Easy speed

Probably the easiest speed gain I've every "hacked" together:

  if (sdCard_) return true;

By initalizing once and then returning true until rebooted, I gained an additional 26 Hz while streaming. This should be safe since the card is read-only and will not change size and/or require re-initialization during runtime... So now I'm counting 66 Hz and still loading animation data in the background.

Current speed (for 16 colors):
Loop 1 : Start to read,       7.354 ms
Loop 2 : Read 512 Bytes, 4.886 ms
Loop 3 : Read 512 Bytes, 4.879 ms
Loop 4 : Read 512 Bytes, 4.881 ms
Loop 5 : Read 512 Bytes, 4.880 ms
Loop 6 : Read 512 Bytes, 4.881 ms
Loop 7 : Read 512 Bytes, 4.879 ms
Loop 8 : Read 512 Bytes, 4.881 ms
Loop 9 : Read 512 Bytes and close, 4.881 ms

Actual video data is currently:

16 colors @   6 FPS   (Screen refresh is 66 Hz)

  8 colors @ 14 FPS   (Screen refresh is 96 Hz)

8 colors may be quite sufficient to create nice graphics, but of course - the more the merrier! I'm sure more can be done to improve the performance.
Stay tuned!