# 🖥️ Hanover Display Simulator

## 📋 Overview

Welcome to the **Hanover Display Simulator**! This Go application is designed to emulate a Hanover flipdot display. It connects to a serial port to receive packets, processes this data, and visualizes the display's state via a web interface. This tool is essential for testing and developing applications that interact with actual Hanover displays without having the physical hardware at hand.

## 🎉 Features

- 🎨 Simulates a Hanover flipdot display with customizable dimensions.
- 📡 Listens for data over a specified serial port.
- 📜 Processes incoming packets following the Hanover display protocol.
- 🌐 Provides a web interface to visualize the live display state.
- 🧪 Incorporates a test simulator for generating sample display data.
- 🔍 Offers endpoints to retrieve packet history and raw display data.

## 👨‍💻 How to Use

### 1. Prerequisites

Before running the simulator, ensure you have the following requirements:

- Go 1.15 or higher
- Git
- `socat` for creating virtual serial ports

### 2. Installation

Follow these steps to clone and set up the project:

```bash
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/harperreed/hanover-display-simulator.git
cd hanover-display-simulator

# Install dependencies
go get github.com/gin-gonic/gin
go get github.com/sirupsen/logrus
go get github.com/tarm/serial
go get gopkg.in/yaml.v2

# Install socat (if you haven't already)
# For Ubuntu/Debian:
sudo apt-get install socat
# For macOS with Homebrew:
brew install socat

3. Configure the Simulator

Create a config.yaml file in the project root with the following content:

columns: 96
rows: 16
address: 1
serial_port: "/dev/pts/2"  # Update this to match your system
baud_rate: 4800
web_port: ":8080"

Adjust the values based on your system's setup.

4. Setting up Virtual Serial Ports

To test the simulator without actual hardware, use socat to create virtual serial ports:

1. Run the following command in your terminal:

   socat -d -d pty,raw,echo=0 pty,raw,echo=0

2. Update the serial_port in your config.yaml with one of the device names output by socat.

3. Keep the socat command running while you use the simulator.

5. Start the Simulator

To launch the simulator, execute:

go run main.go

6. View the Display

Open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080 to view the display's visual representation. To send test data, use the second virtual serial port created by socat.

🚀 Tech Info

This project is built using the Go programming language. Some of the key components include:

• Main Logic: The core logic resides in main.go, which handles the application flow.
• Serial Communication: Implemented via the serial.go, enabling the reading of incoming packets.
• Display Management: Managed by display.go, this file maintains and updates the display state.
• Web Server: The webserver.go file provides a web interface using the Gin web framework, serving display updates and packet information.
• Configuration Management: Configuration is handled via config.yaml and config.go, ensuring easy adjustments.

Dependencies

• gin-gonic/gin for web server capabilities
• sirupsen/logrus for structured logging
• tarm/serial for serial port communication
• gopkg.in/yaml.v2 for YAML file parsing

🙌 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you have suggestions for improvements or features, feel free to submit a pull request!

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

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Happy Coding! 🌍