neopolitan 0.1.40

Neopolitan: a library for displaying text on LED boards

neopolitan

A library for displaying "text" on LED boards

Description

This is a revamp of stockticker, which queries real-time stock price data, calculates daily fluctuations, and displays it on an LED board. While the end result of that project was cool, this project aims to clarify much of the data display code and make it usable to display any inputted message. See this sub-readme for an introduction to how data can be used to make the board display "human-readable" text.

Given that access to hardware boards can be constrictive and testing can be difficult, this project aims to support data display on a graphical interface so that anyone can access it. pygame is used to display the graphical display, while the neopixel (hence the project name) library is used to interface with the hardware board. The switch between these two displays is OS-dependent.

Installation

[python3 -m] pip install neopolitan

Usage

Make sure to exit the program by pressing the window close "X", instead of ctrl+c

• To run the program

  from neopolitan.neop import main as main_function
  main_function()
  

• To demo live-update functionality

  import neopolitan.testboardrunner
  

• To run the program with arguments

  from queue import Queue
  
  q = Queue() # Initialize the input events queue
  q.put('say This is a demo statement') # Set the message: 'say {message (spaces okay)}'
  q.put('speed fast') # Set the scroll speed: 'speed {slow/medium/fast}'
  q.put('wrap True') # Set whether message wraps when done displaying: 'wrap {True/False};
  
  from neopolitan.neop import main
  main(events=q) # Run main with the specified events
  

  • See Supported Characters for a list of supported characters

https://github.com/alyoshenka/neopolitan/assets/38815390/1e98261b-8dfb-48e3-943b-34b49878c55f

• To run some demos

  from neopolitan.demos import *
  
  display('This displays a message that cannot be updated')
  # Execution will return here when the display is closed
  display_all() # display all defined symbols
  

https://github.com/alyoshenka/neopolitan/assets/38815390/e9cae65b-2c18-4844-886f-61a2a319c42a

• See this code for an example of how to send live updates in the package

Command Line Arguments

[Deprecated] Note: This code only works from source, NOT the package install

From the top-level neopolitan/ directory: python[3] neopolitan/neop.py {args}

• --message/-m {message_to_display}
  • Displays the given message on the board (enclose in quotes if multiple words)
• --scroll-speed/-s {slow/medium/fast}
  • Controls how quickly the display scrolls across the screen
• --wrap/-w {True/False}
  • Determines whether the display should "wrap around" when it gets to the end, or just show a blank screen