Python usage¶
OLED displays can be driven with python using the varous implementations in the
luma.oled.device
package. There are several device classes available
and usage is very simple if you have ever used Pillow or PIL.
First, import and initialise the device:
from luma.core.serial import i2c, spi
from luma.core.render import canvas
from luma.oled.device import ssd1306, ssd1325, ssd1331, sh1106
# rev.1 users set port=0
# substitute spi(device=0, port=0) below if using that interface
serial = i2c(port=1, address=0x3C)
# substitute ssd1331(...) or sh1106(...) below if using that device
device = ssd1306(serial)
The display device should now be configured for use. The specific
luma.oled.device.ssd1306
,
luma.oled.device.ssd1325
,
luma.oled.device.ssd1331
, or
luma.oled.device.sh1106
, classes all expose a display()
method
which takes an image with attributes consistent with the capabilities of the
device. However, for most cases, for drawing text and graphics primitives, the
canvas class should be used as follows:
with canvas(device) as draw:
draw.rectangle(device.bounding_box, outline="white", fill="black")
draw.text((30, 40), "Hello World", fill="white")
The luma.core.render.canvas
class automatically creates an PIL.ImageDraw
object of the correct dimensions and bit depth suitable for the device, so you
may then call the usual Pillow methods to draw onto the canvas.
As soon as the with scope is ended, the resultant image is automatically
flushed to the device’s display memory and the PIL.ImageDraw
object is
garbage collected.
Color Model¶
Any of the standard PIL.ImageColor
color formats may be used, but since
the SSD1306 and SH1106 OLEDs are monochrome, only the HTML color names
"black"
and "white"
values should really be used; in fact, by default,
any value other than black is treated as white. The luma.core.canvas
object
does have a dither
flag which if set to True, will convert color drawings
to a dithered monochrome effect (see the 3d_box.py example, below).
with canvas(device, dither=True) as draw:
draw.rectangle((10, 10, 30, 30), outline="white", fill="red")
There is no such constraint on the SSD1331 OLED which features 16-bit RGB colors: 24-bit RGB images are downsized to 16-bit using a 565 scheme.
The SSD1322 and SSD1325 OLEDs both support 16 greyscale graduations: 24-bit RGB images are downsized to 4-bit using a Luma conversion which is approximately calculated as follows:
Y' = 0.299 R' + 0.587 G' + 0.114 B'
Landscape / Portrait Orientation¶
By default the display will be oriented in landscape mode (128x64 pixels for
the SSD1306, for example). Should you have an application that requires the
display to be mounted in a portrait aspect, then add a rotate=N
parameter
when creating the device:
from luma.core.serial import i2c
from luma.core.render import canvas
from luma.oled.device import ssd1306, ssd1325, ssd1331, sh1106
serial = i2c(port=1, address=0x3C)
device = ssd1306(serial, rotate=1)
# Box and text rendered in portrait mode
with canvas(device) as draw:
draw.rectangle(device.bounding_box, outline="white", fill="black")
draw.text((10, 40), "Hello World", fill="white")
N should be a value of 0, 1, 2 or 3 only, where 0 is no rotation, 1 is rotate 90° clockwise, 2 is 180° rotation and 3 represents 270° rotation.
The device.size
, device.width
and device.height
properties reflect
the rotated dimensions rather than the physical dimensions.
Examples¶
After installing the library, head over to the luma.examples repository, and try running the following examples (and more):
Example | Description |
---|---|
3d_box.py | Rotating 3D box wireframe & color dithering |
bounce.py | Display a bouncing ball animation and frames per second |
carousel.py | Showcase viewport and hotspot functionality |
clock.py | An analog clockface with date & time |
colors.py | Color rendering demo |
crawl.py | A vertical scrolling demo, which should be familiar |
demo.py | Use misc draw commands to create a simple image |
game_of_life.py | Conway’s game of life |
grayscale.py | Greyscale rendering demo |
invaders.py | Space Invaders demo |
maze.py | Maze generator |
perfloop.py | Simple benchmarking utility to measure performance |
pi_logo.py | Display the Raspberry Pi logo (loads image as .png) |
savepoint.py | Example of savepoint/restore functionality |
starfield.py | 3D starfield simulation |
sys_info.py | Display basic system information |
terminal.py | Simple println capabilities |
tv_snow.py | Example image-blitting |
tweet_scroll.py | Using Twitter’s Streaming API to display scrolling notifications |
welcome.py | Unicode font rendering & scrolling |
Further details of how to run the examples is shown in the example repo’s README.
Emulators¶
There are various display emulators available for running code against, for debugging and screen capture functionality:
- The
luma.core.emulator.capture
device will persist a numbered PNG file to disk every time itsdisplay
method is called. - The
luma.core.emulator.gifanim
device will record every image when itsdisplay
method is called, and on program exit (or Ctrl-C), will assemble the images into an animated GIF. - The
luma.core.emulator.pygame
device uses thepygame
library to render the displayed image to a pygame display surface.
Invoke the demos with:
$ python examples/clock.py -d capture
or:
$ python examples/clock.py -d pygame
Note
Pygame is required to use any of the emulated devices, but it is NOT
installed as a dependency by default, and so must be manually installed
before using any of these emulation devices (e.g. pip install pygame
).