WS281X NeoPixel-ish Matrix Rendering Library

This library is intended to make the neopixel ish LED matrix to work with raspberry pi and Python. It is based on this rpi-ws281x python implementation. This makes it setting up your LED panel faster and removes a lot of hiccups. The original library does not work with panel, it is meant to control the strip.

Features offered

• Direct resizing and rendering of images (png/jpeg).
• Direct resizing and rendering of animations (gif)
• Frames are represented as RGB Tuples so building your own frame is very simple.
• Excellent brightness control.
• Support for multi panel configurations.
• Non-blocking threads, the operations are async and will not block you.

Setup

You'll need to install pillow and rpi-ws281x packages (and their dependencies from pip)

# pip install pillow rpi-ws281x

Demo

# python demo.py

The order is red -> green -> blue -> image -> animation. If this is not the order you see, your strip config is different than the mine.

Adding to your project

Add it as a submodule.

$ git submodule add https://github.com/whizzzkid/rpi-ws281x-matrix-python matrix

In your project

from matrix.ws281xMatrix import WS281xMatrix

screen = WS281xMatrix()

API

Once you have:

screen = WS281xMatrix()

You can simply ask it to render an image like so:

screen.render_image('path_to_image')

Why is this needed?

When I wrote this, I was frustrated to make this 16x16 panel work with RPi. The Adafruit Neopixel library claims that their panels cannot work with RPi because of their strict timing requirements. However that is not the case. The rpi-281x library is a proof that it works, however it does not allow you to dump images/animations directly on the screen. This library aims to solve just that.

License

MIT