prashnts / esphome-microdot-matrix

esp-home component for Pimoroni's Microdot display matrices

esphome-microdot-matrix

A custom component for esp-home to drive the beautiful LTP305 based LED Matrices from Pimoroni. They produce this module in two forms, a standalone LED Matrix Breakout containing two display modules, and a Raspberry Pi HAT called Microdot pHAT.

I really love these little displays, but I wanted to free up some of my old Raspberry Pis driving this display (thanks to the global shortage), and so I decided to make them work with ESP-Home, which has a great API.

Notes

• Reviewing max7219digit implementation, I discovered that we can have custom functions in lambdas. This works by passing the MicrodotMatrix object to the lambda instead of just the DisplayBuffer.
• Based on Pimoroni's original implementation, and most importantly the font.
• You can use any font (or anything really that is suppored by esp-home's display api), but most pixel fonts I found did not render nicely.
• Pimoroni's font is accessible by using printstr, printchar, and printstrf, while you can use your own font via printf api.
• If you use multiple displays, be aware that there is a noticable refresh delay between them. (I might improve this later.)
• Red and Green modules do not have same brightness scale.
• Logically you have 10 x 7 pixels grid, but there is a gap between 5th and 6th pixels.

Usage

Include the component in your esp-home config. You can either link directly to this repo or clone it and include locally (example below). Refer to docs for the config via git repos.

external_components:
  - source:
      type: local
      path: esphome-microdot-matrix

Next add the following configuration, which will show current time (...well, seconds) and pulse the brightness (approximately) every second.

There are a couple of functions available in lambda, namely, printstrf(format, ...), set_decimal(left, right), and set_brightness(value).

time:
  - platform: sntp
    id: ntp_time
    timezone: 'Europe/Paris'

display:
  - platform: microdot_matrix
    update_interval: .5s
    address: 0x61
    brightness: 10
    lambda: |-
      auto time = id(ntp_time).now();
      it.printstrf("%02d", time.second);
      if (time.second % 2) {
        it.set_brightness(20);
        it.set_decimal(true, true);
      } else {
        it.set_brightness(10);
        it.set_decimal(true, true);
      }

Todos

• Scroll support
• Use Pimoroni's fonts
• Weather Icons
• Support more fonts?

License

MIT.