mi-led-interface 1.0.0

Modular interface for controlling the Merkury Innovations LED Matrix Display via BLE.

Merkury Innovations Multicolor Matrix LED Display Interfacing Library

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Whew, what a mouthful, huh? MILI for short, provides automatic, high-level interfacing with the Merkury Innovation's Multicolor Matrix LED Display.

Why?

I went to Walmart one day, and picked up this LED panel. Naturally, it had an app, and every API developer's worst nightmare is other people's apps to control their technology. So, I started looking into alternatives.

I had come across this reverse-engineering of the model, specifically how it interfaces over BLE. Out of curiosity, I decided to start tinkering with it too.

While the reverse-engineering was perfect, and the protocol worked as expected, what didn't work as expected was trying to interface it like a library... because it wasn't a library. It's a toolkit. So, I decided to use the effort that was already there, and develop a library that plays nicer with developers who want to get things done their way, with their product.

Because of the nature of libraries, I felt it was best to provide an open-source, pip install ready iteration, versus the toolkit of scripts that was provided by the initial developer, offe. Without them, this project would not be possible. Thank you.

Download

You can install it from PyPi, once I have it listed, or you can download the source code and build it with Poetry.

Examples:

from mi_led_interface.client import PanelClient
from mi_led_interface.pixels import PixelGrid

# Until the script is stopped, if you have a model of the Matrix LED display close by,
# it will display a 16x16 rendition of "silly_picture.png" in the directory with the running script.
client = PanelClient()
pixel_grid = PixelGrid.from_image("silly_picture.png")
client.show_image(pixel_grid)

from mi_led_interface.client import PanelClient
from mi_led_interface.pixels import PixelGrid

# This works with animated images, too!
client = PanelClient()
pixel_grid = PixelGrid.from_image("silly_animation.gif")
client.show_image(pixel_grid)

from mi_led_interface.client import PanelClient
from mi_led_interface.pixels import PixelGrid
from PIL import Image

# You can also use PILlow's images...
client = PanelClient()
image = Image.open("a_pillow.png")
pixel_grid = PixelGrid.from_image(image)
client.show_image(pixel_grid)

from mi_led_interface.client import PanelClient
from mi_led_interface.pixels import PixelGrid, Pixel
from asyncio import run

# ...or go a little deeper, and represent individual bits and bytes!
def binary_representation(number: int):
    if isinstance(number, int) is False: return "0"*256
    string = bin(number).split("0b")[-1]
    if len(string) >= 256: return "0"*256
    iterations = 256 - len(string)
    returned_string = ""
    for _ in range(iterations):
        returned_string += "0"
    returned_string += string
    return returned_string

async def __main():
    panel_client = PanelClient()

    while True:
        pixel_grid = PixelGrid()
        b_r = binary_representation(floor(time()))
        for index, i in enumerate(b_r):
            pixel_grid.set_pixel(index%16, index//16, Pixel.from_bool(int(i)))
        await panel_client.draw_to_panel(pixel_grid)

run(__main())