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colorObj
We're human, we love colors. All sorts of hardware deal with color. Wouldn't it be nice to have a common object that can contain and manipulate colors? Take a color from one piece of hardware and pass it to another? Take a starting point of a color and blend other colors into it to create new colors? This is what colorObj is all about. Describing and manipulating colors to use with different hardware.
colorObj(RGBpack* buff)
If you look at the memory required to hold a color object, it typically runs at about 8 bytes. This is fine until you want a bunch of them, like with a bitmap. Suddenly you really want this information packed as tightly as possible. An RGBpack holds a color packed down to 3 bytes per color (Or pixel). Less than half the memory footprint, with no loss of information. This constructor is for creating a color object from a RGBpack color.
colorObj(byte inRed, byte inGreen, byte inBlue)
Your standard "build a color from primary red green and blue values". The primary values are 0..255 or, one byte each.
//colorObj(colorObj* inColor)
This one I was never able to get to work. Its a copy constructor taking a pointer to a colorObj and using that to create a new instance of itself. The problem was that the compiler kept getting this constructor mixed up with the next constructor that takes a word as input.
colorObj(word color16)
color16 is a special way to describe a color in 16 bits (2 bytes). You do loose some color information with this compression. On the other hand, its used by a large variety of displays. Actually, every one I've used as of this writing. So its very important to have in our bag of tricks. This is why it was kept instead of the copy constructor above.
colorObj(void)
The "I don't care what color, just allocate some room" constructor. Very handy for grabbing a "blank" color to use as a receptacle for building a new color.
// Red,Grn,blu
#define LC_BLACK 0, 0, 0
#define LC_CHARCOAL 50, 50, 50
#define LC_DARK_GREY 140,140,140
#define LC_GREY 185,185,185
#define LC_LIGHT_GREY 250,250,250
#define LC_WHITE 255,255,255
#define LC_RED 255, 0, 0
#define LC_PINK 255,130,208
#define LC_GREEN 0,255, 0
#define LC_DARK_GREEN 0, 30, 0
#define LC_OLIVE 30, 30, 1
#define LC_BLUE 0, 0,255
#define LC_LIGHT_BLUE 164,205,255
#define LC_NAVY 0, 0, 30
#define LC_PURPLE 140, 0,255
#define LC_LAVENDER 218,151,255
#define LC_ORANGE 255,128, 0
#define LC_CYAN 0,255,255
#define LC_MAGENTA 255, 0,255
#define LC_YELLOW 255,255, 0
Yes! I used #define. Hahahaha!!! I use it EVERYWHERE!!!!! They said I was crazy. It's THEM! They're the ones that are crazy!!!!!!!!!
Ah, err... Well, anyway..
These are a set of handy starting points for building colors. They are #define-ed in a way that they plug directly into the standard primary constructor. And into the setColor() method.
For example:
colorObj aColor(LC_LIGHT_BLUE);
And now aColor is holding a light blue color.
There are more? Of course there's more! More useful starting points.
Many of the color methods have pointers to color Objects as input parameters. Now, intead of creating new colors every time, there is a prebuilt set that can be used for these kinds of calls.
colorObj red;
colorObj blue;
colorObj white;
colorObj black;
colorObj green;
colorObj cyan;
colorObj magenta;
colorObj yellow;
For example :
aColor.blend(&black,50);
This will blend 50% of the color black inti aColor making it just that much darker.
void setColor(RGBpack* buff);
Sets the current color to the color of the passed in RGBpack color.
void setColor(byte inRed, byte inGreen, byte inBlue);
Sets the current color to the color described by the three primary colors.
void setColor(word color16);
Sets the current color to the color described by the compressed 16bit color. If the 16bit color is a "known" color the decompression will be lossless, otherwise it will do the best job it can matching up a color from the inputted data.
void setColor(colorObj* inColor); // Why doesn't this one get confused? Who knows?
Set the current color to the color that is pointed to by the passed in color object pointer.
word getColor16(void);
Create a compressed 16 bit color from the current color object.
byte getRed(void);
Pass back the 8 bit red component of this color object.
byte getGreen(void);
Pass back the 8 bit green component of this color object.
byte getBlue(void);
Pass back the, wait for it, blue component of this color object. I bet you never saw that coming!
RGBpack packColor(void);
Pack the current color into an RGBpack for tight storage.
colorObj mixColors(colorObj* mixinColor,byte mixPercent);
Creates a new color my mixing the current color with the mix percent of the inputed color.
void blend(colorObj* mixinColor,byte mixPercent);
Blend the mix percent of the inputted color into the current color changing the current color into a new color. This one is probably the most popular call in the entire library. This is also the foundation to color mappers. Color mappers are so insanely handy.. You'll have to sit down and have a coffee break just to get over the amazement!
void printRGB(void);
Sends the information of a color object to the serial monitor. Quite handy but there's a catch. You'll have to use a #define to use it. Why? Because it only exists if PRINT_COLOR is defined.
But not to worry, its only for debugging so you may not ever need to use it.