micropython lcd display supplier

The 5110 LCD is ideal for battery projects as it consumes little power. The resolution 84x48 is restrictive though. If you are buying a few of them, get them from the same provider. I have a few with slightly different shades of backlight. Just enough to be noticible and annoying.

You can get huge 7 segment displays, like 5x10cm per digit. A few of these would be ideal for an odometer. Low power, bright, no need for backlight, rugged. Controlled with either a max7219 or a ht16k33.

You can get 128x64 graphic LCDs, which are similar physical dimensions to a 20x4 character LCD. The yellow/black versions would give better readability in full sun than blue/white LCDs. This would give you a large area for custom graphics. The pixels are large enough to be readable from a distance. The pixel layout is similar to the OLED and the Nokia, so if you trial each display, you can share code.

The character LCDs based on hd44780 come in a few sizes. 8x8, 16x1, 16x2, 16x4, 20x2 and 20x4. That is character sizes. Each char is 5x8, and you can only have 8 custom chars in ram, so rather limited. Great for lots of ascii text.

The graphic LCDs, char LCDs and TFTs differ from the OLEDs as the pixels block light rather than emit. You need a backlight to be able to read them in most cases.

Which one is best for a bike HUD? Well... it depends on a few things. What information you want to display. How readable it needs to be. How rugged it needs to be. How fast it needs to refresh. How many MCU pins it needs. Your budget. Reliability - so you are safe if it crashes/reboots. Are there any laws / compliance you need to follow?

The screen uses an easy to work with SPI interface, and Waveshare provides good MicroPython examples so you can dive right in. There are a lot of things to like about the screen and board:

2) The screen is 240 x 240. I have had great experiences with all of the Waveshare screens I have tried, but this is the Goldilocks resolution since there is enough pixel real estate to lay out a basic game interface and not use too much of the Pico"s memory to display the graphics, so there is plenty of spare RAM to hold a decent amount of code.

which uses the KS0066 display controller the memory start offsets (+ no. of Cursor Shifts Required) are displayed in the photo"s of said "LCM1604" blue display here: https://www.cpmspectrepi.uk/raspberry_p ... .282017.29

In this tutorial Tony Goodhew explains how to use the basic graphics procedures which are included in the display driver, and for the ambitious makers out there he also provides examples for advanced shapes and graphics!

All the other graphical and text objects we would like to display can be built from this single pixel instruction; such as lines, circles, rectangles, triangles and text strings at different sizes.

This is all carried out with code. Display manufacturers usually supply some of these procedures/methods but leave the rest up to the end user to construct.

At the top of our driver program we will always import a minimal set of libraries using this block at the top of our MicroPython script (we add even more later when we want to do advanced programs):

The third line here imports the Framebuffer library which includes several very useful routines to draw objects on the display. The garbage collection library, gc, has also been imported so that we can check how much memory is available.

The following methods draw shapes (such as those above) onto the FrameBuffer. They only become visible to the user once the lcd.show() instruction is executed.

Each program contains the screen driver code, sets up the buttons/joystick (if applicable), sets the width and height variables, loads the essential libraries, defines the colour (R, G, B) and clear (c) procedures, then displays some colour checking text like this:

Using lcd.fill_rect, fill the whole screen green and then fill the middle of the screen black, leaving a 10 pixel border. Put red 10-pixel squares in each corner.

Draw a dark grey rectangle in the centre of the screen. Draw 500 white pixels inside the square, none touching the edge. (Random was explained in the previous display tutorial.)

This is routine is very complicated. It splits the original triangle into two with a horizontal line and then fills them in. If you uncomment all the # lcd.show() lines and sleep instructions it will slow right down and you can see it working (unfortunately, the 2” display needs such a large buffer that there is not enough memory for the filled triangles code):

For the imports we added the math library as this is needed for Sin and Cos in graph plotting. The random library has also been imported, for the randomly generated triangles. These are followed by the basic LCD board setup we covered earlier.

In the centre of the screen display a ‘bull’s eye’ circular target with a ‘gold’ centre, 4 other colours and scores 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 written in the appropriate positions.

You may have noticed that on some screens the text is very small and difficult to read. In a following tutorial will add an extra font, with more characters, which we can display in different sizes.

This article was written by Tony Goodhew. Tony is a retired teacher of computing who starting writing code back in 1968 when it was called programming - he started with FORTRAN IV on an IBM 1130! An active Raspberry Pi community member, his main interests now are coding in MicroPython, travelling and photography.

lcd.display(image[, x=0[, y=0[, x_scale=1.0[, y_scale=1.0[, roi=None[, rgb_channel=-1[, alpha=256[, color_palette=None[, alpha_palette=None[, hint=0[, x_size=None[, y_size=None]]]]]]]]]]]])¶

This is a new Pi Pico display from Waveshare with many more pixels. It is a 2inch LCD display module, designed for Raspberry Pi Pico, with an embedded ST7789VW driver, 65K RGB colours, 320x240 pixels and an SPI interface. A Pi Pico can be plugged into the rear of the screen for very easy connection without any soldering. It sports 4 simple button switches for user input. It is bright, colourful and easy to program. The makers supply an example program (see below), which includes the display driver, making it very easy to get started. The manufacturer"s wiki can be found at:

To control an LCD with a microcontroller as the Raspberry Pi Pico can be a quite complicated job. Well, if your display is equipped with an IC2 module and specific MicroPython libraries are available, it’s not that difficult to connect to the display to the Raspberry Pi Pico. Learn with this tutorial how to connect and to program an 1602 LCD with a Raspberry Pi Pico.

