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pimoroni-pico/micropython/modules/picographics/README.md

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Pico Graphics

Pico Graphics is our unified graphics and display library for driving displays from your Pico in MicroPython.

Pico Graphics replaces the individual drivers for displays- if you're been using breakout_colorlcd, ST7789 then you'll need to update your code!

Setting up Pico Graphics

You must construct an instance of PicoGraphics with your desired display:

from picographics import PicoGraphics, DISPLAY_LCD_160X80

display = PicoGraphics(display=DISPLAY_LCD_160X80)

Bear in mind that MicroPython has only 192K of RAM available- a 320x240 pixel display in RGB565 mode uses 150K!

Supported Displays

  • Pico Display - 240x135 SPI LCD - DISPLAY_PICO_DISPLAY
  • Pico Display 2 - 320x240 SPI LCD - DISPLAY_PICO_DISPLAY_2
  • Tufty 2040 - 320x240 Parallel LCD - DISPLAY_TUFTY_2040
  • Pico Explorer - 240x240 SPI LCD - DISPLAY_PICO_EXPLORER
  • Enviro Plus - 240x240 SPI LCD - DISPLAY_ENVIRO_PLUS
  • 240x240 Round SPI LCD Breakout - DISPLAY_ROUND_LCD_240X240
  • 240x240 Square SPI LCD Breakout - DISPLAY_LCD_240X240
  • 160x80 SPI LCD Breakout - DISPLAY_LCD_160X80
  • 128x128 I2C OLED - DISPLAY_I2C_OLED_128X128
  • Pico Inky Pack - 296x128 mono e-ink - DISPLAY_INKY_PACK
  • Inky Frame - 600x447 7-colour e-ink - DISPLAY_INKY_FRAME

Supported Graphics Modes (Pen Type)

  • 1-bit - PEN_1BIT - mono, used for Pico Inky Pack and i2c OLED
  • 3-bit - PEN_3BIT - 8-colour, used for Inky Frame
  • 4-bit - PEN_P4 - 16-colour palette of your choice
  • 8-bit - PEN_P8 - 256-colour palette of your choice
  • 8-bit RGB332 - PEN_RGB332 - 256 fixed colours (3 bits red, 3 bits green, 2 bits blue)
  • 16-bit RGB565 - PEN_RGB565 - 64K colours at the cost of RAM. (5 bits red, 6 bits green, 5 bits blue)

These offer a tradeoff between RAM usage and available colours. In most cases you would probably use RGB332 since it offers the easiest tradeoff. It's also the default for colour LCDs.

Eg:

display = PicoGraphics(display=PICO_DISPLAY)

Is equivalent to:

display = PicoGraphics(display=PICO_DISPLAY, pen_type=PEN_RGB332)

Supported Rotations

All SPI LCDs support 0, 90, 180 and 270 degree rotations.

Eg:

display = PicoGraphics(display=PICO_DISPLAY, rotate=90)

Custom Pins

SPI / Parallel

The pimoroni_bus library includes SPIBus for SPI LCDs and ParallelBus for Parallel LCDs (like Tufty 2040).

In most cases you'll never need to use these, but they come in useful if you're wiring breakouts to your Pico or using multiple LCDs.

A custom SPI bus:

from pimoroni_bus import SPIBus
from picographics import PicoGraphics, DISPLAY_PICO_EXPLORER, PEN_RGB332

spibus = SPIBus(cs=17, dc=16, sck=18, mosi=19)

display = PicoGraphics(display=DISPLAY_PICO_EXPLORER, bus=spibus, pen_type=PEN_RGB332)

I2C

The pimoroni_i2c library includes PimoroniI2C which can be used to change the pins used by the mono OLED:

from pimoroni_i2c import PimoroniI2C
from picographics import PicoGraphics, DISPLAY_I2C_OLED_128X128

i2cbus = PimoroniI2C(4, 5)

display = PicoGraphics(display=DISPLAY_I2C_OLED_128X128, bus=i2cbus)

Function Reference

General

Creating & Setting Pens

RGB565, RGB332, P8 and P4 modes

Create a pen colour for drawing into a screen:

my_pen = display.create_pen(r, g, b)

In RGB565 and RGB332 modes this packs the given RGB into an integer representing a colour in these formats and returns the result.

