luma.led-matrix 1.9.0

A library to drive a MAX7219 LED serializer (using SPI) and WS2812 NeoPixels (using DMA)

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Luma.LED_Matrix

Display drivers for MAX7219, WS2812, APA102

Python 3 library interfacing LED matrix displays with the MAX7219 driver (using SPI), WS2812 (NeoPixels, inc Pimoroni Unicorn pHat/Hat and Unicorn Hat HD) and APA102 (DotStar) on the Raspberry Pi and other Linux-based single board computers - it provides a Pillow-compatible drawing canvas, and other functionality to support:

• multiple cascaded devices

• LED matrix, seven-segment and NeoPixel variants

• scrolling/panning capability,

• terminal-style printing,

• state management,

• dithering to monochrome,

• pygame emulator

Documentation

Full documentation with installation instructions and examples can be found on https://luma-led-matrix.readthedocs.io.

A LED matrix can be acquired for a few pounds from outlets like Banggood. Likewise 7-segment displays are available from Ali-Express or Ebay.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013-2026 Richard Hull & Contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Contributing

Pull requests (code changes / documentation / typos / feature requests / setup) are gladly accepted. If you are intending some large-scale changes, please get in touch first to make sure we’re on the same page: try and include a docstring for any new methods, and try and keep method bodies small, readable and PEP8-compliant.

GitHub

The source code is available to clone at: http://github.com/rm-hull/luma.led_matrix

Contributors

• Thijs Triemstra (@thijstriemstra)

• Jon Carlos (@webmonger)

• Unattributed (@wkapga)

• Taras (@tarasius)

• Brice Parent (@agripo)

• Thomas De Keulenaer (@twdkeule)

• Tero Korpela (@terokorp)

• Qinkang Huang (@pokebox)

• Shawn Woodford (@swoodford)

• Phil Howard (@gadgetoid)

• Petr Kracík (@petrkr)

• Emlyn Corrin (@emlyn)

• Bram Verboom (@bramverb)

• Thanassis Tsiodras (@ttsiodras)

• Marko Vincek (markoaurelije)

ChangeLog

Version	Description	Date
1.9.0	Drop support for Python 3.8	2026/02/01
1.8.0	Drop support for Python 3.7 Improve performance of APA102 driver	2024/11/02
1.7.1	Documentation fixes	2023/10/05
1.7.0	Drop support for Python 3.6 Switch to implicit namespace package configuration luma.core 2.4.0 or newer is required now	2022/10/19
1.6.1	Trigger publish on github actions	2022/01/09
1.6.0	Remove redundant ws2812 package	2022/01/03
1.5.0	Drop support for Python 2.7, only 3.5 or newer is supported now	2020/07/04
1.4.1	Make contrast an optional constructor argument	2019/12/08
1.4.0	Rework namespace handling for luma sub-projects	2019/06/16
1.3.1	Fix alpha-channel blending for Unicorn Hat HD display	2019/05/26
1.3.0	Add support for Pimoroni’s Unicorn Hat HD	2019/05/26
1.2.0	Add option to control if 8x8 blocks are arranged in reverse order Add (approximations of) more characters for 7-segment displa Documentation updates	2019/04/20
1.1.1	Fix unicode warning	2018/09/26
1.1.0	Add degree symbol to segment mapper charmap	2018/09/18
1.0.8	Use DMA channel 10 (rather than ch. 5) for WS2812 NeoPixels	2018/01/23
1.0.7	Use extras_require in setup.py for ARM dependencies	2017/11/26
1.0.6	Version number available as luma.led_matrix.__version__ now	2017/11/23
1.0.5	Conditionally install WS2812 packages if Linux/ARM7L only	2017/10/22
1.0.4	Make wheel universal Minor documentation fixes	2017/10/22
1.0.3	Explicitly state ‘UTF-8’ encoding in setup when reading files	2017/10/18
1.0.2	Setup fails due to programmer not understanding basic Python …	2017/08/05
1.0.1	Setup on Python 3 fails due to hyphen in package name	2017/08/05
1.0.0	Stable release (remove all deprecated methods & parameters)	2017/07/30
0.11.1	Add Python3 compatibility for neopixels/neosegments	2017/07/29
0.11.0	Alternative WS2812 low level implementation Add support for @msurguy’s modular NeoSegments	2017/07/21
0.10.1	Add block_orientation=180 option	2017/05/01
0.10.0	BREAKING CHANGE: Move sevensegment class to luma.core.virtual package	2017/04/22
0.9.0	Add support for APA102 RGB neopixels	2017/03/30
0.8.0	Change MAX7219’s block_orientation to support ±90° angle correction Deprecate “vertical” and “horizontal” block_orientation	2017/03/19
0.7.0	BREAKING CHANGE: Move sevensegment class to luma.led_matrix.virtual package Documentation updates & corrections	2017/03/04
0.6.2	Allow MAX7219 and NeoPixel driver constructors to accept any args	2017/03/02
0.6.1	Restrict exported Python symbols from luma.led_matrix.device	2017/03/02
0.6.0	Add support for arbitrary MxN matrices rather than a single chain	2017/02/22
0.5.3	Huge performance improvements for cascaded MAX7219 devices Documentation updates	2017/02/21
0.5.2	Add apostrophe representation to seven-segment display Deprecate luma.led_matrix.legacy (moved to luma.core.legacy)	2017/02/19
0.4.4	Support both common-row anode and common-row cathode LED matrices	2017/02/02
0.4.3	Add translation mapping to accomodate Pimoroni’s 8x8 Unicorn HAT MAX7219 optimizations	2017/01/29
0.4.2	Fix bug in neopixel initialization Improved demo scripts Additional tests	2017/01/27
0.4.0	Add support for WS2812 NeoPixel strips/arrays	2017/01/23
0.3.3	Fix for dot muncher: not handling full-stop at line end Documentation updates	2017/01/21
0.3.2	Replace bytearray with mutable_string implementation More tests	2017/01/20
0.3.1	Python 3 compatibility (fix exception in bytearray creation) Begin to add tests & test infrastructure	2017/01/20
0.3.0	BREAKING CHANGE: Package rename to luma.led_matrix	2017/01/19
0.2.3	Bit-bang version using wiringPi	2013/01/28