There are many types of LCD displays. In this tutorial we are using the popular and affordable 1602 LCD. The LCD has an IC2 module soldered on it (see the pictures below). If your LCD is of the same type, but has a different size, it won’t be a problem to continue with this tutorial. You’ll just have to correct some parameters in the MicroPython script. But if it is from a different type or it has no I2C module, you better look for another tutorial.Prepare the hardware

In this tutorial we are using the popular and quite basic 16×2 or 1602 LCD. It can display 16 characters per line on 2 lines. Each character is made from a matrix with 5×7 dots. It is equipped with a backlight for easy reading. Besides sending text, thanks to specific commands, we can give instructions to the display, as to switch on/off the backlight for example.

The display we use in this tutorial is equipped with a I2C-module (black part on the picture below). I2C is a communication protocol which allows an easier connection between the display and the Raspberry Pi Pico. Indeed, instead of having to wire all the pins on the top of the screen, we only have to connect the display with 4 wires to our Raspberry Pi Pico.

If you bought one of our kits, the hexadecimal address of the LCD is ‘0x27’. And if you don’t know the address, you can find it out with the help of our tutorial ‘Find out an I2C address with the Raspberry Pi Pico‘. We will need the I2C address from the display to insert it in our MicroPython code.

To avoid extensive and complicated code writing, libraries are often used. For our LCD, we will also be using a library. We found the most appropriate library at GitHub from Tyler Peppy. And he based his work on the Python library created by Dave Hylands. As these files from this quite specific library don’t come automatically with MicroPython, we have to install them ourselves.

Now, it’s time to save your script. Just make sure you save this MicroPython file in the same folder as the 2 files from the library you uploaded earlier.

And before running the script, it’s important to adjust the contrast of your LCD. If the contrast isn’t adjusted well, it’s possible you don’t see appearing anything. You can adjust it by turning with a small screwdriver at the blue potentiometer at the back of your LCD (see the pictures here above). Make sure the backlight of the display is on to see the result. If the LCD’s contrast is adjusted right, you can just see the darker rectangles for the characters appear.

Besides the commands we used in the last lines of our script, there are more possibilities to communicate with the LCD. If you want to learn more about, have a look at this Github webpage.

This 18-bit capable 320x240 pixel IPS display adheres majestically to the back of your Pico, and has lush colours and great viewing angles. Just like our original Display Pack, we"ve surrounded it with four tactile buttons so you can use your human fingers (or other non-human appendages) to interface with your Pico. There"s also an RGB LED that you can use as an indicator, for notifications or just for adding extra rainbows.

Pico Display 2.0 lets you turn a Pico into a user interface device for a bigger project, capable of giving instructions, displaying readouts and even incorporating elaborate nested menus. If you"d rather use your Pico as a standalone device you could fill up all that prime screen real estate with digitally generated, Mandelbrot-esque art, beautiful graphs or readouts from lots of sensors. You could even make a device for getting folks to share their secrets via Telnet!

The labels on the underside of Pico Display Pack 2.0 will show you which way round to plug it into your Pico - just match up the USB port with the markings on the board.

The easiest way to get started is by downloading and copying our custom MicroPython uf2 to your Pico, it includes all the libraries you"ll need to use our add-ons. The beginner friendly tutorial linked below will show you how to get to grips with pirate-brand MicroPython.

MicroPython code written for the original Display Pack can be easily converted to run on Display Pack 2.0 by changing DISPLAY_PICO_DISPLAY to DISPLAY_PICO_DISPLAY_2.

Display Pack 2.0 also works very nicely with CircuitPython and Adafruit"s DisplayIO library - look for the Display Pack 2.0 ST7789 example in the library bundle to get started!

Even though it"s bigger than our other Pico Packs, Display 2.0 will still work with Pico Omnibus or Pico Decker, if you want to use more than one Pico Pack at once. Please note that if you plug Display 2.0 into a Pico Decker, it will overhang the addon slot next to it.

Raspberry Pi Pico is a flexible, low cost microcontroller development board from the folks at Raspberry Pi, based on their very own chip - the RP2040. It"s easily programmable over USB with C/C++ or MicroPython, and ideal for using in all sorts of physical computing projects, devices and inventions - we"re so excited to see what you make with it!