In P4 and P8 modes this will consume one palette entry, or return an error if your palette is full. Palette colours are stored as RGB and converted when they are displayed on screen.

To tell PicoGraphics which pen to use:

display.set_pen(my_pen)

This will be either an RGB332 or RGB565 colour, or a palette index.

Monochrome Modes

For 1BIT mode - such as for Inky Pack and the Mono OLED - pens are handled a little differently.

There's no need to create one, since mapping an RGB colour to black/white is meaningless.

Instead you can pick from 16 shades of grey which are automatically dithered into the PicoGraphics buffer, where:

  • 0 is Black,
  • 1 - 14 are shades of grey,
  • 15 is white.

And just call set_pen with your desired shade:

display.set_pen(0)   # Black
display.set_pen(15)  # White

Because shades 1 through 14 are created with ordered dither you should avoid using them for text, small details or lines.

Dithering works by mixing black and white pixels in various patterns and quantities to fake grey shades.

If you were to try and draw a single "grey" pixel it will end up either black or white depending on where it's drawn and which shade of grey you pick.

Inky Frame

Inky Frame is a special case- the display itself supports only 7 (8 if you include its cleaning "clear" colour, which we call Taupe) colours.

These are:

  • BLACK = 0
  • WHITE = 1
  • GREEN = 2
  • BLUE = 3
  • RED = 4
  • YELLOW = 5
  • ORANGE = 6
  • TAUPE = 7

Controlling The Backlight

You can set the display backlight brightness between 0.0 and 1.0:

display.set_backlight(0.5)

Clipping

Set the clipping bounds for drawing:

display.set_clip(x, y, w, h)

Remove the clipping bounds:

display.remove_clip()

Clear

Clear the display to the current pen colour:

display.clear()

This is equivilent to:

w, h = display.get_bounds()
display.rectangle(0, 0, w, h)

You can clear portions of the screen with rectangles to save time redrawing things like JPEGs or complex graphics.

Update

Send the contents of your Pico Graphics buffer to your screen:

display.update()

Text

Changing The Font

Change the font:

display.set_font(font)

Bitmap fonts. These are aligned from their top-left corner.

  • bitmap6
  • bitmap8
  • bitmap14_outline

Vector (Hershey) fonts. These are aligned to their midline.

  • sans
  • gothic
  • cursive
  • serif_italic
  • serif

Drawing Text

Write some text:

display.text(text, x, y, wordwrap, scale, angle, spacing)
  • text - the text string to draw
  • x - the destination X coordinate
  • y - the destination Y coordinate
  • wordwrap - number of pixels width before trying to break text into multiple lines
  • scale - size
  • angle - rotation angle (Vector only!)
  • spacing - letter spacing

Text scale can be a whole number (integer) for Bitmap fonts, or a decimal (float) for Vector (Hershey) fonts.

For example:

display.set_font("bitmap8")
display.text("Hello World", 0, 0, scale=2)

Draws "Hello World" in a 16px tall, 2x scaled version of the bitmap8 font.

Sometimes you might want to measure a text string for centering or alignment on screen, you can do this with:

width = display.measure_text(text, scale, spacing)

The height of each Bitmap font is explicit in its name.

Write a single character:

display.character(char, x, y, scale)

Basic Shapes

Line

To draw a line:

display.line(x1, y1, x2, y2)

The X1/Y1 and X2/Y2 coordinates describe the start and end of the line repsectively.

Circle

To draw a circle:

display.circle(x, y, r)
  • x - the destination X coordinate
  • y - the destination Y coordinate
  • r - the radius

The X/Y coordinates describe the center of your circle.

