 (VM_MAX_MODULES = 320) works, chosen in Settings → Module Wall and applied on reboot. A flap card keeps its proportion whatever the grid, and a wall that does not fill the panel is centred on both axes — short walls letterbox or pillarbox.

If every colour is wrong

Same story as the LED panel: if red and blue are swapped, the panel is wired BGR rather than RGB. Tick Settings → LCD Panel → "Panel is wired BGR" — it takes effect on the next frame, no reboot.

The panel as a raw canvas

Because the wall is really a 1280×800 framebuffer, the gateway can hand it over directly — bypassing the split-flap emulation so you can draw anything. A real split-flap gateway has no framebuffer at all, so this is the one place a drawn wall does something the hardware it emulates simply cannot.

• Full frames (rgb888, rgb565 or compressed QOI), partial-rectangle deltas (PUT /api/canvas/rects), and a persistent stream channel (PUT /api/canvas/stream) for animation-rate updates with no per-frame HTTP round trip.
• An on-device animation library (with GIF import) that plays from PSRAM after the client disconnects, a scrolling ticker — exclusive, or overlaid as a lower-third band, with an optional auto-dismiss timer — scalable anti-aliased text, and a named sprite-atlas library (up to 16 sheets, optionally persisted to flash).
• On-device effects — plasma, fire, matrix rain, flip-o-rama, a clock, Game of Life, an oscilloscope and a spectrogram — each declaring its own typed parameters through effectDefs.
• Audio-reactive modes driven by the board's onboard microphone (the ES8311 codec): a spectrum analyzer, scope, spectro, a soundwall where the flap wall itself flips on the beat, and an "audio":true option on fire/matrix/plasma. Sound is reduced to a handful of numbers on-device; nothing is recorded.

Rendering runs at 60 Hz: the logical landscape frame is a linear RGB565 framebuffer in PSRAM, and panelShow() rotates it 90° into the DSI scanout in hardware with the P4's PPA (Pixel Processing Accelerator). Pixel effects render at a reduced 256×160 surface the PPA upscales; the clock and the wall render native. A client discovers the whole surface from GET /api/capabilities — the canvas, effects and effectDefs keys a physical gateway never carries. While a canvas is active the reel renderer stands down; a split-flap command or Quiet Time reclaims the panel, and nothing canvas is persisted, so a reboot returns to the flaps.

→ Full reference: the Canvas API page. You rarely drive any of this by hand — the Companion exposes it through canvas apps (Effects, Image, Animation, Ticker, Lumina Clock, Photo Frame, Stock Graph, Scoreboard, Aquarium…), and any you write yourself.

Timer, alarms & touch

Like the Matrix Gateway, the board doubles as a kitchen appliance. POST /api/timer {"minutes":5} puts a full-screen anti-aliased countdown on the panel that outranks everything — canvas, effects, the companion — until it is answered; four persisted alarm slots (/api/alarms) do the same on a schedule, and an alarm's chime deliberately overrides Quiet Time. Both are advertised (timer, alarms) and the dashboard has a card for them.

To answer one without reaching for a browser, double-tap the touchscreen. The LCD board has no IMU, so where the Matrix Gateway offers clap and knuckle-tap gestures, this one uses its capacitive touch panel (GT911): a double-tap dismisses a live timer or alarm on-device.

How it fits the rest of the wiki

The LCD Gateway is a drop-in replacement for the modules and the gateway, exactly like the Matrix Gateway. Wherever the rest of this guide says "the gateway," it applies here too — including registering the Companion. (Exception: the Home Assistant page is physical-gateway-only — this gateway has no MQTT/HA surface.) Skip the Hardware and Module Firmware pages entirely.

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