Retrofit and Simple Message Generation Software Recommendations

[skyblaster]

I'm looking to retrofit an older Daktronics Galaxy (64x32 pixels) outdoor sign for use at a high school, typically to advertise theatre events to the public.
I believe the display is 8x4', so if using 320x160mm panels, I would end up using 8 strings of 8 panels each. The cost difference of P5 doesn't seem to be much more than P10 when looking at the LYSONLED store on AliExpress. Their P5 panels are actually less than P6.67 and only slightly more expensive than P8. This would be a massive upgrade over the paltry 64x32 that exists now. Does anyone here know if LYSONLED products are durable, or should I spring for Kinglight or Nationstar LEDs? I noticed that various panels from some retailers are advertised with suffixes of 2S,4S,6S,8S. I'm not sure what this refers to, but should I be concerned with FPP compatibility?

I already purchased a Colorlight 5A-75E receiver as I interpreted it to be an upgrade over the 5A-75B. I've tested this successfully with a single P2.5 indoor panel that I had laying around for use with PIN2DMD. Also, since there are two sides to this display, I figure I might be able to drive them both from this single 5A-75E.

EDIT: After a quick discussion in the xLights Discord channel I was able to figure out SubModules to create multi-line text. I'm now confident enough to move forward on the software side of things and will now focus on hardware. If anyone has any thoughts to share on the question or hardware selection above, I would be most grateful.

My big question is in regards to software compatibility. I do not have personal experience with the Daktronics Venus 1500 V4 software that has been used up until now, but I have seen a secretary use OPTEC ViViD software at another school, and it looks dirt simple to create message based content for their monochome display.

I've played briefly with FPP's built-in Matrix Tools plugin, and while simple enough, I was not able to create separate lines of text in different colors. Text was also rendered unreadable in lower font sizes. Again, this was with a single P2.5 64x32 panel, so not the best example. Perhaps there is a font that would at least allow to match the single line text produced by the Venus 1500 software.

I also played briefly with xLights and the learning curve there is far greater. I don't see how I could teach a secretary to use it, even to create simple text. Maybe with a few more hours of use I could figure it out, but it is quite elaborate software in general for my use case.

So, that said, I'm just curious if there is some other piece of software that you folks could recommend to create FSEQ files geared more towards simple messaging?

Thanks!