Rectangle

display.rectangle(x, y, w, h)
  • x - the destination X coordinate
  • y - the destination Y coordinate
  • w - the width
  • h - the eight

Triangle

display.triangle(x1, y1, x2, y2, x3, y3)

The three pairs of X/Y coordinates describe each point of the triangle.

Polygon

To draw other shapes, you can provide a list of points to polygon:

display.polygon([
  (0, 10),
  (20, 10),
  (20, 0),
  (30, 20),
  (20, 30),
  (20, 20),
  (0, 20),
])

Pixels

Setting individual pixels is slow, but you can do it with:

display.pixel(x, y)

You can set a horiontal span of pixels a little faster with:

pixel_span(x, y, length)

Palette Management

Intended for P4 and P8 modes.

You have a 16-color and 256-color palette respectively.

Set n elements in the palette from a list of RGB tuples:

set_palette([
  (r, g, b),
  (r, g, b),
  (r, g, b)
])

Update an entry in the P4 or P8 palette with the given colour.

update_pen(index, r, g, b)

This is stored internally as RGB and converted to whatever format your screen requires when displayed.

Reset a pen back to its default value (black, marked unused):

reset_pen(index)

Utility Functions

Sometimes it can be useful to convert between colour formats:

  • RGB332_to_RGB
  • RGB_to_RGB332
  • RGB565_to_RGB
  • RGB_to_RGB565

Sprites

Pico Display has very limited support for sprites in RGB332 mode.

Sprites must be 8x8 pixels arranged in a 128x128 pixel spritesheet. 1-bit transparency is handled by electing a single colour to skip over.

We've prepared some RGB332-compatible sprite assets for you, but you can use spritesheet-to-rgb332.py <filename> to convert your own.

Loading Sprites

You'll need to include the pen_type in the import statement, and define the pen_type before using loading the spritesheet:

from picographics import PicoGraphics, PEN_RGB565, PEN_RGB332

display = PicoGraphics(display=PICO_DISPLAY, pen_type=PEN_RGB332)

Use Thonny to upload your spritesheet.rgb332 file onto your Pico. Then load it into Pico Graphics:

display.load_spritesheet("s4m_ur4i-dingbads.rgb332")

and then update the display, to show the sprite:

display.update()

Drawing Sprites

And finally display a sprite:

display.sprite(0, 0, 0, 0)

These arguments for sprite are as follows:

  1. Sprite X position (from 0-15) - this selects the horizontal location of an 8x8 sprite from your 128x128 pixel spritesheet.
  2. Sprite Y position (from 0-15)
  3. Destination X - where to draw on your screen horizontally
  4. Destination Y = where to draw on your screen vertically
  5. Scale (optional) - an integer scale value, 1 = 8x8, 2 = 16x16 etc.
  6. Transparent (optional) - specify a colour to treat as transparent

JPEG Files

We've included BitBank's JPEGDEC - https://github.com/bitbank2/JPEGDEC - so you can display JPEG files on your LCDs.

Eg:

import picographics
import jpegdec

display = picographics.PicoGraphics(display=picographics.DISPLAY_PICO_EXPLORER)

# Create a new JPEG decoder for our PicoGraphics
j = jpegdec.JPEG(display)

# Open the JPEG file
j.open_file("filename.jpeg")

# Decode the JPEG
j.decode(0, 0, jpegdec.JPEG_SCALE_FULL)

# Display the result
display.update()

JPEG files must be small enough to load into RAM for decoding, and must not be progressive.

JPEG files will be automatically dithered in RGB332 mode.

In P4 and P8 modes JPEGs are dithered to your custom colour palette. Their appearance of an image will vary based on the colours you choose.

The arguments for decode are as follows:

  1. Decode X - where to place the decoded JPEG on screen
  2. Decode Y
  3. Flags - one of JPEG_SCALE_FULL, JPEG_SCALE_HALF, JPEG_SCALE_QUARTER or JPEG_SCALE_EIGHTH